Browse Items (15987 total)

Considers Machaut's and Chaucer's uses of blue and green symbolism in relation to late medieval "armorial bearings disputes" to investigate the poets' concern with "issues surrounding the legibility of identity." Comments on color symbolism in SqT,…

Outlines "the significance of blue in the medieval period," and "examines this connection between colour and virtue in literature, heraldic treatises and works of art,” including brief comments on blue and female fidelity in SqT and Wom Unc.

Chaucer's close attention to Griselda's and Walter's faces throughout ClT makes allegorical interpretation insufficient. Walter's false faces emphasize his duplicity and cruelty, contradicting his correspondence to a higher beneficent order;…

Assesses the Troy stories in BD and HF, exploring issues of cultural memory, authorization, and Chaucer's visual depiction of the traditional narrative.

Poetic narrative based on characters and plot of TC, set in contemporary Troy, Wisconsin.

Describes the "role Troy played in medieval literary imagination" as a foundation myth, and explores how the "destinies of some of the major figures" in TC are "inextricably" interwoven with that of Troy. Includes an abstract in English and in…

A basketball exposé and coming-of-age novel about a basketball player, Elliott Hersch, and his struggles to find a true life and game, guided by Chaucer’s aphorism in FranT, 1479: "Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe."

Explores associations between the feminine and water imagery, and historical associations with Bath.

. Murder mystery in which medieval detective Crispin Guest aids Chaucer and the Canterbury pilgrims in seeking a murderer.

Cadden traces the "persistent association of nature with moral conduct and social order" in various late medieval texts, from commentaries on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to vernacular poetry. Focuses on PF as an example in which both desire and…

Examines the role of the mill in northern Europe as a site of merry-making and festival that newly informs Chaucer's Miller and MilT.

The slandered Trotula as Dame Trote, or as a "trot," serves as a "type" of the Wife of Bath, personification of medieval misogyny, both medical and clerical.

Studies the medieval and early modern theory of tropological, or moral, sense of Scripture. Argues that tropology can be "theory of literary and ethical invention" as a way to interpret the Bible. Includes brief discussions of Langland's and…

Allusions to the Fall appear in at least half of the tales in CT, but a full tropological reading occurs only in ParsT (10.330), where the allegory explains that "the image of God in man guarantees our ability to rise after a fall."

Explores ellipsis, ekphrasis, lists, allusions, and their combinations as techniques and thematic devices in HF. Focuses on "elliptical ekphrasis" of source material as axiological choice, and as a method of literary generation and renewal, with…

Thirteen essays by various authors on representations of Troy and the Trojan War in medieval works, with an introduction by the editors. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Troja Bauen under Alternative Title.

Compares Chaucer's and Boccaccio's treatments of Troilus's looking at Criseyde in the temple. Governed by the laws of medieval optics, Troilus's gaze imprints Criseyde's image in his heart. In the image of the mirror, Chaucer portrays Troilus's…

In medieval optical theory of intromission and in medieval romances, gazed-upon objects are understood to be more active than they are in modern theorizing of scopophilia. Tracing interdependencies of the romance genre and the masculine gaze in TC,…

Explores the "temporal perspectives" of futurity in TC, combining an Augustinian conceptualization of time with Michel de Certeau's spatial notion of "strategy," looking closely at three perspectives that are posed in the poem and undermined in Book…

Chaucer uses the same words to describe the blushes of Troilus and Criseyde, but the meanings differ there and in ShT. (In Japanese)

According to Chaucer's conception of "manhood," as distinct from the somewhat anachronistic term "masculinity," Troilus is to be seen as "manly" and virtuous in his behavior, as well as worthy of the reader's sympathy. He is an "idealized and…

Chaucer presents Troilus' appeal to Criseyde as ominous in its accuracy, sincere in its passions, yet faulty in its rhetoric. Troilus fails to appear confident, to inspire Criseyde's good will; through faulty emphasis he loses the effect of his plan…

Argues that changes Chaucer made to his source, Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," in TC 4.957-1078 "emphasize Troilus' eagerness to shun responsibility by denying the very possibility of human freedom," saving "him from the need to act."…

Identifies antecedents to Troilus's address to Criseyde's empty palace and his reference to its doors (the rhetorical topos "paraclausithyron"), comparing Chaucer's and Boccaccio's versions of the scene, discarding suggestions of astrological…

Troilus's final speech in Book IV includes three of the only four proverbs he uses, suggesting a new-found "auctoritee." Troilus casts off idealism, speaking for the first time as a cynic and unhappy prophet. The Troilus who allows Criseyde to…