Browse Items (15542 total)

Surveys the depictions of Medea in medieval literature and its backgrounds, focusing on how, in the Middle Ages, the character reflects issues of dynastic rivalry, legitimacy, and presumptions about the passions of females. Comments on how Chaucer's…

Focuses on aspects of the cultural situations of the medieval book. Examines elements of bibliography, social context, linguistics, archeology, and conservation within a broader view of the theory and praxis of manuscript study. For an essay that…

BD provides at once a reaction to its French predecessors of three centuries and also the means by which they can be reexamined.

Includes an introduction by the editors and ten essays by various authors that "aim to rethink the relationship between form and the literary" in a variety of Middle English works. For two essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for The Medieval…

The Middle Ages provided two contrasting traditions in the characterization of Hector, one celebrating his heroism, the other viewing him as possessed of physical flaws and spiritual debilities. In TC, Chaucer combines the two traditions in his…

Huxtable surveys medieval philosophical and religious understanding of sight and color as background to commentary on social concerns with color in sumptuary habits and heraldry. In ParsT 10.424-27, colorful clothing indicates a sinful nature.

Characterizes the "alba scene" of TC (3.1408-1533) as "in many ways the culminating point in the medieval development of the genre," even though Chaucer places the scene in the context of tragic mutability, a context unique for the genre. Considers a…

Watts explains the pedagogy of teaching the dream vision at the undergraduate level, covering texts that include Macrobius, the "Dream of the Rood," the" Roman de la Rose," Dante, "Pearl," "Piers Plowman," Christine de Pizan's "Book of the City of…

An illustrated, indexed cookbook of medieval recipes, drawn from the resources of the British Museum, with one chapter entitled "Chaucer's Company" (pp. 34-50) that includes seven recipes, linked to the CT pilgrims.

An annotated bibliography, listing materials that pertain to the "Consolation of Philosophy" in French, German, Old English and Middle English, with sections on Chaucer's translation and to its influence, with seventy-six and forty-three items…

Examining passages from BD, TC, and CT, Kim contrasts Chaucer's uses of multiple narrative voices with the ways other medieval writers write themselves and their readers into their texts.

LGW contains examples of "the destructive results of excessive passion." Classical, patristic, and medieval attitudes to Cleopatra are negative; Chaucer is thus ironic.

An essay on ecclesiastical patronage of art in the Middle Ages.

Surveys criticism that considers the Ceyx and Alcyone story in BD, exegetical readings in particular, and edits a version of the tale found in fourteenth-century Ovidian manuscripts available in Chaucer's England, with full apparatus and with…

Thirty-eight essays and two commemorations celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Takamiya, focusing on "medieval manuscripts and early printed books, Arthurian literature, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century medievalism." Many of the essays pertain to…

Essays by various hands. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for The Medieval Boethius under Alternative Title.

LGW's "Legend of Thisbe" paraphrases Ovid's story in "Metamorphoses," pt. 4, according to the rules of classical rhetoric. Chaucer's changes in Ovid's story resemble those of other medieval paraphrasers: his neutral narrative style is changed to…

Surveys the iconographical tradition of "Venus-of-the-Seashell" ("Aphrodite Anadyomene") as background to assessing why Chaucer depicts Venus carrying a citole in KnT (1.1959) and carrying a comb in HF (line 136). Explores the images in Chaucer's…

Chaucer may have used prose alone in his "Boece" for clarity and freedom where two speakers face universal dilemmas.

In ParsP, the Parson vehemently rejects the "lies" of pagan fables, as in the scandalous ManT. Yet, medieval poets often used "unseemly stories of the gods"--especially stories dealing with love, sex, and immorality--for their own political or moral…

Both the historical basis for BD and its relation to Machaut's narratives have posed problems, but the dream-vision form can resolve them. Whereas Machaut used it to divide himself from his patrons, Chaucer employed it to indicate their "shared…

The focus of ManT is not adultery and murder but rather talebearing. Chaucer returns to Ovid for janglery as a serious crime. If janglery causes murder, the janglerer is as guilty as the murderer because he is the cause of the crime.

Although classical, Renaissance, and modern satire may represent recognizable genres, a definition of medieval satire must be sought through consideration of how classical satirists were studied in medieval schools and how three poets wrote.

Chaucer achieves maximum concentration on the moment of denouement by organizing his characters into two parallel and static triadic sets. When the characters are in their triadic configurations, no action takes place. The resolution of tension by…

Argues that in CT, "wight" could indeed mean a supernatural being and refer to Jesus Christ as Creator, which questions a long-standing editorial emendation by E. Talbot Donaldson in WBP, 117.