Guilt and Creativity in the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer
I argue that as Chaucer develops his own expansive, questioning poetics in The House of Fame and The Canterbury Tales, he problematises the principle of allegory on which the legitimacy of literary discourse was primarily based in medieval culture and the final fragments of The Canterbury Tales see Chaucer struggling, increasingly, to reconcile the boldness and independence of his poetic vision with the demands of his faith.
MOVIE REVIEW: ‘A Knight’s Tale’
Staying home on a Sunday night? Looking for a fun medieval movie to watch? Here is my review of ‘A Knight’s Tale’ for your Sunday night selection!
Theories of the Nonsense Word in Medieval England
The goos the cokkow and the doke also
So cryede kek kek kokkow quek quek hye
Alphabet Poems: A Brief History
As a collector of alphabet books, and sometime editor of a newsletter on the subject, I have had many opportunities to consider the history of the alphabet poem. Although alphabet poems may take a wide range of forms, most are generally divided into twenty-six parts (lines, couplets, stanze…), one for each letter.
The Biennial Chaucer Lecture: For the Birds
In The Squire’s Tale, Chaucer draws on the genre of romance as a way into thinking about the cultural place of falcons.
A Burnable Book – novel starring Chaucer and Gower gets strong reviews
A Burnable Book is the title of Bruce Holsinger’s new historical thriller, set in the 14th century, with Geoffrey Chaucer as one of the main characters
The “Discrete Occupational Identity” of Chaucer’s Knyght
Popular critical opinion favors reading the pilgrim Knyght of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as the representative of the idealized chivalric knight; however, the pilgrim Knyght bears the hallmark of the early professional soldier that began to evolve as early as the eleventh century.
Valentine’s Day Medieval Love: Books for that special someone
Love is in the air! Here are a few medieval books on the topic of love for your Valentine.
Chaucer’s female characters in the Canterbury Tales: Born to thralldom and penance, and to been under mannes governance
This essay will also demonstrate that in order to be considered a good wife a woman
needed to be humble and obedient and to accept her fate as being subject to male authority figure without resistance.
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.