Browse Items (15544 total)

Identifies parallels between the effects of grief on the Black Knight in BD (486-512) and late-medieval medical descriptions of the "falling of the heart" due to sorrow or distress, quoting parallels from John of Gaddesden and Jacopo Berengario Da…

Explores resonances between the characterization of Chaucer's Prioress in GP and the life and legend of St. Eligius, clarifying how the Prioress's swearing by "Seint Loy" (i.e., Eligius; GP 1.120) is both appropriate and highly ironic.

Considers the "gestalt of identity" that armor represents in TC, assessing the private and public aspects of references to arms and armor in the poem, focusing on Troilus and Diomedes.

Considers the Physician's misreading and misapplication of his source material (the Sermon on the Mount and Jean de Meun) to be key to proper understanding that he is "untrustworthy" and that PhyT reveals his lack of "spiritual sensitivity." Reads…

Assesses the "chilling savagery" of the Merchant's attitude toward January in MerT as well as January's materialism, sensualism, and self-delusion, arguing that the character generates a kind of pathos that verges on the tragic.

Explores the sources and ironies of the disquisition on dreams that opens HF, and argues that its list of "six dream words" (HF 7-12) are made up of "three contrasting pairs," each of which is "distinguished by a contrast between a dream that conveys…

Ponders the complications and implications of discussing rape in modern classroom considerations of WBT, and recommends using the BBC television version of the tale to help raise and confront its inherent questions and values.

Shows how the "relationship between voice and identity" is a preoccupation of both BD and one of its chief sources, Machaut's "Dit de la fonteinne amoureuse." Highlights the formative influence of the composite "Roman de la Rose"--particularly its…

Contends that the SqT explores "rhetorical imitation" as a means to confront the postlapsarian "fallen" nature of language, "multiplying the rhetorical conventions 'imitatio,' inexpressibility, and 'translatio'" in order to "probe the idea of poetic…

Surveys classical and medieval skeptical views of the significance of fame and contrasts the attitudes toward reputation expressed by Criseida in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and Criseyde in TC, focusing on the heroines' views about infamy before leaving…

Examines the medieval conception of sight (both as sense and as ingress of the seen to the soul) in TC and Malory.

Explores spaces, places, and gendered power relations in MilT and RvT, arguing that Alisoun, Malyne, and Symkyn's wife all use trickery to evade spatial oppression and achieve pleasure.

Describes how in Book III of HF Chaucer engages with Dante's "Commedia", especially Canto XI of the "Purgatorio"; focuses particularly on speaking silences, tacit allusions, and concerns with infamy.

Assesses Chaucer's characterization of Criseyde in light of Boccaccio's Criseide in "Filostrato," arguing that Chaucer makes her more of a courtly ideal and therefore more reprehensible in her infidelity and a figure of all false, worldly love.

Argues that John Gardner’s "The Life and Times of Chaucer" (1977) is better approached as a "nonfiction novel" than as a "scholarly literary biography” and that its strengths outweigh its weaknesses as a pedagogical text, offering suggestions for how…

Proposes to resituate Pity within a "medieval mode of metaphysical poetry" because of its "collective subjectivity." Reveals how Pity, because of its allegorical and lyrical metaphysical aspects, deserves closer attention as an "example of medieval…

Uses KnT as a "comparand" in understanding the tension between "outrage and reason" in the tale of Rostam and Sohrab in Fardowsi's medieval Persian frame-tale narrative "Shahnameh" (Book of Kings). Like Fardowsi's, Chaucer's Tale struggles and…

Suggests that Jane Austen may have known WBPT and argues that there are similarities between Chaucer's Wife and Anne Elliot in Austen's "Persuasion," in that both characters "note that male authoritarian writing delimits women's social standing," and…

Explores the influence of the English poetic "heritage of ruralism" on the organicist movement of UK farm husbandry between the 1930s and the 1950s, including discussion of how and to what extent "Chaucer was central to John Middleton Murry's…

Evaluates Godwin's "Life of Chaucer" and its impact on the Victorian reception of Chaucer, exploring how the biography critiques "the politics of thinking national literature historically" and challenges "conventional models of literary biography"…

Examines the use of final -"e" in the fourth stanza of Book II of TC, and the ways in which early copyists paid attention to Chaucer's use of the letter.

Reconstructs a career for the Knight, based on the GP description and details from KnT, MkT, and historical sources. Maintains that Chaucer had met the Knight, perhaps in France, and that the Knight was some fifteen years younger than usually…

Seeks to understand BD as an exploration of (male) grief beyond its presumed historical occasion and to relate the subject and structure of the poem by explicating the recurring references to literal and metaphorical nakedness--especially that of…

Explores the possibilities of "transhistorical feeling" for assessing what "Chaucer's 'persone', and especially his face" mean to "post-medieval audiences." Argues that "intersubjective" perception of "geniality" in visual and verbal Chaucer…

Suggests that authors including Chaucer, Langland, Hoccleve, and Johannes de Caritate employed Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian sources (many derived from Arabic sources) in the course of exploring types of literary and cultural authority.