Browse Items (16035 total)

Despite the crossed purposes of the Prioress's secular and religious impulses, each impulse paradoxically reaches fruition in PrT. In creating the young boy as an innocent so like herself and then describing his martyrdom with the particular…

PrT develops the concerns with food, gluttony, and filth that are established in the GP description of the Prioress, where she is characterized as childish, greedy, and sinful. The tale of Thopas parodies PrT and restores moral balance.

The Prioress is neither aristocratic, as Bowden, Manly, and Robinson argue, nor classless as Sister Madeleva posits, but a proto-Cockney and, thus, a typically round, contradictory Chaucerian character. With East London associations and dialect (her…

Places the Prioress and the Second Nun in the context of late medieval female monasticism, contrasting the roles of female agency and the "representations of female holiness" of the Prioress and the Second Nun.

Argues that the "emblematic Mary legend of the medieval 'puys'" is analogous to PrT, that the description of the Prioress in GP is "as Marian" as it is courtly, and that Chaucer had access to information about the "puys."

Surveys critical approaches to PrT, distinguishing between "hard critics" of the Tale who read it as an indictment of the teller's anti-Semitism, and "historical" approaches that consider it in light of late-medieval attitudes and practices. Argues…

Considerations of the Prioress as a romance heroine have no basis in Chaucer's text; rather they are fantasies of twentieth-century Chaucerians.

A survey of printed editions of LGW reveals that Urry's text deserves a better reputation than it has had since its publication in 1721.

Prose adaptation of KnT, abbreviated and simplified for a juvenile audience, with color illustrations by Marcin Piwowarski.

The people's and Griselda's agreements with Walter, the agent of testing, are analogous to the Old and New Testament covenants, respectively. The lower-order civil bond, governed by the letter of the law, is weak; the higher-order marriage bond,…

Explores the sociocultural influence of sacerdotal celibacy on literature. Capable of performing the Mass, the "special body" of the priest became a literary icon, aligned with the Latin language in opposition to Lollardy. Lay writing emerged against…

Adamina assesses the trickster qualities of the fox and of the Nun's Priest, including various kinds of linguistic slipperiness, doubleness, and flattery.

It is impossible to determine an exact modern value of the 100 francs in ShT, but internal, economic, and comparative literary evidence indicates that {dollar}5,000 is "a specific lower limit to the value of that amount in 1990's U.S. dollars." …

The woman that infatuates the narrator is a barista who she calls "Chaucer girl," so named because she is first seen holding a copy of "The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer."

Collates versions of the epitaph on Chaucer's tomb to challenge assumptions underlying the Chaucer-Variorum choice of the Hengwrt manuscript as a base text. While Hengwrt may be close to Chaucer's original, the "movement" from Skeat to Hengwrt in…

In seeking "blisse" and "prosperitee," Arveragus and Dorigen opt for a limited, worldly purpose for their marriage. The difficulties that arise stem primarily from Arveragus's and Dorigen's words to each other and from the nature of their…

Since the late 1970s, manuscript study has become a major part of Middle English scholarship, but such study has not affected edditorial practice. The "Riverside Chaucer," for example, "is scarcely revolutionary in its method and biases."

Surveys Middle English references to Spanish people, places, and things, concluding that, among Middle English authors, Chaucer "reflects the greatest and the most diverse knowledge" of Spain. He was familiar with Spanish geography, "hispano-Arabic…

Series of essays focusing on medieval vernacular literature and "the presence of a text to its own age and the presence of that age within it." Special emphasis on Chaucer in Chapter 6, which examines CT, ABC, and LGW, to "restore the presence of the…

Contrasts the presentations of interiority in TC and in Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" as a basis for analyzing Shakespeare's vacating his play of chivalric principles.

Chaucer studies are often considered neutral and unpoliticized, whether they are subjective, personalized readings, or objective and "professionalized." The construction of the Middle Ages as unalterably "Other," combined with the lack of a…

A textbook anthology of British and American poetry, arranged topically, with a glossary of poetic terms, a section entitled "About the Poets," and a first-line index. In a chapter labeled "Human Condition" includes a modern English translation of…

Separate chapters are devoted to Lollard society, education, biblical scholarship, and the ideology of the movement as it relates to theology, ecclesiology, and politics. Chapter 9,"The Context of Vernacular Wycliffism," examines the question of…

Analyzes the occurrences of the preverbal y- prefix in seven manuscripts of CT, attending to grammatical, syntactic, and metrical considerations. Concludes that, although the construction is used to form passive constructions clearly, the data also…

Saint Jerome's defense of the merits of virginity for the sake of Christ and the evils of remarriage threaten the Wife, who attacks his teaching.