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.
Besserman, Lawrence L.
Chaucer Review 36: 48-72, 2001.
Throughout the decades, Chaucer critics have argued their own biases in interpreting Chaucer's ideology--seeing Chaucer as a "Christian poet"; as a "poet first and foremost"; as an "atheist"; as a writer who was "politically incorrect." Eschewing…
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…
Not all manuscripts of Ret read LGW as "xxv" tales (other numbers are "xix" and "xx"). Edward of Norwich (ca. 1406) uses "xxv" and refers to the work as the "Goode Wymmen," not, as is more common, the book of "ladies." He may have read Ret, in which…
The reception of the Pardoner can be more fully understood by examining medieval preachers' and orators' uses of examples, or stories that would "excite" an audience to behave virtuously. By "laying bare" his own selfish desires, the Pardoner elicits…
Horvath, Richard P.
Chaucer Review 37 : 173-89, 2002.
Rather than personal comments to private friends, Buk and Scog may be seen as Chaucer's experiments with "[t]urning the relationship between writer and reader into a poetic subject of its own." The characteristic sense of play and seemingly…
Chaucer's WBT destabilizes gender roles rather than focusing on the issues of kingship at the core of most of the loathly-lady tales. WBT engages issues of personal power politics as it creates a lively, garrulous character, but the moral lies in the…
Conversions in TC are modeled ironically on those of St. Paul and St. Augustine. Like Paul, Troilus cannot escape his fate; he can only accept and serve. Like Augustine, Criseyde vainly tries to master the narrative that is out of her control.
Martin, Carl Grey.
Chaucer Review 37: 219-33, 2003.
The romance "The Siege of Thebes" being read by Criseyde at the beginning of the poem prepares us for her preoccupation with "siege" throughout the work. Pandarus persuades her to conceptualize Troilus as an antidote for the siege's danger, while…
Chaucer uses conventions of the friendship tradition to explore the power of erotic desire; Lydgate rewrites the fatal rivalry to emphasize male friendship over male-female attraction.
Despite inaccuracies and major differences from Chaucer's KnT, Helgeland's film "A Knight's Tale" does maintain a "Chaucer effect" that has secured the poet's "iconic status" since the Renaissance. Yet anachronisms abound; rock music replaces chant;…
Morgan critiques modern claims for Chaucer's innovation in GP, arguing that Chaucer's methods resulted from the moral and artistic training of his time. We should read the pilgrim Chaucer both as earnest and as effective in displaying the sins of his…
Kuczynski, Michael P.
Chaucer Review 37: 315-28, 2003.
Scriptural injunctions underlie Chaucer's apology in MilP 1.3172-81 and his encouraging the audience to be cautious when judging his poetic enterprise.
Farrell, Thomas J.
Chaucer Review 37: 346-64, 2003.
Farrell argues that clear differentiation among types of analogues may enable us to analyze Chaucer's works with more subtlety. A "source" is a work we are certain Chaucer knew; a "hard analogue" is a work that was available to him; a "soft source"…
The "coillons" interchange between the Pardoner and the Host at the end of PardT goes much deeper than previously noticed. Echoing a passage from the "Roman de la Rose" found in some manuscripts, the lines evoke a transgressive inversion of the "nut…
Crocker, Holly A.
Chaucer Review 38 : 178-98, 2003.
The comedy in MerT is produced by May herself, whose "conduct demonstrates that the feminine passivity upon which the masculine performance of agency depends is of course an act." May exposes the ridiculous nature of all claims to masculine…
McGowan, Joseph P.
Chaucer Review 38 : 199-202, 2003.
The Prioress's ambiguous motto--"love conquers all"--is only half of a quotation from Virgil. The remainder--"and we must give in to it"--does not lessen the equivocal nature of the portrait.
Moore, Stephen G.
Chaucer Review 38 : 83-97, 2003.
The narrative structure of Mel compels the reader to read backward and forward between scenes and episodes, encouraging affective involvement in the universal sentential wisdom of the Tale. The purpose is not that Melibee learn, but that the reader…
Ambrisco, Alan S.
Chaucer Review 38 (2004): 205-28.
The Squire's "bad use of occupatio and his self-conscious admissions of rhetorical inadequacy" preserve the foreign, "acknowledging Mongol cultural differences but failing to clarify the terms on which such differences rest." Through "this rhetoric…
Throughout TC, the words "sikernesse" and "fere" are repeated and echoed in other words that "complicate their apparently stable meaning." Thus, the "characters' fear of circumstances" cannot be separated from the "narrator's fears about the…
Burrow recommends repunctuating TC 2.255 as "Nece, alwey lo to the laste," suggesting that it means "look to the last," a phrase that might have been inspired by Chaucer's experiences as a "diplomat and negotiator."
The chess metaphor in BD shows that Chaucer's knowledge of the game, while not extraordinary, was adequate for his purpose. His knowledge could have come from being an actual player, from studying medieval chess puzzles, from knowledge of the…
Far from viewing herself as a "passive pawn," Criseyde sees herself as actively fleeing from an unhealthy relationship with Troilus to a healthy one with Diomedes. At the end of TC, she is no longer the cynical widow of Book 2, but instead a more…
