Browse Items (16473 total)

Assesses secular misogamy as a topos "exploited in early Western literature for two fundamental purposes: propaganda and entertainment," dividing it into four categories: Pagan, Ascetic, Philosophic, and General. Discusses WBP in the latter category…

User-generated online encyclopedia that includes a variety of links to information pertaining to Chaucer, his language, works, sources, influences, and social and literary contexts, composed by users both expert and amateur, but subject to…

The wife in ShT refuses to submit to the "comprehensive masculine dominance" of the competitive world of her husband and the monk. The two men understand their manliness in terms of the "image of potency"; like commerce, manliness is based on…

Brief comments about "pairing" WBP and Christine de Pizan in the classroom; mentions the Wife's "deliberate misreading, invective, and outright mockery" of misogynistic writing, and Chaucer's irony that "slices Jerome and the Wife with a single…

Contrasts FranT with analogous medieval accounts of wife exchange to argue that Chaucer's "unusual" version "testifies to Arveragus's regard for his wife and to Aurelius's regard for Averagus's regard for his wife." Other versions testify to male…

Among the many "para-texts," or "refigurings" of material from other tales in CT, we find WBT, PardT, and Th, which refract, "correct," and refigure each other.

Characterizes the Wife of Bath through a sustained, appreciative summary of and commentary on WBP and, more extensively, WBT, showing that "Comic exaggeration is her forte, but tempered by delicate play and a fatal aim, the more precise for being…

Eight historical and legal essays by various hands, including two of potential value to Chaucer studies, especially treatments of WBPT: Barbara A. Hanawalt, "Remmarriage as an Option for Rural Widows in Late Medieval England"; and Richard M.…

Assesses the meter of line 1 of CT.

During the Middle Ages, widowhood usually brought legal, social, and economic benefits. Although the Wife of Bath makes calculated use of these advantages, May in MerT foolishly jeopardizes her inheritance. Fertility lore indicates that she is…

Includes a brief comical introduction to Chaucer's poetry and a modernized selection from the conclusion to NPT, with b&w illustrations by Philip Reeve.

Describes procedures for incorporating student performances of portions of LGW into classroom activities and using these performances to help students evaluate other Chaucerian texts.

Argues that MLT and MLE are "fundamentally concerned with the transmission of affect." The tale "dramatizes how affect operates as a physical force that realigns individual and collective identities," while the narrator's style, combined with…

By the choice of the colors coral and green, Chaucer has turned a respected religious ritual into one of earthly desire.

Identifies a medieval tradition in which singing through the nose is a "sign of weak faith and lack of devotion," contributing to the satire of the Prioress in her GP sketch.

Surveys attempts to explain how MkT is appropriate to the Monk as teller, and cites examples from monastic preaching of associations of "the monastic profession and an interest in historical examples of misfortune."

Suggests that Pierre Bersuire's account--"or one like it"--of a hunter-devil dressed in green may account for Chaucer's similar description in FrT 3.1382ff.

Distinguishes among taverns, alehouses, and public inns, providing historical evidence that the latter were in Chaucer's day a "new institution," and maintaining that his setting of the opening of GP in an inn engages an emergent social culture,…

Examines why the expression "this Criseyde" never occurs in TC, from the viewpoints of accent, stress, syllable, rhyme, spelling, and form. Statistically compares lines containing the words "Criseyde," "Troilus," and "this."

Suggests that "gonne" rather than "goune" is the correct reading in "O mosy Quince," a lyric ascribed to Chaucer in Cambridge, Trinity College MS 3.19 (no. 49); supports the reading by identifying St. Barbara, cited in the poem, as "patron saint of…

Presents a version of the Griselda story from Thomas III, Marquis of Saluzzo (c. 1355-1416) in "Le chevalier errant," and analyzes how fourteenth-century audiences would have reacted to Chaucer's version in ClT. Includes a translation of Thomas's…

From the viewpoint of a history of social economics, Miyoshi explains why the poet chooses Bath as the Wife's place and shows that it was not unusual to to marry five times.

Acknowledges the Wife of Bath and Criseyde as different kinds of widows in the tradition of literary widowhood that underlies the Dona Endrina episode in Juan Ruiz's Libro de Buen Amor.

In forecasting Monday as the date of the flood, Nicholas seized on John's belief in current superstitions of the day's ill reputation, due both to its etymological association with the unstable moon and to the tradition of certain "perilous Mondays,"…

Phillips explores the proverbial and biblical background to ManT, identifying links between its plot and its teller, an untrustworthy servant. In popular tradition, crows were regarded as unfaithful servants and unreliable messengers, an association…