The Canterbury Tales as Framed Narratives
Although I think that the notion of modern art as organic must be qualified and questioned, there is a certain force and validity to Jordan’s distinction between medieval and modern art. Modern art expects the parts to be somewhat subordinate to the whole. The dominant stress of New Criticism was on the organic nature of art.
Queer times: Richard II in the poems and chronicles of late
The article focuses on the representation of deviant sexual behavior in 14th-century English poetry and other chronicles. The portrayal of King of England Richard II as a rebellious youth, which is interpreted as perverse and lacking manliness, and the propaganda needed to offset this perception are discussed. Historical information is given about the political culture and power of the church. The murder of Edward II after being accused of sodomy by the Bishop of Hereford is mentioned.
Chaucer’s reading list: Sir Thopas, Auchinleck, and Middle English romances in translation
One frustration of engaging in any branch of European medieval studies as an academic pursuit is that few claim expertise about the ancient or Roman worlds, but seemingly everyone on an internet discussion forum believes him or herself knowledgeable about the medieval period, usually based on patently false beliefs.
I Wol Yow Nat Deceyve: The Pardoner’s Virtuous Path in The Canterbury Tales
The Pardoner of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is usually perceived as terrible and morally bankrupt. As a result, he is often categorized as an evil and one-dimensional character.
Chaucer’s Solar Pageant: an Astrological Reading of the Canterbury Tales
This thesis proposes a correlation between the twenty-four Canterbury Tales and an external ordered system, namely the twelve signs of the zodiac, from which one might infer Chaucer’s intended ordering of the Tales.
Editing Chaucer
Over the centuries many authors have attempted to re‐write or adapt the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, including John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and William Wordsworth. This trend has continued into the 21st century, as Chaucer has been reaffirmed as an English literary icon
A Medieval Madwoman in the Attic: Chaucer’s Wife of Bath in The Canterbury Tales
Anyone interested in Chaucer knows the description of the Wife of Bath in the General Prologue by heart, ‘her gap teeth, her wimple, her hat, her five husbands, her heavy coverchiefs [. . .] her deafness, [. . .] [and] her remedies of love’
What do We Really Know about Medieval Women?
What do We Really Know about Medieval Women? Carolina Galdiz (Trinity College) 115 Vernon, Paper 26, (2013) Abstract At the onset of this…
Literature, Logic and Mathematics in the Fourteenth Century
This thesis assesses the extent to which fourteenth-century Middle English poets were interested in, and influenced by, traditions of thinking about logic and mathematics.
Time, consciousness and narrative play in late Medieval secular dream poetry and framed narratives
This thesis proposes to look at the equation between time and text in the later medieval period. Time-telling and tale-telling have a particularly dynamic relationship in the considers time-telling and temporal referencein an era (c.1230 – 1500) that time-measurement multiple cultural experiencesa greatvariety of types of and
attitudes to time.
Caught in the (One-)Act: Staging Sex in Late Medieval French Farce
Caught in the (One-)Act: Staging Sex in Late Medieval French Farce Sharon D. King Paper given at the 14th Triennial Colloquium of the…
Wild woman and her sisters in medieval English literature
The subject of this work is the concept and figure of the Wild Woman. The primary focus will be on various forms this figure assumes in medieval English literature: Grendel’s mother—the second monster Beowulf faces—and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, along with other figures.
Heroic Worlds: The Knight’s Tale and Beowulf
Epic and Christianity are not incompatible, but they are uneasy bedfellows.
Wrestling for the Ram: Competition and Feedback in Sir Thopas and The Canterbury Tales
The purpose of this essay will be to explore the significance of competition and feedback in The Canterbury Tales, by applying historical evidence of literary competition in the fourteenth century to a discussion of the frame narrative, especially the prologue and epilogue to Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas.
Food Representation in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
He uses food and drink as the means to express people’s characters, look, but also mood and situation.
Function and Representation of Women in Fourteenth-Century English Arthuriana
This thesis investigates the function and representation of female characters through Arthurian tropes in three fourteenth-century English Arthurian texts: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale,’ and Sir Launfal.
Feeding the Dogs: The Queer Prioress and Her Pets
Everybody knows what we should think about the Prioress’ love for animals. She steals from the poor by feeding her ‘smale houndes’ roast meat and good bread. And she’s breaking the rules just by keeping pets.
War and Peace in the Works of Chaucer and his Contemporaries
But whenever authors of work on chivalry and war during the Middle Ages have tried to determine the exact historical influence and result of chivalric ideals, they have run into difficulties. That is why there are such widely varying hypotheses concerning the ‘Golden Age’ of chivalry.
“Walkynge in the mede” : Chaucerian gardens and the recasting of the Edenic fall
In this thesis, I intend to illustrate how Chaucer uses his knowledge of garden traditions, both biblical and practical, to discuss the concept of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of humanity.
Wynne whoso may, for al is for to selle: Sexual Economics and Female Authority in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue
Chaucer’s inimitable Wife of Bath stands out as one of the most analyzed literary characters of all time, in part because of her existence outside of any defined medieval cultural classification, and in part as an archetype of a rising social tradition.
Chaucer, Gower, and What Medieval Women Want
Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower, friends and colleagues, both chose to retell the same story at roughly the same time in their story collections, The Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis.
Chaucer’s Arthuriana
The majority of medieval scholars, including Roger Sherman Loomis, argue that the popularity of the Arthurian legend in England was therefore on the wane in the latter half of the fourteenth century; as a result, the major writers of the period, such as John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer, refrained from penning anything beyond the occasional reference to King Arthur and his court.
Contemplating the Evolution of Medieval Double-Entendre Literature
The linguistic composition of the Exeter Book Riddles supports this, and in fact, the genre became a refuge for contemporary colloquial speech which was seen as coarse and lower class within the ideologies of Christianity and Germanic heroism.
Fashion of Middle England and its Image in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Fashion of Middle England and its Image in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Petra Štěpánková Bachelor Thesis, Masaryk University – Brno, Faculty of Education, Department…