In a talk he gave in 1995 at a conference at Georgetown University, “Cultural Frictions: Medieval Cultural Studies in Post-Modern Contexts,” Paul Strohm asserted that “postmodernism is preoccupied with history, endlessly obsessed with history, and with the nature of the claims the past exerts upon us; it might almost be called a way of thinking…[Read more]

The essays collected in this volume demonstrate that, when certain medieval and contemporary cultural texts are placed alongside each other — such as a fourteenth-century penitential handbook and the reality television show “Survivor,” or early fifteenth-century Lancastrian statecraft (Henry IV) and the stagecraft of George W. Bush’s presidential…[Read more]

Although widely beloved for its playfulness and comic sensibility, Chaucer’s poetry is also subtly shot through with dark moments that open into obscure and irresolvably haunting vistas, passages into which one might fall head-first and never reach the abyssal bottom, scenes and events where everything could possibly go horribly wrong or where e…[Read more]

This essay argues that literary narratives can serve as ideal sites through which to explore the emergence of time’s dissonant conjunctions and surprising forks, arising as they do from minds that are both transhistorical and rooted in particular times and places, and because literary texts are also objects that, as Jonathan Gil Harris has a…[Read more]

This essay serves as the Preface to “Still Thriving: On the Importance of Aranye Fradenburg,” a collection of critical reflections on the career and paradigm-shifting scholarship of medievalist and psychoanalyst L.O. Aranye Fradenburg.

The work of L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, especially her psychoanalytic criticism of Chaucer, and her formulations of discontinuist historical approaches to the Middle Ages, has been extremely influential within medieval studies for several decades. More recently she has been focusing on more broad defenses of the humanities, especially with regard to…[Read more]

Received opinion based on scanty evidence and skimpy arguments holds that race and racism operate in important ways in Othello and Othello’s jealousy. Few specifically race-referential words and only one specifically racist image occur in the play, almost all in the first four scenes.

Brabantio’s, Roderigo’s, and Iago’s views are mistake…[Read more]

This bibliography is divided into three parts. The first two parts encompass medieval romances first available in English before 1558. Part I includes romances by unknown or little-known authors or translators which others, as noted, regard as romances. Part II includes romances by those who are well known: Caxton, Chaucer, Gower, Henryson,…[Read more]

A prose rendering of the earliest English medieval romance, adapted into chapters, annotated throughout, with an introduction.

Uses the survival of the English chivalric romance tradition throughout Shakespeare’s professional lifetime and his exploitation of that tradition especially in his major tragedies to challenge the commonplace distinction between the medieval and the renaissance on the one hand, and to suggest that his openness to that medieval tradition showed…[Read more]

Analyzes Spenser’s Red-Cross Knight and Shakespeare’s Edgar as chivalric knights in the tradition of English chivalric romance, and compares these writers’ attitudes toward the knights and the chivalry which they represent. Finds that, contrary to common interpretation, Spenser is the more modern, Shakespeare the more medieval, in their regar…[Read more]

0. Preliminaries provide the usual guides to contents and graphics, and an unusual statement of acknowledgments. It also provides a preface which explains my approach to prevent possible misapprehensions because of its debt to, but also its departure from, source and influence studies. It addresses various critical issues: genre because of…[Read more]

Chapter 2: The Survival of English Chivalric Romances provides an account of the documentary evidence of manuscripts, entries, printings, and adaptations which detail the survival of English chivalric romances. The discussion considers other cultural artifacts and related literary kinds which include materials from the tradition of these romances…[Read more]

This textual crux all modern editors unanimously and silently emend, from the Folio “he”, their copy text, to the Quarto “you.” Although they find F so nonsensical as to deserve no comment, Shakespeare, his company, and his audience found it not only sensible in a play involving jealousy, but also powerful. The difference between then and now…[Read more]

Surveys the contemporary and modern designations of the genre of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Considers the gothic, not the humanistic, character of chivalric romance and the range of chivalric romances both idealistic and satirical. Accepting the medieval treatment of The Iliad as chivalric in nature, views Shakespeare’s play as a com…[Read more]

Scholarship on the Pearl-poem has seen a significant jump in recent years, due largely to the influx of eco-critical readings throughout Medieval studies. Gillian Rudd’s recent book Greenery: Ecocritical Readings of Late Medieval English Literature explores a new and exciting reading of the poem’s natural environment, claiming that the rose met…[Read more]

In this work, I discuss the management of the initial iconic peritext of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in a paper edition, a translation, and a
digital facsimile. Writing from the perspective of cognitive narratology, I argue
that the miniature is not a disposable illustration but a framing border, the
(non) reproduction of which in each…[Read more]