Browse Items (16472 total)

Pandarus is a persuader, not a philosopher; so he sees before him not existential problems so much as materials to be shaped to a happy resolution. An earthly maker, at points an imitation of the Divine Creator, he tries but fails to achieve a human…

Troilus's "kankedort" is an Anglo-Norman equivalent of the proverbial "chien qui dort" (sleeping dog); Troilus expects a rude rebuff, ending his love affair.

The body of this dissertation consists of a chronological compendium made up of an individual abstract-like annotation for each significant piece of scholarship (published before 31 December, 1969) which has treated BD during the first 600 years…

BD is revisionary art which de-mystifies the language of conventionalized desire and revises the Boethian consolation dialogue. The narrator suffers the same "tristitia" as the knight and must be cured. A confession entails the knight's Augustinian…

The dream-frame ("envelope") of PF reveals Chaucer's struggling with the problems of poetic composition, particularly of fusing form and context. The poem's unity is a function of the narrator's stance, more divorced from the poem's subject (Love)…

PF can be used as a vehicle for notional instead of Newtonian criticism. It is better interpreted as a complicated art form rather than as social criticism.

PF, "Temple of Glas," and "Kingis Quair" deal not with courtly love but with marriage. The idea underlying all three works is that one should be free to marry whom one loves.

The opposition of knowledge in HF suggests the fourteenth-century reaction to the scholastic efforts of the thirteenth century to forge a synthesis between reason and faith. However, this dissertation does not argue that Chaucer was a reformer. The…

Since in his most carefully completed poems Chaucer avoids or undercuts any full thematic resolution, it is unlikely that the missing conclusion of HF would explain away the dynamic tensions of the poem. Probably the most inconsequential of the…

The marriage of Richard II to Isabel in 1396 explains the revision of LGW prologue; Chaucer's likely understanding of and distantly prudent attitude toward Richard accounts for the new tone.

Chaucer's chief object in LGW is to explore, through the art of "variatio," irrational sexual passion as a source of human misery. The legends divide into three distinct groups: the pathetic tale, Dido and its variations, and star-crossed lovers.

Fine art printing of GP, with accompanying abstract visual renderings. Each copy (250 printed) includes one of twenty additional original screen prints by King and an accompanying poem or commentary by Roy Fisher, Andrew Crozier, Kevin Power, or…

Seeks to define "romance" in Western literary tradition, commenting on its development from classical roots up to modern fantasy literature. Common formal features help to define the term, along with recurrent narrative patterns and themes. The…

Edits Caxton's earliest Chaucer publications, except for the first printing of CT, including PF (aka "The Temple of Brass"), Henry Scogan's "Treatise" that includes Chaucer's Gent, the lyric "Wyth empty honde" that Chaucer alludes to in WBP (3.415)…

Presents two scripts for "teaching through performance": 1) an adaptation of scenes from several of Shakespeare's plays, presented as a single playscript ("Shakespeare's Mirror"); and 2) a fusion of reduced, modernized versions of MilT, PrT, WBPT,…

Assesses Chaucer's influence on "The Unicorn's Tale," found in the early-sixteenth-century Asloan MS and adapted from Nigel of Longchamp's "Speculum Stultorum" which Chaucer alludes to in NPT 7.3312-16. Focuses on verbal echoes from Chaucer's NPT…

An exchange of letters in the PMLA Forum section, discussing the tone and details of Delasanta's essay, "Penance and Poetry in 'The Canterbury Tales," published earlier in 1978 in PMLA.

Facing-page (English/Latin) edition of Innocent's treatise, "De Miseria Condicionis Humane," unemended from British Library Manuscript Lansdowne 358, with extensive critical and textual information. including descriptions of the manuscripts and…

Includes comments on Chaucer's two allusions to the "feldefare": TC 3.861 and Rom 5510.

Tallies various instances from GP where Chaucer "shows in his deployment of nonce-words, key-words, status-terms and moral terms, that character and language are inseparable, that words and values change as societies change, that the only true value…

Characterizes "Ricardian Literature" and discusses the major works of William Langland, John Gower, and Chaucer (pp. 246-69), focusing on social criticism and genre.

Neither tedious nor ignorant, MkT teaches a "sound Boethian lesson" and can be seen as "artistically refined" in its evocation of tragic pathos. The Knight, the Host, and the critics err in castigating the Monk and his Tale.

Equates "mistress-knowledge" of Sir Philip Sidney's "Defence of Poesy" with the "concept of an architectonic . . . usually related to self-knowledge as an ideal," traces the concept from classical to Renaissance treatments, and applies the critical…

Gauges the originality and success of William Morris's poetry, commenting in passing that "The Lovers of Gudrun" is written "in the rather casual couplet form which Morris derived from Chaucer" (37), even though he fails to exploit the "variety" of…

Surveys the influence of Provençal and Italian poets on the works of Ezra Pound, and examines Pound's critical commentary about Chaucer (in his "ABC of Reading"), comparing passages from the two poets and exploring the extent to which the "three…