Browse Items (15542 total)

Examines LGW as a poetic work that invites criticism as a function of how it is structured. Looks in depth at Alceste and her efforts in the poem, reappraising how she achieves success with the God of Love.

The introduction to this edition of Valerius includes a section on "The Later Middle Ages: Benoit, Guido, Chaucer, and Boccaccio," discussing whether or not "medieval writers were familiar with Valerius Flaccus." Demonstrates that, although Chaucer…

Analyzes how the "Legend of Dido" differs from Virgil's "Aeneid" and Ovid's "Heroides," VII. Claims that Chaucer's narrator is more self-referential and that the plurality of voices of the narrator, along with the characters' voices, results in a…

Studies Chaucer's engagement with Ovidian sources to consider how LGW is a "narrative of metamorphosis." Argues that the metamorphosis is due to the creative process of “"vernacularization of the classical authority,”"which establishes a shared…

Studies aspects of "mystical non-mysticism" in Chaucer's poetry. Explores the "nomenclative impotentiality" of the narrator's "non-self-naming" in HF, 1873–82, and his "unknowing" elsewhere in the poem. Comments on the Black Knight's tearless sorrow…

Investigates the reference to the "Judeo-Roman historian Josephus" in HF, 1429–36, exploring how his authority varies in the Middle Ages "depending on the extent to which he is understood as a Christian or a Jew," and showing how, in Chaucer's poem,…

Argues that in its adaptations of poetic traditions (particularly representations of the four elements and "ars grammatica") and in dealing "explicitly with the problematics of language and poetry," HF is "almost an anti-'ars-poetica'.” In it,…

Combines a biography of Benedictine astronomer John Westwyk with contextualizing information about medieval science, technology, education, and innovation, particularly in the monastic settings of St. Albans Abbey and its Tynemouth Priory. Credits…

Offers pedagogical justification for using Brian Helgeland’s movie "A Knight’s Tale" in multicultural teaching, with attention to the movie's brief mention of BD and discussion of the poem's usefulness in broadening student awareness.

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…

Examines the "topos of the dream" in Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio and compares the dream vision in BD. Points to similarities with mystical and shamanic experiences toward ecstasy that go beyond the similarities and differences in the medieval…

Compiles extensive, authoritative information about each of the English translations of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" from Alfred the Great to H. R. James (1897)--complete translations (including Bo), partial versions, abridgments,…

Examines the trauma of sexual violence, focusing on Chaucer's rape of Cecily Chaumpaigne, contextualizing the study of trauma through contemporary theorists Cathy Caruth and Ruth Leys along with Astr. Considers "the relationship between Chaucer's…

Discusses the Virtues and Vices miniatures that accompany ParsT in Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.4.27, as they relate to Chaucer's text, in the "context ofmtheir wider medieval iconographic tradition" and the "imagery of affective meditation."…

Explores the reception of John Gower as an alchemist in the sixteenth century, including description of Elias Ashmole's notion that Gower was Chaucer's "master" and "mentor" in alchemical science.

Surveys the cultural impact of "Omnis utriusque sexus," and shows how Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve used "confessional discourse" to help construct subjectivities in their works. Comments on ParsT as the "best known confessional manual in Middle…

Argues that "the discarded historical event" of the Peasants' Revolt "surfaces" in NPT "not to record the cracks and crevices in the dwindling feudal system, but to participate in the bestialization and grotesquing of the 1381 insurgents and the…

Using Michel de Certeau's idea of the tactic, argues that the Monk represents the monastic estate, and that he uses tragedies to attack the Host, representative of the city, and the Knight, representative of the nobility. Explores the Monk's own…

Shows not only that Th is a send-up of the tail-rhyme romance and its conventions, but that the poem's metadiscursive horizon of expectation, established by means of the characterization of Chaucer the Pilgrim, resonates in the tale and reveals…

Reads the GP description of the Prioress as an ironic frame for PrT, concluding that they combine as an "exercise in depicting and ridiculing popular anti-Semitism rather than condoning it."

Compares the antisemitism in the three works, describing the Jews of PrT as "an undistinguished mass with no face, and no individuality, a mass that can instinctively react, if given a chance, against their Christian neighbour"; they are less…

In Wallace's volume dedicated to examining various aspects of the importance of Rome and the Latin language--classical and Christian--in early British culture, this chapter focuses on their roles in theorizing and depicting relations between living…

Claims that Chaucer may have been aware of a fourteenth-century alchemical work prescribing an "elixir" of "a grain of wheat soaked in wine" that prolongs life long enough for someone whose death is imminent to "speak, make their will, and confess."…

Reads PrT and the thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman "Hugo de
Lincolnia" as "conspiracy theory narratives," showing "how they use language and imagery to generate aesthetic emotions, especially fear and disgust," and revealing connections "both to…