Browse Items (16346 total)

A discursive review of Chaucerian scholarship and research published in 1957.

Argues that the "key fact" in Chaucer's satiric GP description of the Monk is that he is an "outrider," allowing leeway for suggestive details about diet, hunting, and other worldly concerns. Fabricates a fictional dialogue between the Monk and the…

Attributes the disruption of order in the plot of FranT to Dorigen's pride and "indecisiveness" and to Aurelius's "moral flaw" and use of "unlawful" magic. Order is reinstated by means of seriatim "self-sacrifice" triggered by the "manly firmness" of…

Traces developments in Chaucer's "attitude to love" as reflected in his narrative personae in BD, LGWP, PF, HF, and TC, assessing this attitude in light of the courtly, Chartrian, and neo-Platonic standards of works by Alain de Lille, Jean de Meun,…

Explicates GP 1.673 (not 1.163, as in title), adding depth to the multiple, generally sexual innuendoes of the "stif burdoun" borne by the Summoner to accompany the Pardoner's song.

Reads FrT as "one of Chaucer's more carefully worked and closely unified poems, and, . . . one of his most dramatic." Focuses on the poem's "Faustian situation," its '"unusual withholding of the denouement," and "its moral implication," exploring…

Clarifies the Franklin's "morning dish" of a "wine-sop," suggesting dietary or medicinal implications necessary to compensate for his culinary excesses.

Identifies an early modern allusion to Chaucer and CYT (by Hugh Platt) and one on dreams and, possibly, NPT (by William Vaughan), neither previously noted.

Anthologizes samples of Greek, Latin, Provençal, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Welsh, Irish, Norse, Danish, Dutch, German, and Old and Middle English verse--generally in modern English translation--from the fifth to the fifteenth century.…

Investigates the "equestrian vocabulary" used by Chaucer, with particular attention to GP, but including his other references to horses, their tackle, colors, names, conditions, movements, etc., clarifying the denotations of the terminology. Includes…

Includes various readings by Dunn that illustrate changes in the English language and English literary style, among them, a reading of Book III.m9 of Bo (Side 1, band 9; 41 sec.). Text from F. N. Robinson's edition of Chaucer complete works (1957).

Examines the characterization of the Pardoner as the "wretchedest and vilest of the ecclesiastical sinners" among Chaucer's pilgrims in CT, arguing that "not covetousness, but wrath against the Divine was the Pardoner's prime motivation." Tallies a…

Explicates the "striking instance of Chaucer's use of word-play and Scriptural allusion" in TC 4.1585 to "enrich his presentation of the lovers' predicament" and emphasize differences between earthly and divine happiness.

Introduces literary acrostics and anagrams as examples of "unkeyed" transposition ciphers, clarifying some terminology of cryptography, and applying technical analysis to invalidate Ethel Seaton's claims (1957) about "so-called double acrostic…

Includes a modern English translation (pp. 294-95) of the opening of Astr, lines 1-64

Describes how, as protagonist of NPT, Chauntecleer is the "mock-hero" of Chaucer's burlesque, engaging in three "battles" and failing because of his own vanity, the target of Chaucer's satire. His "avisioun" was no vision at all, a result of…

Examines the "apparent momentary tenderness between Aleyn and Malyne" in RvT 1. 4234-48, reading the passage as a parody of the "dawn-song," variously known as the "aube," "aude," "aubade," or "tageliet," an "established form in the medieval poetry…

Identifies biblical and patristic resonances in GP 1.634, suggesting that they help to "deepen an already ugly picture of spiritual as well as physical deformity."

Disagrees with editorial explanations of FrT 3.1314, arguing that the subject of the sentence, a "composite sinner," is the recipient of "pecunyal peyne." Offers supporting evidence from several contemporary sources.

Compares a horoscope and its accompanying Latin text found in Equat with two analogous versions, showing that it has closest relations with the Nürnberg version printed in 1659.

Observes that references to Elijah and Elisha in SumT 3.2116-18 evince "Chaucer's awareness, if not endorsement, of the widely held belief that the 'earliest anchorite' Elijah was the founder of the Carmelite Order," and provides various features of…

Describes the "traditional Christian" symbolism that underlies the fowler/bird and winter/spring imagery in LGWP 125-39, identifying biblical roots, exegetical commentary, and literary examples that precede Chaucer, suggesting that the "alert…

Suggests that at TC 4.312 when Troilus refers to his own eyes they "represent zeros" and thereby "Stonden for naught" in two ways.

Argues that Arcite is as much a romantic hero of KnT as is Palamon, both as a "Chaucerian idealization of love" and as a representative of humanity's "proper relationship to Fortune." Includes comparison of Arcite with Boccaccio's analogous Arcita in…

Focuses on the opening section of BD, arguing that it depicts a "Narrator suffering excessive grief resulting from bereavement, who within the poem moves toward a means of consolation based chiefly upon a conception of Nature as Life, and whose…