Browse Items (16107 total)

Tracks the popularity of a passage about shoes from Rom in the nineteenth-century popular press, demonstrating how the passage forges a connection between Victorian and medieval England by using Chaucer as a supporter of Victorian interests and…

The Wife of Bath is, in B. J. Whiting's phrase, "an oxymoron in the flesh," and modern structuralist criticism helps us to see the mythic implications of her parodies of Paul's dicta concerning marriage, apostolic experience, and beatific vision.

Jost applies performance theory to key points in the narrative at which Criseyde seems to manipulate her words and her behavior self-consciously to achieve a desired effect.

Assesses the late-medieval and early modern popularity of the "story of Griselda" as an exploration of the "paradox of her non-noble status and her fitness to hold the moral high ground" and a reflection of anxiety "about marriages based on unequal…

Crane investigates a wide range of cultural rituals, demonstrating how identity was performed in late medieval England and how such performances make meaning and establish identity. She explores the Chaucer coat of arms as self-representation rooted…

Eleven essays by various authors on medieval theatricality as a cultural process, including discussion of dramatic images and ludic energy in Chaucer and the social and ideological "performativities" of the mystery and morality plays. For six essays…

Examines PrT and the Prioress's sketch in GP as reflexes of gender performance and the historical conditions that shaped such performances. The anti-Semitism of her tale results from her suppression of her "bodiliness," represented in a fetishizing…

Develops the medieval concept of "middle age," one of the Ages of Man, as it differs from the modern concept.

Credits Chaucer "[m]ore than any other single person . . . with establishing the position of Middle English," describing him as a "major figure in politics as well as literature," and declaring that CT "achieved instant popularity" and that it is the…

Explores the "iconographic vocabulary" of Pentecost and its affiliations in Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival," Dante's "Inferno," Lus de Cames's "Lusiads," and Chaucer's SumT. Chaucer's version combines details from verbal and pictorial traditions…

Neither Gascoigne's comments on Chaucer's deathbed repentence nor the retraction at the end of ParsT should be read too strongly. Rather Ret should be connected to the ParsT more clearly and seen in relationship to remarks on repentence in ParsT…

Item not seen. The WorldCat record states that this is a "Shortened edition of The Horizon book of the Middle Ages, published in 1968 by American Heritage, New York," with a section on Chaucer.

Opens with a section (pp. 1-6) on Chaucer's life and his role as a songwriter (one who "introduced the rondel into England from France"), and reprints, with glosses and comments, the words from Ralph Vaughan Williams's printed musical score of MercB…

A pendant is usually conjectured to be a "penner," a pencase, emblematic of the poet's profession. It is, however, more likely to be an ampulla, a lead vial supposedly containing blood from the martyr of Saint Thomas of Canterbury.

The pendant in the Ellesmere and Hoccleve portraits of Chaucer is a "penner" (not an ampulla, as previously argued), referring specifically to Chaucer as a writer. The penner, coupled with the rosary held by the poet in a number of portraits,…

It is not likely that Chaucer links the topaz primarily with chastity in naming his knight Thopas. Rather, the poet uses the superlative reputation of the topaz as brightest of gems in a general chivalric context.

Both NPT and Gower's "Vox clamantis" merge the figure of the crowing cock with the figures of the preacher and the poet, a response by each poet to the social challenges of the so-called Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Chaucer's ironic identification of…

The poet juxtaposes the narrator's dream to a summary of the "Somnium Scipionis," reconciling Venus and Nature, and resolving the strain of living in a world of abstract thought and human experience.

Argues that, modifying poems by Machaut to establish the narrator of BD as a comic, "doctrinaire" servant of love, Chaucer reveals how such a perspective is inadequate to "experience the experience . . . of perfection itself." The Dreamer learns of…

Both ClT and Marie de France's "Fresne" examine the themes of patience and obedience. Although the descriptions of Griselda and Fresne are strikingly similar, the style and perspective of the tales differ. In Chaucer's "lavish and masterful" style,…

A series of literary portraits, each combining biography and appreciative criticism. The section on Chaucer, entitled "Founder of English Literature" (pp. 17-31), emphasizes his careers in business and diplomacy, his poetic "borrowings," and his…

Argues that "late medieval dream poets viewed writing as a serious means of therapy, capable of healing both psychological and physiological ailments." Includes discussion of HF where Chaucer combines "performative humor" and "strong sensory imagery"…

Claims that by composing his poetry in English, Chaucer participated in the European movement of promoting the vernacular literatures. Argues that Chaucer's neutral depiction of dialectal features in the two clerks' speeches in RvT affirms the…

Authorial development from pastoral toward epic provides a universal creative basis, analogous to the human life span and close to nature. Assesses works by Plato, Virgil, Chaucer (BD), Milton, and Vladimir Nabokov (as lepidopterist).

Argues that evidence of female readership drawn from the Paston letters indicates familiarity with works by Chaucer and by Lydgate, as well as popular spiritual writings, devotional works, hagiographies, and chivalric treatises. Emphasizes the…