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This document is a teaching guide for a research article titled "Chaucer's gender-oriented philosophy in The Canterbury Tales." The author provides further reading recommendations, including a Chaucer Review article and a blog post from the National Archive, which discuss new evidence that exonerates Chaucer from accusations of sexual rape. The author argues that the conventional view of Chaucer as misogynistic or feminist is overly simplistic and calls for a closer examination of Chaucer's own words. They also suggest exploring the contribution of medieval English literature to modern concepts of gender and rape. The document concludes with suggestions for incorporating the article into syllabi on medieval literature and gender studies. The author, Malek J. Zuraikat, is an associate professor of English literature at Yarmouk University in Jordan, with a focus on medieval English literature. [Extracted from the article]

This paper scrutinizes the cultural strangeness of Coleridge's line "Instead of the cross, the Albatross about my neck was hung", arguing that the image of the bird hung around the Mariner's neck is borrowed from Holy Quran. The paper provides a close reading of the line under discussion while associating it with the Quranic verse 13 of Chapter 17 (al-isrāʼ; meaning: The Night Journey), which declares that a bird is bound to the neck of every single human. The paper concludes that the image of the Albatross hung around the Mariner's neck testifies to the heavy influence of Holy Quran on Coleridge's poetry, which complies with Coleridge's statement that he will never forget Mohammad the Prophet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The episode of Chauntecleer's dream found in Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale" is a controversial topic for Chaucer critics. Some critics argue that the downfall‐escape experience of Chauntecleer is worthy of investigation because animal figures in fables symbolize people (Finlayson, 2005, 495) and thus their rise and downfall sometimes allude to certain theological or philosophical issues such as the original Fall of Adam and Eve (Payne, 1976, 211–112). Other critics propose, on the contrary, that the episode of Chauntecleer is a "joke" and therefore should not be overestimated (Eliason, 1972, 172). These two opposing perspectives have their own rationale; nevertheless, the centrality of Chauntecleer's dream to the narrative of "The Nun's Priest's Tale" is hard to ignore. Considering the philosophical reverberations of the tale concerning the medieval concepts of destiny and free will, this paper argues that the Chauntecleer episode is not a "joke" but a philosophical exemplar that proposes the absence of any demarcating lines between destiny and free will, bearing in mind that destiny refers to the many options decreed by the deity to be available in every single situation for each individual, while free will refers to humans' freedom to decide what to say and do. The paper contends that Chauntecleer's dream shows how free will and destiny—though they are "inconsistent" forces (Boethius, 1785, 195)—mysteriously connive together to form what can be called conditional free will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manipulation of gender in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is utterly opaque. While "The Knight's Tale" potentially entices readers to think that Chaucer defines a woman regarding her relationship to man, "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" suggests that the poet views a woman as an independent figure whose identity has nothing to do with man. This apparently controversial portrait of gender causes some critics to read Chaucer as a pro‐woman individual; simultaneously, it inspires other critics to view the poet as anti‐feminist. Such debate may cause readers to misjudge Chaucer's multifaceted approach towards gender as well as other hypersensitive topics, thus adding to the atmosphere of complexity and lack of clarity that dominates The Tales. Accordingly, this paper revisits Chaucer's gender‐oriented philosophy in The Tales sieving what is conjectured by the poem's critics from what is said by the poet himself regarding gender. The paper concludes that Chaucer has never had the choice to overtly be or not to be the friend of woman but has always adopted a fence‐sitting strategy concerning the question of gender due to his sociopolitical status. The paper confirms that Chaucer's viewpoint of women is neither feminist nor anti‐feminist but a realistic amalgamation that mirrors the opaque gender culture of England in the fourteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry expresses a great admiration and interest in the main components of the heroic lifestyle known among the Anglo-Saxons like the Comitatus, the Lord, and the Warriors as well as people's ethics, such as loyalty, courage, self-denial, blood vengeance, and wergild. While this suggests that modern readers can understand and reconstruct the cultural texture of the Anglo-Saxon culture by reading Anglo-Saxon poetry, this paper contends that the Anglo-Saxon culture constitutes a state of alterity for modern readers and that Anglo-Saxon literature is dominated by that atmosphere of alterity, which makes understanding Anglo-Saxon culture through reading its literature a speculation-based task. Relying on Jauss's and Borrow's opposing perspectives about the alterity of medieval literature, this paper analyzes some excerpts from Beowulf, the Wife's Lament, and other Old English poems to prove that such narratives do not completely display the Anglo-Saxon heroic culture; thus, reading the heroic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons does not always result in a full understanding of the Anglo-Saxon culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that John Gower in his literary adaptations introduces strategic narrative changes that amount to more than being inferior approximations of the original classical "Tale of Actaeon". These changes, we claim, challenge the authority as well as the literary and cultural uniqueness of the classical sources he borrowed from. We discuss Gower's creative manipulation of his classical sources, specifically the differences between his and Ovid's version of "The Tale of Actaeon," pointing up the former's authorial uniqueness as an original English poet.We conclude that Gower uses his borrowed material according to his poem's moral purpose. He does not passively paraphrase his classical sources into Middle English; rather, he innovatively rewrites them in light of the Confessio's exemplary texture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]