Browse Items (16472 total)

A report of new projects, projects in progress, and membership of Chaucer Library Committee.

Argues that the Clerk's Envoy "generates a unifying theme which runs through" MerT--the possibilities of "perfection and imperfection in marriage, expressed as paradise and purgatory"--an echo of the concern with "purgatory" in WBPT. Explores the…

Assesses the Pardoner as a "puzzle" posed by Chaucer to challenge his audience to consider the relationship between morality and story-telling. The Pardoner's dazzling rhetoric, his relics, and the tensions between his immoral prologue and moral tale…

Tallies Chaucer's modifications of his sources in ManT, especially the digressions he adds, to show that the "subject of the tale is language." In his tale, the Manciple "sneers at" people who "can be distracted from empirical reality by language,"…

Suggests that Chaucer purges "sensuality" from Boccaccio's "Filostrato" when he adapts it as TC, and demonstrates in detail where the quality is consistently present in the Boccaccio's poem.

Argues that Troilus' ascent to the eighth sphere (TC 5.1807-27) combines Christian and pagan elements--the classical pagan notion of immortality among the stars transmitted to Chaucer via Alain de Lille, Dante, and Boccaccio, and the Christian…

Treats the "psychological realism" and "moral allegory" in TC as complementary, analyzing the imagery and themes of ancient gods, the moon, and mutability, associated with Criseyde. Images of hell and torment in the final two books, differing from…

Reads TC as a sinful poetic act, acknowledged as such by Chaucer in Ret (CT 10.1086). Passionate love and Christian love are "irreconcilable" in the poem, and from the Proem of Book 3 forward, Chaucer employs an "intensifying program of disguise" of…

Tallies books and articles pertaining to Chaucer--ones in progress, completed, and/or published in 1971.

Argues that the Wife of Bath's reference to an incubus (3.880) is not an aggressive critique of the Friar's "deficient virility" as editors assume but instead a gentle and teasing jibe.

Rejects readings of MerT as "savage and mordant self-revelation" of the Merchant, characterizing the Merchant's wife as more similar to the Wife of Bath and the Host's Goodelief than to May. MerP is an extension of the Clerk's Envoy, the Merchant…

Compares PhyT with its sources in Livy and the "Roman de la Rose" to argue that Chaucer's retelling characterizes the Physician as amoral, consistent with the GP description.

Reads ManT as an example of successful "characterization through narrative technique," assessing its paucity of actual storytelling relative to the amount of moralizing. This tedious moralizing is comic and results from Chaucer's adaptations of his…

Argues that Chaucer intended to complete SqT, evident in the fact that the Franklin's interruption is unjustified or inconsistent with the characterization of the Franklin in several ways.

Interprets Pandarus's reference to "corones tweyne" (TC 2.1735) in light of lapidarian tradition, suggesting that it refers to the two kinds of "caraunius" (thunderstone), differently colored gemstones that emblematize Criseyde's beauty, lightning,…

Tallies similarities and differences in the characterizations of Palamon and Arcite in KnT, arguing that there is no way to resolve the "demande d'amour" that closes Part 1--"who is more worthy?" Theseus's rational decision making, the intervention…

Reads ClT as a "dramatization" of the teaching of St. James' epistle: the testing of faith "begets patience." Despite Walter's cruelty, he is God's "unwitting agent" in effecting Griselda's faith and obedience.

Argues that SqT "presents the growing impulse toward exoticism and disorder at work in the courts of late medieval Europe," the antithesis of classical order depicted in KnT. Also comments on notions of "gentilesse" and the uses of rhetorical colors…

Tagmemic analysis of NPT that examines three of its "overlapping hierarchies" by shifting focus among them: the tale as a fable, the rhetorical elaboration of it, and the framing context of CT. Such analysis discloses the complex comedy of the tale.

Explicates features of the reference to St. Giles in CYT (8.1185), drawing on the various traditions of Giles as patron saint of "'those struck by some sudden misery, and driven into solitude.'"

Surveys approaches to NPT, and discusses its appropriateness as a homiletic exemplum to the Priest as narrator, discussing its rhetoric, its misogynistic depictions of females, and its allusions to mermaid song and Physiologus (7.3270-72)

Surveys critical approaches to Mel and discusses its themes of "the good woman" and forgiveness; also assesses Mel as a complex, multi-leveled allegory.

Argues that, while clearly discrediting summoners, the Friar "also discredits himself." Reads FrT as a exemplum that satirizes summoners and, ironically, condemns the Friar's malicious hypocrisy, especially clear in light of contemporary sermon…

Identifies Giglio Gregorio Giraldi's allusion (1551) to Chaucer as a vernacular poet.

Though the Wife of Bath states that she never heard "diffinicioun" upon "fyve," the number of her husbands, Chaucer was probably aware of this number's significance as a symbol of earthly love in the numerological tradition of Dante, Macrobius, the…