Browse Items (16470 total)

Five chapters, focusing on "Sir Orfeo," "The Awntyrs off Arthure," the "Second Shepherd's Play," BD, and Pearl, respectively. The study emphasizes the intertextual relationships between classical myths, on the one hand, and Celtic and Anglo-Saxon…

Contrasts Gower's story of Ceyx and Alcyone with versions by Ovid and Chaucer (in BD). Gower imagined a new dramatic possibility in the character of Alcyone and thereby subverted "monolithic notions of culture and gender" (503).

Focusing on orthography, rhyme, "near-rhyme," and meaning, Vaughan suggests that "hunting for the hurt" in BD, and not just the hart, gives prominence to the narrator's unresolved emotional and physical pain. The hert(e)/hart/heart word-play in BD is…

Contrasts Chaucer's concern for the role of authors in the preservation of historical "fame" with Pope's emphasis on the enduring value of art. Di Rocco shows how Pope's personal interest in fame is tempered by humility like that of Chaucer's…

Kaplan explores medieval and early modern legal discourse about slander and defamation. Though HF is concerned with the relation between poetry and slander, in Chaucer's time "defamation was not understood as having temporal consequences for the…

The authors maintain that Chaucer's visit to Monserrat inspired aspects of HF and suggest that Chaucer's man of great authority (HF 2158) was Pedro IV.

Comments on modern efforts to "get ahead" and contrasts them with attitudes toward success in HF.

LGW examines possible heterosexual love relationships between pre-Christian Western and Oriental protagonists. Chaucer systematically deconstructs the cliché of female unfaithfulness and the racial prejudices against Oriental women; what matters…

Human experience explodes the reductive and stereotypical distinctions between good and bad and between women and men posed in LGW, undercutting the title of the poem, rendering the narrator's task pointless, and encouraging the reader to reject the…

Chaucer's political commentary is often disguised by ambiguity--the refusal ever to mean one thing--and the multiple nuances of his words. In revising LGWP, Chaucer inserted allusions to the "dangerous talk" of his day--to texts and interpretation…

Describes Chaucer responsibilities as a justice of the peace from 1385 to 1389, particularly "the enforcement of highly controversial labor regulations," and explores how the "trope of poet as accused laborer" in LGWP suggests his concerns about such…

Explores narrative technique and meaning in PF; shifts in narrative strategies reveal intention.

Tallies similarities among PF, the Persian Mant̓iq al-T̓ayr, and Peter Brook's theatrical adaptation, "Conference of Birds." The author comments on titles, frame, and universality of message.

Is PF realist or nominalist? Ultimately, the poem's debate and epistemological investigation of the two positions is more conducive to reader participation than a conclusive ending would have been.

Proposes a reading for PF 215-16: "and with a harde file / She couched hem." "Couched" comes from French "cocher," meaning "to cut a notch or groove," a necessary step in arrow-making.

Kang introduces and summarizes the French poem and describes the main characteristics of Chaucer's partial translation.

Kumamoto compares the word classes of rhyme words in Rom with those of the Old French source. There are wide differences when rhymes involve verbs and adverbs; the use of pronouns in rhymes is confined to the English text.

Applies modern translation theories to Rom, identifying Chaucer's goal of testing the "capacity of English to attain higher spheres of expression." Far from being a servile translator, Chaucer composed a "metapoem" with a range of translational…

The influences of Boethius, Dante, and Petrarch ("Canzoniere") on TC are not fully evident to readers unfamiliar with these sources because Chaucer nowhere indicates what he is doing. Such secrecy renders interpretations of his text complex.

The original audience of TC would have read the decision of the Trojan Parliament in light of the 1385 Durham Ordinances, clause 3. Since this clause explicitly prohibits the imprisoning of unarmed women, the parallel suggests Criseyde's status as a…

Critics' inability to sympathize with Troilus in TC results from their failure to recognize the "medieval practical reasoning that informs Troilus's deliberations and ultimately humanizes him." His philosophising "reflects a withdrawal from the…

In TC, Chaucer attempts to recreate the Oriental atmosphere of Troy and its environment: the maze of walls hiding wealthy rooms and pleasant gardens, the secret corridor, the Greeks' tents, Sarpedon's entertainments, the wiles of Pandarus, and…

Chaucer and Shakespeare use different narrative techniques to lend ambiguity to the characterization of Criseyde/Cressida, but each uses ambiguity to create sympathy for his character.

Identifies instances in which the letters in TC follow rhetorical principles found in Cicero, medieval rhetoricians, and Ovid's Heroides.

An iconographic analysis suggesting that the illustration of Chaucer reading to the court of Richard II benefited the Lancastrian campaign to recognize "English as the national language of England" (exemplified by Chaucer as supreme "user and…