Browse Items (16459 total)

Considers Chaucer's understanding of "tragedy" in Bo, MkT, and TC, tracing this understanding to Dante's use of the term in his "Inferno," where it is affiliated with history. In TC, Chaucer chose to emulate Boccaccio's "Filostrato" because doing so…

Reads "goter, by a pryve wente" (TC 3.787) literally--a passageway that passes a latrine--and comments on the poetic functions of Troilus's approaching Criseyde's bedroom by this means. The passage characterizes Pandarus's house as up-to-date and…

Introductory commentary on British poetry from Anglo-Saxon poetry to the works of John Keats, focusing on canonical works and writers. Chapter 2 (pp. 21-30) summarizes Chaucer's life and describes his iambic meter, explicating Truth (original and…

Matthews explores the English rhetorical device of writing about political topics as if the author were writing directly to the king, even though the works that used the device were intended for a wider audience. The device flourished in the late…

Twelve essays by Scattergood, seven reprinted and five here published for the first time. Chaucer is cited in several of the reprinted essays, one of which is an extended analysis of Purse: "London and Money: Chaucer's Complaint to His Purse."

Questions why "The Assembly of Ladies" has been in print for so long and explores the role of its anonymity in its publishing history. Addresses its attribution to Chaucer, affiliations with the corpus of his works, and surmises about female…

Given the numerous verbal parallels between Greene's work and "The Cobbler of Canterbury" (an avowed imitation of CT, published anonymously in 1590), it would seem that Greene "fibbed" when, in a separate publication, he "informed the spirits of…

Reviews several late medieval texts to demonstrate the "devolution of knighthood" before Shakespeare's time. Comments on the GP description of the Knight, on MerT, and on Th.

The anonymous author of "The Assembly of Ladies" counterdefines herself against a clearly Chaucerian courtly tradition by allying herself with a distinctly feminine textuality that is opposed to a traditional masculine hermeneutics.

Also named "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," "Boke of Cupide" was once considered one of Chaucer's great poems until it fell into obscurity when it was removed from the canon. The essay considers stylistic similarities to Chaucer's dream visions, the…

Uses HF--along with Langland's "Piers Plowman," "St. Erkenwald," and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"--as evidence in a discussion of the medieval understanding of the memorialization process, suggesting that fame "becomes emblematic" of the…

Analyzes HF in light of Saint Augustine's understanding of memory, showing how Chaucer proposes a dialogue with history and literature of the past in which the author and the reader are recipients of a common legacy.

Surveys classical uses and techniques of ekphrasis and explores how Chaucer uses it in HF to comment on the shifting nature of communication. In descriptions of the House of Fame, House of Rumor, and especially the House of Glass (Aeneas and Dido),…

In playing on Alan's "theological epic" in HF, Chaucer projects a view of readerly interpretation as a key component of literary production, thus challenging the notions that poetry springs solely from inspiration and "that textual meaning could be…

As part of a discussion of Gower's trilingualism and his uses of history, science, and literature, Zarins contrasts the treatment of astronomy and literature in HF with Gower's "praise of science . . . for its own sake."

Focuses on Chaucer's uses of Ovid, specifically his use of the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe in LGW.

Bowers describes LGW as "work-in-progress" of the 1390s and dates the G-prologue between 1392 and 1394, offering various comments to help justify these datings and explore their implications: LGWP emulates Gower's Ricardian prologue to "Confessio…

Fradenburg begins with a brief psychoanalytic view of the aesthetic of enjoyment as the communication of affect. The article explores the image of Alceste/daisy in terms of psychological and philosophical intersubjectivity. The individual stories,…

Describes the nature and legacy of the dream vision genre and assesses Chaucer's four dream poems (BD, HF, PF, and LGW), exploring the dynamics of courtliness and learning, experience and authority, endings and implications,…

Twenty-six essays and thirteen appendices explore how Christianity underlies Western attitudes. The section "Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)" (pp. 67-75) reads Ret in light of ParsT and Mel as a mild account of misconduct in which Chaucer is guided more…

Discussing fiscal metaphors for the state of the soul in the Middle English period, O'Neill suggests that Ret is Chaucer's effort to escape "the imperatives of stewardship," evoking instead "a relationship of mutual intercession with his readers."

Describes late medieval efforts to "formulate vernacular languages that could stand in for Latin grammar as a first and paradigmatic 'habitus'," i.e., as a rule-based discipline of the mind that shapes cognition and moral action. Dante, the…

Reads Bo as Chaucer's advice to young Richard on the subject of tyranny; later, Bo had "potential resonance" for opponents of Richard as king and may have served to support the usurpation of his crown.

Examines the use of whiteness in a variety of medieval works, arguing that being "white" is a mark not merely of ethnicity but also of Christianity, "beauty," and rank. Examples include mystery plays, "Pearl," and BD.

In chapter 7, "Discrediting the Vision: The House of Fame" (pp. 184-207), Barr argues that HF portrays an active, unreliable visionary, one who unsuccessfully employs cognitive faculties to try to understand the contents of divinely granted vision.…