Browse Items (16472 total)

Since Kittredge, we have come to see a dramatic structure at the heart of CT, with interaction not only among the tellers but also among the tales themselves. Many points, however, are still in dispute: the order of the tales, the question of…

The advance of the fabliaux in critical estimation is perhaps the major development of twentieth-century Chaucer studies. The fabliau--an "upper"-class genre ridiculing the buffoneries of the "lower" classes and clergy--flourished in…

In CT Chaucer defines and redefines "myrie tale." Ultimately it is neither mere entertainment, nor pure instruction, not even sentence and solace. A truly "myrie tale" must be "fructuous," i.e., truly edifying. Only ParsT fits, for poetry is…

Chaucer's romances include KnT, SqT, WBT, FranT, and Th; but "Chaucer's realism, humor, and interest in character all tend to transform his romances into something beyond what one usually finds in the genre."

Chaucer is the rule for vernacular poets rather than the exception. His appropriation of monastic patterns of thought and ascetic ideas and imagery were a tradition already becoming a classic in his time. In CT, the Summoner's portrait, the…

The much-disputed allegorical criticism of CT is a fairly recent phenomenon. Chaucer's allegories maybe either "formal" (e.g., ClT) or "informal" (e.g., KnT)--both styles deriving from "a reservoir of established menaings shared by the poet and his…

Irony--"the Chaucerian pose"--is of five basic types in CT: verbal, structural, dramatic, and philosophic irony, as well as irony of manner.

Marriage has important positive values in medieval narrative, including Chaucer's. The "Marriage Group" constitutes not so much a debate over sexual dominance in marriage as a varied demonstration of the need for mutual consideration and…

Kittredge's dialectical interpretation of the Marriage Group in CT is re-examined in terms of the different views presented by W. W. Lawrence, D. R. Howard, J. L. Hodge, and C. C. Olson. The conclusion is that there seems little to be revised in…

GP not only is a brilliant poem in itself but also sets the tone for the entire work to follow. It skillfully blends the real with the ideal world--all seen through the device of a narrative persona. Chaucer uses several devices for description,…

The fundamental distinction in KnT is not between Palamon and Arcite, but between them and Theseus. The Dionysian misrule of Thebes is symbolically contrasted to the Apollonian order or Athens. The mythic structure of the narrative prepares a…

KnT is a scholastic romance whose primary subject is universal human nature conceived in varying combinations of will and intellect, and its overriding concern is human freedom. From its position as the first Canterbury tale, one might infer that…

Twice the carpenter in MilT uses "astromye": is it a malapropism, an acceptable variant, or a scribal error? Since according to Manly-Rickert all mss of CT record "astromye," the last of these is not tenable. And since the word thus misused does…

Although giving the impression of belonging to the world of courtesy, "deerne love" is actually more pertinent to the activities detailed in fabliaux. But secrecy, even when it would appear to be taken seriously, causes destruction of love and…

Despite Tolkien's praise of Chaucer's "accurate observation" of dialects in RvT, examination of the mss of CT reveals that Chaucer's knowledge of northern dialect was in no way exceptional and that many of the northern speech characteristics of the…

An edition, with introduction, notes, and glossay.

Chaucer's version of MLT is more like Trevet's than the folktale version identified as "The Handless Maiden." If Chaucer knew this folktale version, his choice of Trevet's more sophisticated version is another tribute to his art.

Constance is not, as Delany (1974) claims, a character who embodies and recommends self-degradation and abject submission to power in all its forms. What is important is that Constance discovers in the course of her experience that Providence, not…

Previous criticism often finds an unresolved tension between tale and teller in MLT and in the tale itself, leading a critic like Edward A. Block to declare the work "poor art." However, the admitted tensions within the tale between a feeling of…

The story of Constance is not especially appropriate to the Man of Law. Chaucer was attracted to it because it is a good piece of fiction and because it gave him the perfect opportunity to set forth and justify his belief in astrology. The story…

Constance is not the passive ninny she has been accused of being. She possesses a presence which demands and receives forcible response; she moves in her world with self-sufficiency; her virtue is heroic; her ability to accept what God sends gives…

Past opinions are either that Chaucer was profoundly involved with the tale and reflected the period's emotionalism or that he was detached and disenchanted with the narrator. Actually the tale is an exposure of the "publicly sentimentalizing…

Recent proposals that Alisoun and Jankyn may have murdered her fourth husband are analyzed and rejected. Their quarrel arises not from mutual guilt but from Jankyn's suspicions about Alisoun, and from his association of murder and female lust. Such…

The Wife of Bath has served as an example of a medieval feminist. However, it would be more accurate to describe her as an androgyne--a person possessing both male and female characteristics. While it can be argued that she has liberated herself…

An important immediate source of Chaucer's work is in the Latin "Lamentations of Matheolus," a thirteenth-century French cleric, whose work Jean le Fevre translated into French and expanded in the fourteenth century. In excess of one hundred…