Browse Items (16012 total)

Discusses the silence of Chaucer on the life of Boethius in Bo, then moves to examine a fifteenth-century translation of Boethius, based on Bo, that expands and adds to Chaucer's text, including material focused on Boethius himself. Traces and…

Chapter 2 comprises discussion of how "astronomy travelled from Spain to England" and speculation about "how Chaucer might have benefitted [sic] from this collaboration in order to produce" Astr.

Summarizes the attribution and reception of Anel in the early modern period and views the six-line poem appended to Caxton’s edition of Anel, known as
"Chaucer’s Prophecy," as a source for the Fool's speech in Shakespeare's "King Lear."

Presents a new interpretation of the historical basis of the canon from "Pars secunda" of CYT, while emphasizing Chaucer’s own historical context of being at
the center of a network of connections at court and elsewhere.

Treats the concerns of “faith, miracle, and conversion” in SNT, separating the tale from its "putative and absent narrator" and emphasizing its orthodoxy in the relation between faith and understanding, sexuality and marriage, and female…

Analyzes legal, hermeneutic, and social ramifications of murder and murderers in the Middle Ages. Includes Tracy's own essay entitled "'Mordre wol out': Murder and Justice in Chaucer," which focuses on Chaucer’s treatment of murder in CT,…

Contextualizes the barnyard chase scene of NPT alongside late medieval hunting treatises, and questions the juxtaposition between the chase and the medieval noble hunt. The parody of this hunt offers multiple layers of meaning, from criticism of the…

Explores the range of representations of animals in English poetry for the ways poems can generate knowledge of animal life and sympathy for it, analyzing animal fables, poems that treat animals generally, species poems, poems about individual…

Argues that in MkT, the Monk proves himself to be not only a reader and interpreter of tragedy, but also a critic of the concept itself.

Considers the performative aspects of Prudence as an allegorical figure in "Sawles Warde," where she functions as a dramatic "expositor," and in Mel, where she offers "commentary . . . on reading, misreading, and the limits of wisdom when it is…

Explores the recursive demands of grammatical emendation ("emendatio") and penitential reform--the accumulative and ongoing need for correction of error that creates or prompts more need for correction--as the aesthetic that underlies Mel, and CT…

Argues that Malory downplayed his uses of the Stanzaic "Morte Arthur" and the Alliterative "Morte Arthure" in his "Le Morte Darthur" because the cultural prestige of native English romances was low--an attitude popularized by Chaucer in Th and…

Reads the prologue to Th (Prioress-Thopas Link) psychoanalytically as a comic enactment of the internal economy of the self in which the ego (Chaucer) absorbs the "attentions" of the superego (the Host) "so thoroughly as to arrest them" and deflect…

Includes discussion of "Chaucer's use of the bestiary to create his character of the Pardoner," relying on "the reader's association of animal features with morality to convey its meaning" and structuring PardPT to incorporate "the generic components…

Explores the implications of reading the Pardoner as a cross-dressing female, arguing that Chaucer leaves "her" characterization ambiguous, plays on "cultural associations of cross-dressing," and “legitimiz[es] the rhetorical power of female…

One-act play for eight child actors adapted from PardT, with Chaucer speaking directly to the Pardoner at the opening and closing of the plot. Production notes indicate a running time of approximately 20 minutes.

Points out thematic parallels between Hoccleve's "Male regle" and PardT, such as "riot and repentance" and "misreading" of "the material and the spiritual," and argues that Hoccleve succeeds in taking in Chaucerian literary resources to make his…

Argues "that in early modern England the primary theoretical models by which poets understood how language means what it means were applications of
eucharistic theology." Opens with discussion of PardT, SumT, and Pearl "in the context of the debate…

Includes discussion of how Chaucer "lays bare . . . [h]ow language and other signs may be adopted to obscure the patently obvious,” arguing that the Pardoner's "constant insistence on corporeal language and imagery always returns the reader to the…

Includes discussion of "Chaucer's critique of the rhetoric of moderation in the speech of the Pardoner and the Friar John [in SumT] . . . , who attempted to assert their clerical superiority and cover up their gluttony by preaching moderation."

Includes a prose retelling of PardT entitled “Three Rioters: The Pardoner’s Tale,” which closes with a return to the “eternal journey” of the Old Man.

Examines the depiction of the Pardoner in PardT as a reflection of Chaucer's own ideas about spirituality. Contends that Chaucer's portraits of the religious pilgrims in GP showcase several types of spirituality and argues that the poet seems to…

Compares Chaucer's and Gower's versions of the story of Virginia, her rape, and death, remarking upon their various similarities and differences. Building upon that comparison, offers correctives for how a narrator might be used for old texts in…

Proposes a "theoretical conjunction" between "an ecological love for the non-identical and ethical theories of love for the neighbor," exploring in light of neighbor theory Dorigen's relationships in FranT with Arveragus, with Aurelius, and with the…

Examines the concept of intent and the illusion that is the marriage between Dorigen and Arveragus in order to argue that the message is one not of equality in marriage but of the happiness gained when the woman submits to her husband's authority.…