Browse Items (16376 total)

Chaucer employs scriptural allusions in Thomas's gift and its codicil; typological exegesis demonstrates that, if Jankin's division of the fart suggests Pentecost, Thomas's first gift recalls the events in the lives of Moses and Elijah that Pentecost…

Christine de Pizan uses the Griselda tale to illustrate the virtues of patience and constancy in her "Livre de la Cite des Dames," derived from a French prose version of Philippe de Mezieres, perhaps also consulting the anonymous French prose…

An explication of the MerT and FranT using the Hengwrt manuscript order, the article surveys some critical interpretations of the two tales, concerning the clerical or secular nature of the tellers.

Hole's "Remarks on the Arabians Nights' Entertainments" contains speculations about the sources of the pear-tree motif and the magical objects in the two tales. While many of his guesses are without substantiation, he does suggest a pear-tree…

The legend of Moses' magic, alluded to in SqT 247-51, first occurs in Peter Comestor's "Historia scholastica." Nicholas Trevet and Gower also mention this motif, but probably Chaucer's source for the allusion is Roger Bacon's "Opus maius."

The Franklin is a gentleman with old-fashioned but praise-worthy standards. FranT treats the fourteenth-century interdependent virtues of "trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie" (A46)--moral values in ambiguous wrappings.

Discusses the Franklin "class" of late-medieval England: etymology, legal status, land tenure, wealth, rank, and social position. Adducing contemporary evidence, some of which is here discussed for the first time, the author explores the clues…

In spite of an appearance as a tragedy, the tale by the sanguine Franklin quickly arrives at the conclusion of a happy exemplum. It is the narrator himself who most keenly enjoys the tale.

In contrast to other analogues to PhysT, Chaucer "systematically obliterates social content" to deprive the characters of plausible motives. This "bad piece of work" is "pornographic or free-floating sadistic sensationalism, with murder as its only…

Although thought immortal and evil, the Old Man in PardT is mortal in his longing for death, and, furthermore, good, patient, and kind. Chaucer's audience might have seen a parallel with Noah, the incredibly old survivor of a worse "plague," the…

Ambiguous old men in English poetry, including the one in PardT, can be illuminated by the psychological archetype of the "wise old man" that Jung describes in "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales."

Critical views of the Pardoner range from total condemnation to interpretations of him as Christlike, with current views seeing him as evil. Interpretations can be immediate, direct, and simple, or complicated sociopsychologically or…

Explicates PardT with a concern for the division between the tale proper (lines 463-903) and its frame. The tale is structurally a digression, theologically orthodox, but unconvenional in "tone," and is to be taken seriously.

Although the major sources of the Old Man figure have long been known, the existence of the figure in alliterative and lyric poetry shows how Chaucer transforms the tradition. His Old Man is a trope for man's desire for transcendence.

The Old Man in PardT represents a fusion of divine force with the sense of futility and remorse that accompany physical aging--a motif found in medieval lyrics, Villon, and in later writers.

All attempts by critics to ascribe psychological implications to conventional self-revelations of a fictional character such as Chaucer's Pardoner lead to a false evaluation. The text does not contain the slightest suggestion that the Pardoner is a…

In ShT, Chaucer may have used the well-known text of Proverbs 31.10-31, which praises the valiant woman, in ironic fashion. The scriptural "mulier fortis" is praised for her "huswifery," her provision of food and clothing, her "rendering" to her…

In the Noah's Flood motif of MilT, the audience delightedly and ruefully recognizes the consequences of the perversion of God's order. In addition to visual or other sensory images (the runaway mare in RvT) Chaucer employs also dramatic icons, as in…

Suggests that in three places in the ShT--lines 1519-21, 1536-37, 1581--Chaucer exploits two denotations of "chevyssaunce." In addition to the specific denotation "usury," the word has a more general denotation--MED meaning 2--which, when applied…

As all five saints of PrT had Lincoln associations in Chaucer's day, so the poem was intended for Lincoln. PrT commemorates the visit to Lincoln Minster, on March 26, 1387, of Richard II, who sought by its means the political support of John…

Theologically, the Blessed Virgin is highly venerated, with "hyperdulia," but she is nevertheless only a means to the one mediator, Christ (1 Tim. 2.5), who is worshiped with "latria." This distinction, most unusual for a work of literature, is a…

Chaucer's Prioress is said to be a miniature of CT. Just as Madame Eglantine is a religious with fairly secular characters, so CT shows all kinds of people, with their sublime and indecent faces, their beauty, and their ugliness.

Chaucer uses signs playfully, "in bono, in malo": tears cited by the Parson are signs of contrition; the Prioress weeps for dead mice and whipped dogs. Chaucer is original in his treatment of her features, all of which point to worldliness.

For his portrait of the Monk in GP, Chaucer probably recalled Dante "Paradiso" 21.118-20, 127-35, an encomium of Peter Damian, and Damian's own words regarding "unholy hunters, cloisterless monks, and waterless fish." "Palfrey" may be an echo of…

An explication of NPT, analyzing it within its historical context.