Browse Items (16369 total)

Chaucer used elements of the formal features and conventions of medieval sermons to explore character and inter-personal relationships, examining the dynamics of preachers' interactions with their congregations and often parodying the imitative…

Chaucer and Gower both saw life as a soul's endless journey. Both were concerned with the antipodal aspects of man's life. But Gower observed human conduct in light of moral and philosophical standards, while Chaucer never passed judgments.

The uses to which Chaucer put the Bird-in-the-Cage image (in MilT, SqT, and ManT), which he derived from Boethius and Jean de Meun, reveal the precision and complexity of his literary adaptations.

Inclusion of Diomede's taking Criseyde's rein, original with Chaucer, dates "The Destruction of Troy" after 1385-87. A probable compression of Lydgate's reference to TC suggests a date after 1420 and closer to Luttrell's dating of the alliterative…

Offers a close examination of the various ecclesiastical figures in CT and "Piers Plowman" and of the literary techniques used by the two authors to distinguish them. Chaucer's method of characterization concentrates audience interest on the person…

The reasons for Chaucer's low reputation in the seventeenth century were as much aesthetic as linguistic. He was a pawn in the battle over enrichment of the language; his works violated the principles of decorum; the medieval genres he used had…

Spenser drew upon Chaucerian and Milton upon Spenserian narrative for mythopoeic embodiments of moral ideas, which they in turn adapted and transformed. From PF, KnT, Marriage Group, and SqT Spenser assimilated ideas of continuity, harmony and free…

The medieval Chaucer developed by a process of accretion and transformation into "England's Homer." Metamorphoses occur in the language, text, and image of the poet. The history of TC is the metamorphosis of a beautiful idea into an ugly one. …

Chaucer's contributions to the novel merit further study. Like Cervantes, Chaucer shows concern for problems which become increasingly important in the development of the novel, notably the author's freeing himself from historical sources and the…

Similarities abound in the writings of Chaucer and Joyce, e.g., concern with English as an appropriate language for literature and with authorial presence in fiction. Most importantly, Chaucer and Joyce, both immersed in the Catholic ethos, share a…

Pandarus, the Pardoner, and the Poet Chaucer are all three creative artists and experience the frustations of the unloved. The Poet created Pandarus and the Pardoner as representation of deep impulses within himself.

Chaucer's allusions to saints were used to evoke different associations on different occasions. Two allusions to St. Nicholas offer striking contrasts in different contests.

The idea that Chaucerian criticism must be approached from the premise that Chaucer wrote only for a select court circle is bad history and bad criticism.

Modernism, properly defined, allows the critic to evaluate Chaucer's art more meaningfully. Modernism has much in common with the medieval aesthetic.

Chaucer's works in American criticism. In Lithuanian.

TC, KnT, and NPT are constructed on the pattern of oppositions found in Boethius' "Consolation" and the dialectic method of scholastic philosophy. At crucial points, however, Chaucer relinquishes this method and chooses one side. The pattern of…

The differences between the narratives classified as "Chaucerian romance" indicate that either all of his narratives are romances, or else that none are."

Rhetorical devices in Chaucer's early poems aid description, lend emphasis, achieve amplification or brevity, and mark transitions. The figures iintensify the utterances of characters, and characterize persons, concepts, or objects.

Parody is the key to understanding the relation between Chaucer's comedy and Christianity. Through parody Chaucer achieves high seriousness and high comedy. Parody of sacral sign and symbols in PardT and Marriage Group produces poetry that can be…

Describes techniques used by medieval authors for presenting human emotions, drawing examples from various writers, and focusing on Chaucer's uses of the heart as a physical object or a concrete image in depicting the pains of love, whether caused by…

In TC Chaucer employs a series of circular images--rings, city walls, seasonal cycles, Fortune's wheel, and super-lunar spheres--to reinforce his themes of sexual love, imprisonment, and ephemerality, and to accentuate the differences between earthly…

The portrait is more static and less chimerical than its sources in the "Aeneid" and the "Apocalypse." By focusing on one detail as others recede in a flexible irrational dream vision, Chaucer surrealistically blends elements of chimera and goddess…

Manuscript evidence indicates that Chaucer intended the title of his longest work to be "The Tales of Caunterbury." During the fifteenth century, however, the work became known popularly as "The Canterbury Tales."

CT is a storytelling contest involving a drama of contrasting visions. It was intended to end not with ParsT but with a feast of celebration and judgment.

The observable final total of pilgrims is 33, a symbolically significant sum. The Pilgrim Chaucer's two tales may have been meant as a center-point signifying a shift from game to earnest. The initial statement that there were 29 may demonstrate…