Browse Items (16038 total)

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.…

Traces the history and implications of the rhetorical analogy between the effects of "persistent speech" and water eroding or imprinting stone, from Ovid through medieval erotodidactic and religious writing to Boccaccio's Tale of Menedon and FranT,…

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…

Reviews the scholarship concerning the bond between Canacee and the falcon in SqT and argues that this posthumanist bond "derives from their femaleness, which for the tale-teller transcends species in favor of a gendered sameness borne of similar…

With Albertanus of Brescia's "Liber de consolationis et consilii" as a common source, Mel and MerT both confront issues of counsel, gender, and lordship. MerT offers a skeptical, antifeminist, homosocial reassessment of the relatively optimistic…

Includes discussion of MerT that explains Chaucer's precision in using astronomical data for poetic purposes. Suggests that Chaucer used Alfonsine tables, and aligns the astronomical details and imagery of MerT with celestial events that occurred in…

Explores the implications of ascent and descent in MerT, focusing on the significance of the tale's vacillations between courtliness and the fabliau genre in comparison with several analogous narratives that include fruit-tree episodes. In French,…

Explores how the "unfulfilled outcomes" of characters who are possibly mothers or possibly pregnant in TC, MerT, Shakespeare's "All's Well that Ends Well," and John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" “simultaneously enable author, character, and…

Argues that the "interpretive reading" underlying T. H. White's uses of William Twiti's "The Art of Hunting" as a source in "The Once and Future King" is similar to medieval rhetorical techniques of amplification. Exemplifies similar kinds of…

Explores medieval literary representations of clothing, nudity, and fashion. Includes discussion (pp. 160-63) of how the Wife of Bath's clothing indicates her "personality" and "the crisis of legibility in the fashion system in England"; reproduces…

Reads the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 as an inspiration for the relationship between textual authority, bibliophobia, and violence in WBPT. Compares Alisoun to rioters who destroyed writings they deemed threatened their personal rights. Argues that…

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…

Includes discussion of WBPT as background to a survey of women as witches in contemporary British literature. Interprets WBP as evidence that, in Chaucer's time, a "woman, in order to claim her independence . . . has to speak of herself in negative…

Appreciates WBP as a representation of autobiographical storytelling. Argues that the Wife of Bath's focus on oral self-expression presents her as a powerful female character standing against the male-dominant literate culture.

Studies "the literary, religious, and legal histories of felony procedure," focusing on literary depictions of felony, including those in ParsT and MLT.

Describes the pedagogical value of teaching MLT alongside modern narratives "that emphasize the ways Custance represents and evokes the displaced and powerless," including students' personal experiences; "Refugee Tales," edited by David Herd; a US…

Argues that the "bond between parent and child in late medieval England was deeply felt and often conflicted as demonstrated by the literature of the period," including MLT.

Edits "Le Bone Florence of Rome," accompanied by a facing-page translation that maintains the twelve-line, tail-rhyme stanzas of the original, with end-of-text explanatory notes, textual notes, and several appendices. Introduction includes commentary…

Challenges the uses and meanings of "vernacular" and "vernacularity" in literary and linguistic studies on the grounds that the terms are historically and intrinsically racist, colonialist, and/or supremacist. Using the "paradigm of metrolingualism,"…

Includes comments on MLT, arguing that it "demonstrates the belief that not everyone can become a true Christian and that true Christianity can only be acquired by the right kind of pagans, such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings," but not Muslims.

Contrasts Chaucer's version of Custance in MLT with that of Gower and Trevet in order to show how Chaucer emphasizes the foreignness of Custance in England and the negative reaction to her, comparing them with documentary instances of xenophobia…

Contrasts medieval Augustinian views of translation with those of modern translation theory and practice, applying the former to the adaptation/translation of CkT found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 686. Argues that the Bodley scribe…

Contends that the beating in RvT alludes to an incident in the life of St. Oswald the Bishop, arguing that the allusion enhances the Reeve's attack on the Miller and creates a sense of irony, as the Reeve suffers in comparison with his priestly…

Examines late medieval British literary texts (lyrics, pastourelles, flytings, "alewife poems," "schoolroom texts," etc.) for their use of obscene language and imagery to shape and convey attitudes toward gender and sexuality, both positive and…

Contends that the confrontation between the carpenter John and the clerk Nicholas in MilT provides dramatic context for the exploration of anti-intellectualism and intellectual curiosity. Claims that in MilT it is the "combination of humor and…