This volume presents a feminist approach to the Canterbury Tales, investigating the ways in which the tensions and contradictions found within the broad contours of medieval gender discourse write themselves into Chaucer's text. Four discourses of medieval masculinity are examined, which simultaneously reinforce and resist one another: heroic or chivalric, Christian, courtly love, and emerging humanist models. Each chapter attempts to negotiate both contemporary assumptions of gender construction, and essentialist readings of gender common to the middle ages; throughout, the author argues that the Canterbury Tales offer a sophisticated discussion of masculinity, and that it strongly indicts some of the prevalent medieval notions of ideal masculinity while still remaining firmly homosocial and homophobic. The book concludes that on the question of gender issues, the Tales are best studied as male-authored texts containing representations and negotiations revealing much about late medieval masculinities. Dr ANNE LASKAYA teaches in the English Department at the University of Oregon.
Anne Middleton's essays have been among the most vigorous, learned, and influential in the field of medieval English literature. Their 'crux-busting' energies have illuminated local obscurities with generous learning lightly wielded. Their historically- and theoretically-informed meditations on the nature of poetic discourse traced how the generation of Chaucer and Langland devised a category of the literary that could embody a ethos of engaged, worldly consensus and make that consensus available to imaginative and rational consideration. And their reflections on the enterprise of literary study found a rational way, free of cant, to understand the work of the literary scholar. This volume reprints eight essays: ’The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II,’ ’Chaucer's 'New Men' and the Good of Literature in the Canterbury Tales,’ ’The Physician's Tale and Love's Martyrs: 'Ensamples Mo than Ten' as a Method in the Canterbury Tales,’ ’The Clerk and His Tale: Some Literary Contexts,’ ’Narration and the Invention of Experience: Episodic Form in Piers Plowman,’ ’Making a Good End: John But as a Reader of Piers Plowman,’ ’William Langland's 'Kynde Name': Authorial Signature and Social Identity in Late Fourteenth-Century England,’ ’Life in the Margins, or, What's an Annotator to Do?’ It includes one essay previously unpublished, ’Playing the Plowman: Legends of Fourteenth-Century Authorship.’
Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 66 (A-), University of Warwick (Department of English), course: Medieval to Renaissance English Literature, language: English, abstract: “I have a wyf, the worste that may be,” says the merchant in his prologue of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (E.1218). However, in the beginning of the Franklin’s Tale, the narrating voice speaks of “the joye, the ese, and the prosperitee / That is bitwixe an housbonde and his wyf” (F.804-05). This example shows how little unanimity there is among the characters of the Canterbury Tales when it comes to marriage, be they the pilgrims or be they the characters within the pilgrims’ tales. The aim of the present paper is to show the various ways in which Chaucer represents marriage in the Canterbury Tales. I will refer to The Miller’s Prologue and Tale, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, The Merchant’s Prologue and Tale and to The Franklin’s Tale. The first three chosen tales show marriage in a deformed shape, as a relationship over which predominance of one sex over the other and / or a strong economic interest are hovering and lead to unpleasant incidences. The fourth tale depicts wedlock as an ideal kind of marriage, a state of mutual connectedness in which values like patience, fidelity, generosity and nobility can be explored (lecture). I will support those claims with an analysis of the tales taken each by its own. I will also examine them as interrelated elements of what is considered a “marriage debate” (Hussey 135). According to this theory, the Franklin’s Tale is seen as the solution and final element of a debate which begins with the Wife of Bath and runs through The Clerk’s Tale and The Merchant’s Tale.
A richly illustrated history exploring life in Kent. This book tells the amazing story of Kent from earliest times to the modern day. Some of the pivotal moments in the Garden of England’s history are recalled, including invasions from Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans. It has seen the Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt, the Swing Riots and, more recently, audacious escapades by suffragettes in the battle for Votes for Women. The story is brought right up to date with the challenges faced by traditional industries and the transformation of cross-Channel travel. The resilient people of Kent have taken it all in their stride and this story encompasses how they lived, worked and played through hundreds of years of colourful history.
Explores the representation of emotions as psychological concepts and cultural constructs in Geoffrey Chaucer's narrative poetry. McTaggart argues that Chaucer's main works including The Canterbury Tales are united thematically in their positive view of guilt and in their anxiety about the desire for sacrifice and vengeance that shame can provoke.
Becket's life was lived on a European stage, his cause was conducted in a European setting, and the cult of the new martyr spread with extraordinary rapidity to the furthest reaches of Latin Christendom before the end of the twelfth century. The fifteen studies collected here reflect not only the global reach of the subject but the diverse expertise of their author, whose edition and translation of the Correspondence of Archbishop Thomas Becket (2000) and acclaimed biography (Thomas Becket, 2004) have established her place in Becket studies. Based on the critical examination of manuscripts and texts, this collection focuses first on the papal curia and Becket's household in exile. The following studies deal with Becket's letters and their authorship, the coronation of the young King Henry (1170), and Henry II's reconciliation at Avranches (1172). The final part traces the explosion of Becket's cult, the transmission of hagiographical and liturgical texts to France, Germany, and Portugal, and the role of diverse agencies of dissemination: Henry II's daughters, for example, in Saxony, Castile, and Sicily, and the Cistercian and Augustinian orders whose networks of houses embraced the whole of Europe.
A richly illustrated history exploring life in Kent. This book tells the amazing story of Kent from earliest times to the modern day. Some of the pivotal moments in the Garden of England’s history are recalled, including invasions from Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans. It has seen the Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt, the Swing Riots and, more recently, audacious escapades by suffragettes in the battle for Votes for Women. The story is brought right up to date with the challenges faced by traditional industries and the transformation of cross-Channel travel. The resilient people of Kent have taken it all in their stride and this story encompasses how they lived, worked and played through hundreds of years of colourful history.
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