Browse Items (16376 total)

None of the structural orders that critics have strained to produce are totally satisfactory for a poem in such an obviously fragmentary state as CT by an author whose plans and intentions are as enigmatic as Chaucer's.

The CT are seen as a single unit. In particular, Mel and MLT are analyzed in the light of Marsilio of Padua's "Defensor Pacis" and Wyclif's religious position.

Contains a glossary of all saints referred to in CT, with notes relating them to medieval art, plus commentary on fourteen associated with Reeve, Wife of Bath, and Pardoner or named in FrT, SumT, and CYT.

The fourteenth century accepted literary conventions of the love code and approved warfare with honor and profit conjoined. Chaucer understands chivalry without attacking it: Theseus, in KnT, is an idealized knight modeled on Edward III; Th…

Recent Princeton performances of the "Officium Peregrinorum" (from Luke 24) reveal probable echoes in CT of the liturgical drama of Christ's pilgrimage to Emmaus in the pilgrimage frame itself, in the poet who like Christ uses "lying" fables to…

The Breton lay evolved from Celtic tradition to generic identity with Marie de France to art form in Chaucer's WBT and FranT. Most clearly characterized by the "merveilleux," it has crossed cultural boundaries in such a way as to lose its motives…

The portraits of GP, which depict types, belong to the tradition of rhetorical description, not of satire. Epideictic rhetoric provides for representation of virtue and vice alike and aims at the unity of perspective that we find in the descriptions…

Examines GP 369-84 in light of the guild feud in London in the 1370s and 1380s, reviewing opinions of Kuhl and Fullerton, and Skeat. "In his attitudes toward the guildsmen...the pilgrim Chaucer shows himself as more petty-bourgeois than bourgeois."

Chaucer's digression from Boccaccio concerning Arcite's career at court should be interpreted not biographically but rather in the context of the career of Havelock the Dane. Both tales show the social stigma of being a page; Arcite's role…

Chaucer draws on the medical and literary traditions about poison current in his day. In KnT, Arcite's love for Emelye is pictured as a deadly infection.

Similarities between Chaucer's description of the knight and the descriptions in "Warwick Pageant," a fifteenth-century complimentary biography of the Earl of Warwick, indicate that Chaucer's description contains not irony but praise.

Precise astrological material and medical details pertaining to the disease "amor hereos" support the theory that Saturn and the fury that startles Arcite's horse dramatize the consequences of human choice rather than fatalism. Chaucer uses…

Analyzes plot and content to show that MilT is a popular tale, not a bookish one, and is based on twelve "joke motifs."

Despite recent scholarship of MilT that equates Alison's "pa" (line 3709) with the Wife of Bath's "ba" (WBT, line 433), the two words should be distinguished. "Pa" seems to be a shortening of "pax," the liturgical embrace of Christian love. In…

In the character of Absolon in MilT, Chaucer exploits the literary fact that "the minor orders were not taken seriously as lovers, but were found precisely in the burlesque world of the 'fabliau'." The willfulness and sexual appetite of the Wife of…

"Astromye" is neither a scribal error nor an acceptable variant for "astronomye" but a malapropism that probably appeared originally as "arstromye," containing a pun in the first syllable.

A valuable edition based on British Library Arundel 248 with variants from other texts of the late-thirteenth-century Latin song sung by "hende Nicolas" in MilT. In addition to its sources, Stevens discusses it as a type of canto that eventually…

John of Arderne's "Fistula in ano" and the "Book of Quinte Essence" provide insight into the illness references in MilT.

The use of regional dialects in RvT and the "Second Shepherd's Play" indicates a sporadic literary exploitation of dialect differences in the fourteenth century and implies an ability, at least among the educated, to classify the different dialects…

The Man of Law's allusion to the story of the nine daughters of Pierus, as presented in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" 5, is viewed as literary criticism that emphasizes the fact that the Man of Law is reluctant to be compared to the daughters--who lost…

The disparity between Chaucer's allusion to Lucan in MLT 400-403 and the actual passage in Lucan may be explained by commentaries that Chaucer might have known. The "Pharsalia" shares thematic parallels with Chaucer's story, and may reflect his…

After discussing various readings for the phrase, "In termes hadde he cas and doomes alle..." (GP 323), Wentersdorf argues that "term" is equivalent to a court session: thus, when courts were in session, this man of law had at his disposal all the…

Similarities in the career of Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny, Ireland, and Chaucer's Alice suggest that the case against the former may have influenced Chaucer's portrait. Alice Kyteler was married four times and was accused of carnal relations with a…

Tries to reconcile the change from the naturalism of the "Prologue" to the abstract quality of the tale. Gives an extended definition of "gentilesse."

The deafness of the Wife of Bath is viewed as an iconographic reflection of her unbalanced intellectual and spiritual position. Hearing as she does with only one ear, the Wife's views are skewed to improper attention to the present--to the things of…