Browse Items (16472 total)

Defends Mel as a meaningful allegory, considering in turn Chaucer's use of the name "Sophia," his reference to wounded feet, and the "extended account" of Christ's passion which indicate framing attention to the Crucifixion. Then tabulates "three…

Argues that HF is organized and coherent: it is consistently concerned with poetic art, its tripartite structure is based on the "rhetorical doctrine of three styles," and the styles correlate with the "three principal works" of Virgil"…

Chaucer's ironic treatment of the Dido legend in LGW and HF involves a naive narrator who erroneously sympathizes with Dido; a medieval audience would have recognized differences from the treatment of Dido in Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Heroides. …

Lucretius's "De rerum natura" may have influenced the reverdie, or spring song, that opens GP. Lucretius's reverdie predates and almost certainly influenced those in the "Georgics" and the "Pervigilius veneris," already linked to The General…

Describes the cognitive condition of "mind blindness," often associated with autism, and argues that a literary version of the condition recurs in satire, where authors use the blind spots of characters to ironically convey unstated information. Uses…

Explores the allusion to Virgil's "Georgics" in "Faerie Queene" 1.1.50-53, arguing that Spenser "desexualizes the Vergilian model by removing [its] generative principle" (90) and thereby re-makes the Classical/Christian topos that underlies Chaucer's…

Tradition relates the sin of simony to leprosy and sodomy, as evidenced by John Wyclif's "Tractatus De Simonia." The physical abnormalities of the Pardoner and Summoner in CT can thus be seen as symbolic of their simony.

Though similarities have been found, Mercury's appearance to Arcite in KnT cannot be traced to a single specific source. One should view the scene in the broad context of the theme of epic descent from which Chaucer draws several effects.

Surveys the dilemmas experienced by Criseyde, Troilus, Chaucer, and the reader in TC, relating them all to the conflicts between classical beauty and Christian truth.

Boyd summarizes the tension in medieval tradition between the promotion of homosocial bonding and the proscription of sodomy. He characterizes Chaucer's treatment of male homosexuality in CT as typically homophobic.

Th, according to L. H. Loomis, follows no previous pattern of burlesque. This article disputes Lommis's contention through comparison with "prise de Neuvile" in action, language, opening address, catalogues, descriptions, parody, abrupt ending, and…

Introduces Chaucer's life and describes each of his major works in chronological order, identifying the French context of BD, the Italian travels and reading that influenced him later, the philosophical concerns of TC, and his self-representations in…

Compares people and places of twentieth-century journeys on the Dixie Highway to several medieval pilgrimages, real and fictional, including CT.

According to Barber, "about half the examples of unelided word-final -e in CT were pronounced." A following study will determine in which words final -e was pronounced.

TC is Chaucer's only fully realized tragedy. Interrupted by the Knight to show its limitations, MkT satisfies only the "minimal medieval expectations" of the genre, lacking elevated subject matter. Kaylor explores the term "tragedy" by reference to…

Interprets Custance's use of "Latyn corrupt" to the natives of Northumbria in terms of Isidore of Seville's discussion of linguistic history and suggests that MLT takes an acutely historicist view of the development of medieval Christianity,…

Johnston scrutinizes Chaucer's comments on alliterative poetry in ParsP, interpreting them as evidence of a power struggle in England's evolving literary field. By presenting aesthetic difference as linguistic difference, Chaucer consciously presents…

Enumerative disjunctions, emphasizers, repetition, and variation produce the controlled style of CT. Chaucer's two prose tales, ParsT and Mel, have characteristics that are found less in verse (and that modern readers dislike): cohesive redundancy…

Briefly surveys the ways Chaucer leaves "gaps" in CT--omissions, repetitions, reversals, etc.--and suggests how ParsT provides a wholeness despite these gaps.

Compares Molly Bloom's concluding monologue with WBP, assessing the two characters' views on sexuality and euphemism and their relations with their husbands.

Uses public relations theory ("concepts of relationship management") to examine the competitiveness of the Pardoner in PardPT and the combination of competiveness in WBP with the valuing of "communal relationship" in WBT.

Provides comparative analysis of the modern Tunisian tale "Sabra," an analogue of ClT, told by a woman to an exclusively female audience. Includes summary of and commentary on Chaucer's "ambivalent and ironic version," plus other medieval European…

A facsimile reprint of the 1896 Kelmscott Chaucer, with Winterich's Introduction that summarizes the lives of Chaucer and of William Morris, the production of the original book, and its place in the history of Kelmscott publications. Includes a…

Not mere "doodles" but symbolic images, scatalogical images in the margins of medieval manuscripts derive ultimately from biblical and religious writing. Verbal scatalogy in MilT and SumT is serious, moralistic, not vicious.

Yvernault assesses Chaucer's ambiguous uses and rewriting of Boccaccio in ClT, especially in his treatment of Griselda.