Browse Items (16470 total)

Examines "the role rape plays in the formation of Criseyde's character," contrasting Criseyde with Helen of Troy and Lucretia. Criseyde is a "choosing subject," and the language of rape helps to define the ambiguities of choice she faces.

Neither Pandarus, Troilus, nor Chaucer is to be taken at face value in TC 1.540-875. All three are deceivers.

Troilus cannot read the "text" of Criseyde's face because he is too self-absorbed. Thinking only of what she can do for him, he neglects her "context," fails to acknowledge her vulnerability, and thinks of her as an "image in stasis." Although…

Yang considers several aspects of translation and the rhetoric of translation in TC: the narrator's "double role" as translator and author, Pandarus as translator, Diomede as a "force of the translation process," Criseyde as "text" that is…

Examines two mid-fifteenth-century complaints that reflect public distrust of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, arguing that these complaints are more Lydgatian than Chaucerian, since Chaucer's own complaints had little influence at the time. An appendix…

Central to medieval love poetry is the figure of dying for love--found in works by Marcabru, Bernart de Ventadorn, Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer (BD, TC, complaints), and Alain Chartier, as well as in the Harley lyrics and the Findern manuscript. Donne…

Explores ABC as a prayer, especially in its relations with Psalm 118 and 119 and the rosary, and in light of the possibility that it was presented to Duchess Blanche for inclusion in her devotional primer. Quinn confronts several formal features and…

Adam is a more complex work than generally thought, evoking Adam the "first father" and "the earthly instrument of chaos and capriciousness." The scribe's "long lokkes" link him to Chaucer's other prideful, foppish characters. The threatened…

Forni traces the complex relationship between Chaucer's canon and the apocrypha, with particular focus on the "Folio" canon, from Thynne's 1532 "Workes" edition to editions of the eighteenth century. The first part examines the formation of the Folio…

"The Isle of Ladies" --first published as "Chaucer's Dreame" with the "Fairest of the Fair" as "Additions" in Speght's 1598 edition--has been confused by both scribes and early editors with BD and Lydgate's "Temple of Glass." This confused…

Decried by detractors such as Gower and Langland, legal discourse was a way of bridging the growing gap between legal tradition and contemporary reality. Although it satirizes legal pragmatism, The "Tale of Beryn" reflects appreciation of such…

Attributes the popularity of "Gamelyn," in part, to its association with CT, arguing that Chaucer intended to adapt "Gamelyn" for telling by the Knight's Yeoman, even though Chaucer "did not like yeomen very much." Also assesses the tension between…

ParsPT and the GP description of the Parson reflect "concerns over the limits of late-medieval pastoral language." While the GP Parson suggests Wycliffite emphasis on Scripture, one finds a more orthodox view in ParsPT, with its focus on…

Explores Chaucer's play "with the very concepts of finished and unfinished" in CT, surveying the ends of several tales and Ret. Suggests that Chaucer's sense of an ending distinguishes him from modern sensibility.

Describes Chaucer's use of Arabic and Hebrew diction in Astr as "horizontal multilingualism," i.e., "not colonialist or Orientalist."

Malaczkov assesses Chaucer's techniques of translation in Bo, focusing on his glosses and arguing that Chaucer chose to translate for meaning or content rather than for form.

Howes explains how walking through landscape ("pedestrian logic") helps to organize many medieval narratives, including "Sir Orfeo," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Chaucer's BD. She illuminates her explanations with comparisons to the layouts…

Compares Chaucer's use of history in BD with that of Langland in "Piers Plowman," suggesting that focus on contemporary events is common to the poets and perhaps indicative of their common audience. Such commonalities and the habits of mind they…

Watson coins the phrase "Ciceronian Platonism," defined as the "emphasis on the poetics of 'sermo'," suggesting that the earliest evidence of Chaucer's interest in the notion appears in BD, a poem offering "a Socratic therapy as filtered through both…

HF advocates an "ethics of reading" as the narrator struggles to accommodate contradictions found in literary texts. Book 1 ponders the legend and textual transmission of the Dido and Aeneas story. Book 2 learns about the suspect nature of language…

Argues that the pilgrimage of HF 116 was to the medieval hermitage of St. Leonard, two miles west of Windsor Castle; the associated weariness evokes the use of pilgrimages for amorous trysts.

HF provokes reflection on the "historical processes of memorialization." Such concepts as the brass tablet, apostrophe to Thought, inscribed ice block, and House of Rumor are analogous to conceptualizations of personal and cultural memory (history)…

Chaucer's visit to Florence (December-May 1373) would have brought him into contact with Giotto's frescos. These, along with his exposure to Dante's works, led him to explore the implications and limitations of "individual perspective" in HF.

In HF, the description of Fame's hall raises questions about the status of classical authors. The poem as a whole reflects "Chaucer's struggle to find some place [. . .] for his individual talent in the mainstream of the Western and Mediterranean…

Chaucer's changes to the Ovidian version of Hypermnestra in LGW--exchanging the names of Danaus and Aegyptus and then reducing the number of daughters from fifty to one--were not an "error." Chaucer both indicates that men are not "stably positioned…