Browse Items (16376 total)

Chaucer elaborately constructs the pagan love story as an epic, a romance, and a philosophical demonstration, but simultaneously undercuts all three frames of reference; however, the Christian epilogue decrying earthly existence is modified by the…

The manipulation of narrative techniques in TC (as, for example, in the five-book structure or the epilogue) is one way in which the story reveals its value system and subtly encourages us to adopt that system.

In Chaucer's TC and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," the actions focused on the lovers are remarkably alike in general contours and specific internal resonances, a resemblance which points to Chaucer as Shakespeare's source. Chaucer shows a…

TC opens in "high style" comparable with Virgil's "Aeneid" or Milton's "Paradise Lost." This style creates an epic frame for the poem which is sustained by the correlation of Troilus the lover with Troilus the warrior. Donaldson is wrong in…

In the epilogue Chaucer addresses his book as "litel myn tragedye," adding that God might prompt him still to make it into "som comedye." This objective is achieved when Troilus (recalling "Paradiso," XXII) transcends tragedy and attains celestial…

The epilogue to TC emphasizes the poem's double perspective of man as an active character in life's drama and of man deliberately separating himself from reality to perceive it objectively. This problem reflects the dilemma of the artist, who is at…

Even though Chaucer's characters are defined by the strong theological framework in which they appear, they still achieve an effect of individualized feeling and characterization. Although TC reveals elements of a controlled classical approach to…

The activities of Pandarus in TC and Celestina in Gernando de Rojas's "Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea" show the similarities in the panderer's roles and the fundamental disparities between Chaucer's and Rojas's visions. Celestina's world is…

Although the heroine speaks bravely in TC of being her "owene womman," Chaucer's "would-be feminist" is continually victimized by the male-dominated society largely responsible for her limited views about sexual roles.

Chaucer's treatment of Cassandra in TC illustrates his changes in the tone and import of Boccaccio's "Filostrato." Whereas Boccaccio's portrayal provides interesting psychological study, Chaucer's Cassandra introduces a philosophical context by…

Criseyde's "aubes" of TC, III and IV, wherein she swears her constancy to Troilus, ironically recall the "impossibilia" of anti-feminist lying-songs, which warned men not to put trust in women.

In TC 5.543, the use of the participle "queynt" (quenched) may have been meant by Chaucer as a pun on the noun "queynt" (pudendum). Although the pun may have been intentional, it is irrelevant to the passage in which it appears, syntactically…

BD is about art as well as consolation--the art that engages real attention with its game and objectifies grief only to escape into its own fixity and so shatter finally on the existentiality of loss.

In BD, Chaucer, working in a tradition of courtly style, composes a poem of consolation. Within a beautiful poem of human sympathy, Chaucer effects a critique of courtly language and exposes the inability of such language to express profound…

The narrator of BD, who sees in the tale of Ceyx and Alcyone an exemplum of the loss of their "golden age" love, realizes that the love of the knight is an analogue of the happy fulfillment of the couple's love. Thus, the actual consolation of the…

The dreamer's experience in BD is an amplification of the Ceyx and Alceone story. The Black Knight and the dreamer may be seen as the same person, the dream providing a means of facing the fact of death.

In medieval narrative theory, "aporia" is set forth as a way of examining the moment when the ironic process begins. BD relies on a withdrawal from literal statement which brings the author's intention to the reader through the process of irony.

A St. Valentine's Day entertainment, PF emphasizes the inevitable, though unembraced, participation in "kynde" of its audience. The narrator's use and misuse of his authorities frustrate the expectations of his readers, thereby forcing them to…

The organic model of unity does not fit discontinuous, dilated, expository, encyclopedic medieval works such as PF. A model more "multiple" deserves hegemony.

The lists of lovers in PF extend Chaucer's commentary on the common profit. The lovers cited all neglected their political and social responsibilities for love.

In PF Proem, Chaucer uses the "Somnium" to maintain that the chasm between terrestrial and celestial love is bridgeable. Common profit is a moral and spiritual concept through which human love can assume greater order and direction.

Dame Patience sitting "upon an hil of sond" (PF, 242-43) may come from the second recension of Deguileville's "Pelerinage de la vie humaine" where the persistence of an ant in reaching the top of a sand hill might be thought of as the active…

Ovid is an important source for Gower's "Confessio" and for LGW. However, there is evidence that both authors also made first-hand use of Livy.

LGW provides an important statement of Chaucer's poetics. It recognizes his genuine debt to his French contemporaries. The poet-dreamer does not reject or parody the tradition of "fin amor," but under its direction he acknowledges the poet's duty…

LGW contains examples of "the destructive results of excessive passion." Classical, patristic, and medieval attitudes to Cleopatra are negative; Chaucer is thus ironic.