Browse Items (16533 total)

Argues "that conventions of setting, familiar themes or locations which create expectations in the reader about the content of the dream itself, provide a valuable and largely overlooked perspective upon the genre of Chaucerian dream poetry."…

Identifies liturgical echoes in Chaucer's reworking of Dante at the end of Book V of TC, arguing that it exemplifies David Lawton's theory of voice and "public
interiorities."

Looks at how SqT frames the East as stereotypically strange and familiar in order to explore the corrupting effects of "vitium curiositatis" (the vice of curiosity) and the beneficial possibilities of wonder. Argues that Chaucer embraces fragmented…

Refers to Roger Bacon's description of the use of encryption in Equat, noting that Chaucer's authorship is not definitive.

Discusses inquisition and "examination in the ecclesiastical courts" for the ways that they, like confession, help to disclose the development of interiority as an aspect of medieval selfhood, discussing literary works such as "Dives and Pauper,"…

Reveals how the common, generally lower-class forenames in the "Visio Anglie" portion of Gower's "Vox clamantis" reinforce the "degraded, bestial character" that Gower attributes to the rioters of 1381. Because the names could apply to animals or to…

Assesses "self-referential reflections on storytelling" in MLT and Mel, focusing on how the "resistive narrative agency" of their female protagonists calls attention to "questions central to the literary enterprise itself," particularly through…

Focuses on the Sultaness in MLT and argues that the text explores the ramifications of forced conversion and feigned baptism, along with larger issues of deception and truth.

Musical setting for the song at the end of PF (ll. 680-90; 691 is omitted), in modernized Middle English; printed from the original in British Library, Additional MS 54779 as edited by Graham Parlett.

Identifies connections among "war, narrative, and literary technique" in TC to show "how Chaucer constructs . . . siege as a dynamic space in which to imagine the forces that shape and determine human behaviour." Chaucer "reconfigures the idea of a…

Explores the question of what Chaucer "holds to be the nature of reality," focusing on "the metaphysics of beauty" in PF, the "nature of the rocks" in FranT, and the "ontology of narrative itself" in NPT, and showing that "Chaucer's sensate faith in…

Interprets BD as an early example of "illness narrative." BD's structuring concern with sickness and healing, centered upon insomnia detached from the courtly discourse of lovesickness, reflects the preoccupations of late medieval natural philosophy…

Investigates the "moral version of Chaucer that emerges" in Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes," arguing that it is a kind of poetic authority produced "in the face of an increasingly militant and repressive English Church," and that, unlike other early…

Considers Chaucer's uses of Theban material drawn from the tradition of Statius and Boccaccio, exploring how he adapted his sources and how, in turn, his works were adapted by others. Surveys the "exemplary power" of Thebes in Chaucer's works, and…

Surveys translations and studies of medieval English literature produced in the People's Republic of China, commenting on the important role of Professor Li Fu-ning and describing translations, theses and dissertations, and critical books and essays.…

Uses a "political theology of the refugee as neighbor" to explore contiguities between "Refugee Tales" (2016) and CT. Explicates nuances of "tendre/"tender" in the works and examines the absent presence of Theban refugees in KnT. The Knight "edits…

Seeks to answer the "demande d'amour" of FranT (1622), first eliminating Dorigen and the magician from consideration of who is most "fre," and then arguing that Aurelius and Arveragus have effectively equal claim to be named--a complicated balance…

Compares and contrasts John of MilT with January of MerT as "ridiculous figures" and "gulls of courtly love," the first "senex amans" naïve, the second lascivious. Both men violate "an existing societal order" and the ideals of "sexual propriety and…

Assesses John Lydgate as "the premier learned war poet of the later English Middle Ages," exploring his "Troy Book" and "Seige of Thebes" for the ways they depict the violence of war. Includes recurrent attention to Lydgate's sources, Chaucer's TC,…

Explicates the scene of Pandarus's interruption of Criseyde's reading group (TC,
II.85ff.), attending to its intertextualities, the implications of its setting in a paved "secular parlor," the nature of the female aristocratic readers, and…

Suggests that "wood" indicates lechery in FrT 3.1327, echoed punningly by "harlotrye" in the next line.

Argues that "as a better joke," "worly" is preferable to "worthy" in Tho (7.917). The latter appears to be "scribal normalization" of Chaucer's mocking of a "well-worn native" word.

Argues that Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" alludes to KnT (particularly the figures of Emelye and Arcite) in ways that "perforate the boundaries" of the chronology of Shakespeare's borrowings the from the tale in "Dream" and in "The Two…

Sketches "the mode of literacy" that "occupies a borderland just beyond the precincts of surviving evidence," exploring "the role of dictation" rather than "a sequence of errors in copying that stands between" versions of such texts as TC and "Piers…

Traces Chaucer's uses of purses and other cavities in PardPT as sites of queer reproduction. Throughout, "locates the 'purs' as a gendered, sexualized, and economized site of social exchange."