Browse Items (16472 total)

Assesses Chaucer's uses of Boccaccio and Boethius as source material in KnT, addressing the omission of Arcite's apotheosis and the subordination of the pagan gods to providential order. Focuses on Palamon's and Arcite's prayers and Theseus' final…

Describes an "experiment in the use of oral reading as a means of teaching" TC that increased students' "critical appreciation" of the poem and Chaucer's art.

Challenges Paul Ruggiers' essay, "Some Philosophical Aspects of 'The Knight's Tale'" (1958), maintaining that the critic fails to distinguish between Chaucer's views and those of the Knight, and disagreeing with his interpretations of several points…

Explores the symbolic value of the gems, their colors, and their settings (rings and brooch) in TC, discussing the moral implications referred to in medieval lapidaries.

Argues that the Yeoman attends the Knight rather than the Squire in GP, considering evidence of dress and character, and adducing William Caxton's "The Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry."

Uses principles of Kenneth Burke's rhetoric of form to analyze NPT, commenting on aspects of its progressions (syllogistic, inverted, and repetitive), aspects of its genre conventions, and examples of its rhetorical ornamentation.

Investigates the dramatic ironies of PardPT (comparing them with those of WBPT), arguing that the Pardoner does not reveal "more than he intends, but rather the converse": that none of the pilgrims "is able to see the full meaning of what he says"…

Argues that the main characters of ClT "have Oedipal fixations": Griselda, a masochistic form that correlates with "an incestuous quality in her relationship with her father," and Walter, a sadistic version that reverberates with the Cupid/Psyche…

Surveys the "editions and translations of Chaucer currently in print" (in 1965) and designed for college courses, commenting on their strengths and weaknesses.

Critiques the editorial practice of "smoothing" Chaucer's verse to produce iambic pentameter rhythms by adjustments to final-"e," and advocates following medieval scribal practice of using the "'punctus elevatus'--the medial mark" to indicate the…

Compares the knight's decision in the marriage bed of WBT to that of the analogous one in the more mythic "Marriage of Sir Gawain," arguing that in the context of Chaucer's relatively realistic Tale, the decision to return the choice to the loathly…

Argues that in PardT the Old Man "reveals the Pardoner's real secret, the joylessness of the life he professes to relish so much." The Pardoner is a "young-old man, and the confrontation between the three rioters and the old man in the tale brings to…

Parodies patristic criticism by reading Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" as an indictment of concupiscent love, drawing recurrent comparisons between the structure and imagery of Twain's novel and BD.

Asks why the Pardoner "always preaches against his own sin" and why he admits to doing so to the Canterbury pilgrims, using the questions to argue that he is a con-man rather than a hypocrite, and one who considers himself morally superior to his…

Explores the assumptions about stress that underlie prosodic scansion, and demonstrates that Chaucer's decasyllabic verse is built upon a contrastive rather than an absolute distinction between stressed and unstressed syllables. Considers elision,…

Reads WBT psychoanalytically, exploring its "sexual taboos," its phallic and vaginal significations, and the sexual fantasy that is "at the heart of the story." The tension between authority and submission in the Tale conveys meaning equally well for…

Applies "principles" of medieval visual art (scale and perspective) to aid in understanding how BD magnifies the Black Knight's loss by presenting it in the context of the analogous accounts of the narrator's malaise and the grief of Alcyone.

Challenges Morris Halle and Samuel J. Keyser's theory of Chaucer's iambic pentameter (particularly their application of the notion of "stress-maximum"), and poses a theoretical distinction between "norms" and "rules" in discussing prosodic practice,…

Challenges the validity of the metrical theory proposed by Morris Halle and Samuel J. Keyser in their "Chaucer and the Study of Prosody" (1966), commenting on their treatment of several lines of Chaucer's verse but concentrating on later English…

Describes an eight-step "algorithm" for enabling computers to aid in the recognition and cataloging of prosodic traits, and explores the utility of such practice by discussing the data from a computer-assisted scansion of a 1000-line sample of…

Woman was made from Adam's rib (rather than his head or foot) so that she would be a fellow to man. This idea is found in Chaucer's ParsT and earlier in Aquinas's "Summa Theologica," pt. 1, chap. 92.

Most of the major elements of plot and theme in ClT reappear in Alice Walker's novel of 1982. The heroines of each, Griselda and Celie, passively accept male domination and tyranny but finally achieve reconciliation.

Characterizations of Grendel, the Green Knight, and Chaucer's Pardoner can be used for a "queer pedagogy" based on the theories of Henry Giroux and Stanley Aronowitz. Zeikowitz suggests discussions and written assignments that encourage analysis of…

Consideration of authorial agency enables professors and students to explore relationships between personal ethos and literary texts. Ethical criticism frames discussions of whether Chaucer raped Cecily Chaumpaigne or whether Flannery O'Connor was a…

Ingham uses Freud's meditations on Tasso's knight Tancred as a model for how literary texts mediate between the repetitive and the representational aspects of trauma. Chaucer's TC resonates with trauma in the work's historical context, in the…