Browse Items (16376 total)

Describes how the Boethian concept of divine (fore)knowledge of eternity underlies various aspects of TC and explores how narrative devices, allusions, the treatment of time, and the epilogue evoke the "illusion of 'present eternite' for the reader…

Explores the classical and medieval poetic theories that underlie the genre of the fabliau, particularly its lack of concern with meaningfulness, commenting on several French fabliaux, and discussing the comedy and satire of MilT, RvT, ShT, and SumT.…

Explores how "complex irony in Chaucer has the effect of affirming both sides in a conflict or both terms in an opposition," discussing the device in TC, KnT, NPT, PardPT, and the end of the CT. Includes discussion of Boethius's "Consolation of…

Explores how narrative time in TC interacts with the theme of time in the poem, considering the epilogue to have its own, third time scheme.

Treats BD as oral "entertainment," considering its possible performance at court and how such a performance affects the meaning of the poem.

Explores how in BD, HF, and PF "Chaucer concretizes abstractions, turning ideas into poetic form." The poems are "artistic recreations of medieval literary and philosophical commonplaces about life."

Includes discussion of the treatment of KnT, WBT, NPT, and "The Floure and the Leafe" in Dryden's "Fables Ancient and Modern," arguing that he adjusted his sources to suit his neo-classical audience.

Includes discussion of the influence of Nigel's "Speculum Stultorum" on NPT, arguing that it is "significant to the final shaping" of Chaucer's poem.

Treats pilgrimage as a "unifying device" in CT, exploring the influences of Boethius, Virgil, and Dante and parallels with "Piers Plowman" and Deguilleville's "Pèlerinage de la Vie Humanie." Focuses on the frame of CT, KnT and its theme of exile,…

Phonological/transformational investigation of multisyllabic rhymes, including discussion of the first 61 lines of BD and the role of final-'e.'

Studies Chaucer's first-person narrators of BD, PF, and HF as "students" who are instructed by some pedagogical authority, considering also the narrator of TC as well as the student-teacher relationship between Pandarus and Troilus. Assesses the…

Assesses astrological imagery in works by Chaucer, Lydgate, Henryson, Lyly, Greene, and Spenser, including discussion of how the zodiacal signs of Aries, Taurus, and Gemini suggest "symbolic re-enactment of sin" and provide "ironic commentary" in…

Identifies the "structural units" of TC---"the books, the time units, and the narrative units"--and explores their relationships. Also considers various "structural devices": the proems, the lyrics, the rhetorically elaborate temporal descriptions,…

Studies the "3500 second-person pronouns" in CT, using a socio-linguistic model that attends to "Social, Kinship, and Ideational Domains" to account for patterns of usage.

Assesses the characteristic styles of the characters and narrator of TC, arguing that Chaucer was interested in individuality but not psychology.

Identifies Chaucer's uses of the "Ovide Moralisé," particularly the narrative material of the French poem rather than its allegorical interpretations, often used in combination with Latin sources. Considers LGW, Form Age, TC, HF, ManT, and ParsT,…

Describes Chaucer's uses of physiognomic details in GP, PardPT, KnT, RvT, WBP, Th, and NPT, arguing that while he used such details for imagery he "only rarely relies on physiognomy alone to delineate character."

Considers plot and narrative voice for the ways that they set up comic climax in representative French fabliaux and in the six fabliaux of CT.

Assesses the history and criticism of the concept of courtly love, contending that it is a "complicated metaphor for the poet's commitment to the craft of poetry." Then considers the occasions and philosophical implications of BD, PF, and HF, arguing…

Includes discussion of SNT, proposing that the Tale was composed in 1381 and exploring Chaucer's sustained interest in hagiography.

Uses the Halle-Keyser theory of meter to discover a "pattern of heavy stresses in the initial syllables" of twenty-one of the twenty-three stanzas of ABC that "illuminate the poem aurally."

Describes the classical and medieval developments of the story of Dido and focuses on versions by Virgil, Ovid, and Chaucer, the latter in both HF and LGW.

Identifies a "significant continuity of thought" in BD, HF, and PF: "their shared concern" with Nature and Fortune as principles of order and fertility, on the one hand, and disorder on the other. Traces the roots of these concerns in Boethius, Alain…

Argues that R. K. Root's groupings of manuscript variants in TC (alpha, beta, and gamma) evince Chaucer's developments in his characterizations of Pandarus, Troilus, and, especially, Criseyde; the characterizations also help to balance tragedy and…

Argues that the "emblematic Mary legend of the medieval 'puys'" is analogous to PrT, that the description of the Prioress in GP is "as Marian" as it is courtly, and that Chaucer had access to information about the "puys."