Browse Items (15544 total)

Argues that Chaucer modified, extended, and developed the "conventions" of medieval rhetoric (including the "doctrine of three styles"), exploring his uses in light of the "Poetria Nova" of Geoffrey of Vinsauf and the pseudo-Ciceronian "Rhetorica ad…

Suggests that "esy of dispence" in the GP description of the Physician (1.431) means not only "slow to spend money," but also "moderate in prescribing remedies," or perhaps that he prescribes palatable medicines.

Offers lexical and contextual evidence to argue that "Lente" in WBP 3.543 and 550 means not the liturgical season but "spring" more generally.

Lists and describes the pedagogical value of selected resources in the study of Chaucer, focusing on CT but not exclusively, and arranged in several categories: Language, Editions, Adaptations and Translations, Backgrounds, Social History, Reference…

Edits the complete text of Kynaston’s Latin translation of TC, based on the printed version of Books 1 and 2 (1635) and the manuscript version of the remaining three books in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Additional C 287. Includes an Introduction that…

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that the volume includes a poem entitled "On a Theme of Chaucer."

Explores how Chaucer's transformation of Boccaccio's Criseide in "Filostrato" to Criseyde in TC is analogous to his negotiation of authorial arrogance ("Arroganz") and humility ("Bescheidenheit") in relation to ancient authority.

Includes comments on the "feature-by-feature account" of the Prioress's face in GP 1.151-56, and suggests that "a description of this kind is less likely to produce a vivid response than one that relates the features to one another."

Assesses "bibliophilism" in Chaucer's works as indicators of his own access to and attitudes towards books, learning, and learning spaces or libraries. Focuses on the uses of "librarye" (Bo 1.pr.4.41 and 1.pr.5.41) as early instances in English and…

Approaches SNPT as translations of source materials, assessing Chaucer's assignment of his early life of St. Cecilia to the Second Nun as narrator, the implications of rhyme royal, and the thematic and formal concerns of transformation, idleness, and…

Describes features of medieval economic practice that underlie the SqT and the Franklin's interruption of it, investigating fundamental interrelations among food, land, and social status and their resistance to occlusion. Designed for pedagogical…

Comments on the possibly harmful and/or fraudulent aspects of "japes" in CkPT, offering information about the food trade in medieval London and considering the Cook's "mormel" (GP 1.386) to be a sign of his vulnerability. Designed for pedagogical…

Treats the breaking of sisterhood (Emelye and Hippolyta) and brotherhood (Palamon and Arcite) in KnT as Chaucer's adaptations of Ciceronian ideals in order to "intensify questions of desire agency and social justice" in the face of worldly…

Encourages readers to keep track of the money in ShT, assessing the coded actions of gifting, receiving, and reciprocating in the Tale, analyzing the merchant's response to Don John's request for 100 franks (7.281-96), and suggesting that the readers…

Explores the "complications" involved in defining "environment," "landscape," and "nature" in MerT, and views the narrative through an "ecocritical" lens, describing the critical method and showing that in the Tale "literary devices revolving around…

Describes distinctions that derive from transgender politics and explores how the gender and sexual identities in SumPT--"largely constructed by and through its twin genres of antifraternal critique and fabliau"--"insinuate that friars are both…

Approaches Mel as a mirror for princes, concerned with the power of lordship and the value and function of proverbs and didactic literature. Includes several classroom projects and questions for discussion.

This webpage coordinates and comments upon approaches to medieval texts as "multimodal"; designed for classroom use, with suggestions for further exploration and hypertext links to texts, illustrations, and related materials. Arranges the approaches…

Summarizes the “textual world” of the late-medieval England and describes the international development of the printing press. Comments on references to literacy and literate materials in Chaucer's works, explores the implications of Adam, remarks…

Uses visualization software (the "network analysis software Gephi") to represent the interactions among the pilgrims in the links between tales in CT, focusing on the importance of the Host and his "twin anxieties"—concern with haste and with…

Comments on several medieval legal cases involving charges of rape, describes the role of rape in pastourelle tradition, and argues that, even though "no form of justice . . . can fully undo rape's harms," WBT "demonstrates the pressing need for…

Outlines "Chaucer's lives as poet, public figure, and literary persona," with recurrent reminders of the limits of what can be known from surviving evidence. Designed for pedagogical, includes suggestions for further reading.

Introduces Chaucer's language as a dialect and a stage in the development of English. Designed for classroom use, includes sections on vocabulary, grammar, style and register, and the opening eighteen lines of the GP.

Compares the functions and effects of Dorigen's "odd pleasure of intense feeling" in FranT with those of Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, considering their feelings in light of their respective community structures and gender…

Describes how GP reflects "Chaucer's fascination" with social diversity and "bodily variety," and reads MkT as a "verse anthology of disability narratives," using various approaches drawn from disability studies to examine several of the Monk's…