Browse Items (16472 total)

Examines the pace of WBT as an example of the loathly hag story and reads in it echoes of several other Canterbury narratives.

Mel capitalizes on a pattern of attention to women earlier in CT, reflecting Chaucer's own concern with female rights of speech and self-expression.

Compares Chaucer's WBT and Gower's "Tale of Florent" as indices to the authors' social and moral outlooks. Whereas Gower consistently emphasizes maintaining a hierarchical status quo, Chaucer's concern for the individual and his recurrent…

Two exercises deal with passages from CT (1.28-45 and 1.477-84)

Compares acts of treachery in the tales of Constance by Trevet, Gower, and Chaucer, showing that MLT has a feminist point of view and a religious stance. The liveliness of the debate scenes in MLT may result from the occupation of the teller.

Examines the diet of the poor widows in CT and the extravagant menus of the Franklin, the numerous recipes in "Le menagier de Paris," and "The Boke of Nurture" by John Russell.

Although the terms in the title are not the most frequently used in Chaucer's vocabulary, their collocations enable us to explore associations and meanings of colors, the gushing of blood from wounds, the physiology of emotions, devotion to Christ's…

Alliteration, not infrequent in Chaucer, fulfils several functions. It is mimetic in the description of battles (KnT) and the harmony of the spheres (TC); metrical, when binding two parts of a line or several lines together (BD); and syntactic:…

TC illustrates the mechanisms of perception, memory, and imagination as defined by fourteenth-century scientific theories. The two protagonists are enmeshed in a net of gazes--their own as well as those of others--and the narrative unfolds as viewed…

In TC, Chaucer attempts to recreate the Oriental atmosphere of Troy and its environment: the maze of walls hiding wealthy rooms and pleasant gardens, the secret corridor, the Greeks' tents, Sarpedon's entertainments, the wiles of Pandarus, and…

Most of the pilgrims seem to be about the same age, but the problem of age is not ignored: e.g., old and young husbands (WBPT); the relationship between father and son (Knight and Squire, Franklin, Chauntecleer) or daughter (RvT); and the…

Dauby examines the transformations from living characters to artifacts and vice versa, the interplay between life and art. A comparative study of "Sir Degrevant," Lancelot, the Tristan legend, and poems by Chaucer leads to a typology of the…

Though posed as a continuation of CT, the Prologue to the Tale of Beryn emphasizes a return from Canterbury to London, from the sacred to the profane. Sentence and solaas are reduced to the merely "glad and merry."

The Tale of Beryn shows that bargaining is essential in the mercantile world. It uses the "biter bit" pattern and--unusual in CT--reflects the moral growth of an individual. First shown misbehaving like the rioters in PardT, Beryn undergoes a true…

Assesses invocations and formulas used to address divinities, characters,and sources in TC.

Chaucer and Gower both adapted the story of Constance from the Anglo-Norman chronicle of Trevet. A comparison of the proper names, institutional terms, and speeches shows that Gower closely follows Trevet while Chaucer modifies the story in MLT.

Focuses on the narrative systems in The Arabian Nights and CT.

Traces changes in the putatively fixed form of the balade as used by Eustache Deschamps, John Gower, Chaucer, and others, commenting on variations in number of stanzas, rhyme schemes, the inclusion of envoys, etc. Includes comments on Ven, For, Ros,…

Passages from ShT and MLT suggest that men have a right to beat their wives; furthermore, MilT and passages from Mel and WBT (in the wife's marriage to Jankin) seem to suggest masochism in female characters. MkP suggests that women are naturally…

Argues that the pilgrimage of HF 116 was to the medieval hermitage of St. Leonard, two miles west of Windsor Castle; the associated weariness evokes the use of pilgrimages for amorous trysts.

Examines two mid-fifteenth-century complaints that reflect public distrust of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, arguing that these complaints are more Lydgatian than Chaucerian, since Chaucer's own complaints had little influence at the time. An appendix…

Davenport describes several categories of medieval narrative, focusing on English literature, particularly Chaucer. Discusses didactic narratives (exempla and fables), historical accounts (chronicle, epic, romance), comic tales (fabliaux and…

Davenport's survey articulates formal, thematic, and verbal influences of PF and HF on a wide variety of late-medieval English bird poems, also mentioning those in which Chaucer's influence is not apparent.

Complaints--courtly, religious, philosophical, moral--were an integral part of Chaucer's poetry, and different combinations of lyric and narrative led to experiments in literary structures. Davenport contends that Chaucer adapts the complaint…

Discusses Middle English debate poems but touches on dialogue in CT, TC, and PF.