Geoffrey Chaucer Archives

the book cover for The Wife of Willesden featuring the title and some drawings of rings with pink gems

Zadie Smith’s Exploration of Experience as Authority

ByJessica Hines April 18, 2022

What Zadie Smith does in showing a Kilburn girl located within the Wife of Bath’s voice of experience is to open up space for thinking through the particular authority—the particular value and, especially in the play’s conclusion, the particular forms of sexual justice—such experience offers.

Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare, 1781 oil on canvas

Critical Essays

The Insomnia and Dream Visions of Medieval Literature

ByJessica Hines February 21, 2022

Medieval literature’s exploration of insomnia demonstrates a grappling with what it means to live with, and accept, fear and anxiety.

a medieval piece of art illustrating various figures preparing for the burials of victims of the black plague

Longform

Literary Silence in the Time of Pandemic

ByJessica Hines December 29, 2021

From the Black Death to the AIDS epidemic, the history of literature is suffused with gaps. Such a history is a record of mourning. It’s a record of all the things that cannot be spoken while living with upheaval and grief.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Zadie Smith’s Exploration of Experience as Authority

The Insomnia and Dream Visions of Medieval Literature

Literary Silence in the Time of Pandemic

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