Browse Items (16376 total)

Throughout TC Chaucer uses the social play of "luf-talkying" as a vehicle for irony and as a means of establishing man's inability to attain an ideal. Troilus plays the love game too earnestly and so is both truly comic and, in terms of final…

The ironic treatment of the lovers in Book III may be clarified by examining representations of "charitas" and "cupiditas." Chaucer juxtaposes them throughout the poem and with special effect in the proem and aubades of Book III. His use and…

TC reveals on a serious level a sexual pattern similar to that of the ludicrous MilT. In spite of disparity of social status, Alisoun and Criseyde offer the same promise to a would-be lover; Absolon and Troilus suffer in similar ways; the same kind…

Chaucer increases Boccaccio's emphasis on the social situation of the lovers to dramatize the separation between personal and public lives. Pandarus, ever conscious of the social context, trains Troilus as the "literary" lover. The action reflects…

The "epilogue" of TC apparently reveals Chaucer's denial of worldly love. However, it should be interpreted as the poet's complexity and uncertainty in his attitude towards "love," one of his major themes.

Chaucer sets up Criseyde's behavior, from first love to betrayal, as a reflection on woman's perilous social state. In so doing he questions the judgment passed on her by a male-centered society and religion, even though it is represented in his own…

Chaucer's illustrates the reciprocity of hearing and speaking by demonstrating how perfectly the characters of TC understand each other's indirectly spoken meanings. The reader's complicity in this implit communication is stressed particularly in…

A discussion of the characterizations of Troilus and Criseyde by investigating the meanings of adjectives attached to each noun illustrating their natures. Troilus, who languishes for love, is represented as a strong, faithful, idealistic knight and…

Chaucer presents Troilus' appeal to Criseyde as ominous in its accuracy, sincere in its passions, yet faulty in its rhetoric. Troilus fails to appear confident, to inspire Criseyde's good will; through faulty emphasis he loses the effect of his plan…

The alliterative phrase "here and houne," usually related to "hare and hound," may derive from an unattested OE formula meaning "the host and the household," an interpretation consistent with the context.

The line reads "Thy pourynge ('vrr.' pouryng, powringe) in wol nowher lat hem dwelle." All evidence--context, lexicographical, manuscript--indicates that it means "peering-in, gazing-in," from ME "pouren"; and not "pouring-in."

Computer-generated concordances and frequency lists help in deciding which part of a character's vocabulary is especially significant. Pandarus' vocabulary emphasizes his expertise in using social and family relationships. Criseyde applies words to…

Chaucer uses "the winds of Fortune" as a metaphor to organize the genre and to define the characters. Troilus' perception of Fortune shifts from the divine to Criseyde, assuring his fall. The narrator opposes Pandarus' attitude in accepting the…

The main characters in TC are oppressed in various senses. How to enhance and ennoble them despite their unfortunate situation is one of Chaucer's undertakings. He cannot, however, free himself from the given conditions of the Trojan cycle. Hence…

Supports James Wimsatt's contention that the story of Ceyx and Alcyone in BD owes certain details to "Ovide moralise" rather than to the "Metamorphoses" by offering one piece of evidence, namely, that the narrator says that, to drive away the…

Earlier critics, led by Kittredge, read the poem as a consolation for John of Gaunt, embodied as the Black Knight;the dreamer is naive and childish. Recently, however, Robertson has denied the view of "courtly love" some see in the work. Instead,…

From BD at the beginning of his career to Sted at the end, Chaucer made use of Machaut's ballade, "Il m'est avis." He drew on it for the translation of Bo, for MerT, and for For. Its images appear especially in BD and in MerT, its philosophical…

Substantive criticism of PF really begins in 1935 with Bronson, who stated that the poem is a study of contrasts between man's views of love. Later critics have elaborated this view, noting the polarities of the work: the "Somnium" and the garden,…

Reconsideration of passages not sufficiently considered in his 1957 edition of PF has led Mr. Bennett to comment on Chaucer's deep and searching study of the "Somnium Scipionis"; the structure of the main part of PF; the central sequence of the three…

There are several contrasts and incongruities in tone, style, and ideas in Chaucer's PF, as for example the naive narrator vs. condescending Scipio, ideal love vs. natural love, the love garden vs. the discordant parliament held therein, courtly…

Antithesis is the major source of PF's aesthetic unity. It arranges the poem's structural levels in a pattern of oppositions: antithetical word pairs are joined by antithetical arrangements of style, description, characterization, plot, narrative,…

The use of contrast in PF is notable, as the poem begins with a suggestive contrast in "Ars longa, vita brevis." The main theme of the work may be considered to be a contrast of courtly love and natural love.

Structure and theme of the Vision are established not only by the "Roman de la Rose" but by Latin poems: (1) visionary setting and (2) questing love-debate for a solution to the turmoil resolved (or unresolved) at (3) a Court of Love. Chaucer's…