Browse Items (16472 total)

In TC and "several important" tales of CT, Chaucer expresses more "confidence in human nature" than do Langland or the "Pearl"-poet in their works. He indicates the human need for divine Providence and assurance that "God will not use his absolute…

A biography of Richard Stury, based on public records, with recurrent attention to his forty-year acquaintance with Chaucer as friend and associate. Touches on the "long unsolved question of Chaucer's relation to Lollardy."

Encourages separation of teller and tale in interpreting CT, reading MerT in light of its sources but not MerP. The narrator of the Tale identifies more with Justinus than with January and shows "a measure of sympathy" for May. In this way the Tale…

Examines "the relationships existing among the printed editions" of CT from Caxton through Tyrwhitt, based on comparisons of their versions of GP and considering their uses of prior texts, emendation policies, and editorial innovations.

Defines parody and surveys "all of the major literary parodies in Middle English, Old French, and Middle German," including "three little-known anti-courtly parodies by Hermann von Sachsenheim and Geoffrey Chaucer." Includes comments on ManT.

Explores Chaucer's and Lydgate's assumptions about their audience's knowledge of history, and discusses how and to what extent it may indicate irony in KnT, MkT, TC, and several works by Lydgate.

Argues that post-medieval notions of comedy obscure the relations between sense and sententiousness in Chaucer's poetry, explaining that Boethian, analogous thinking underlies Chaucer's art and that Hebraic and Graeco-Roman poetic traditions help to…

Argues that Chaucer used French versions to facilitate his translation from Latin and that he sought to produce literal translations, although his prose translations are more literal than his poetic ones. Considers, Bo, Mel, Rom, Venus, and ABC,…

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."