Browse Items (16376 total)

Collection of essays that explores various literary aspects of Chaucer's oeuvre, with particular focus on the "international motif" and "transnational" themes found in many works. Essays address critical contexts and readings to help understand…

In his rhyme-royal poetry, Gower adapted Chaucerian techniques as well as techniques from his own French seven-line poetry. Dean reviews Cinkante balades, Traitie pour essampler les amantz marietz, In Praise of Peace, and Amans's "supplicacioun" from…

The unadorned, unironic ParsT is what Chaucer wanted for the ending to CT. The Ricardian pattern of sickness, pilgrimage, and penitence shows why Thomas Gascoigne's narrative of Chaucer's deathbed retraction of his writings is a likely story, or not…

Probably written before Chaucer knew Boethius well, BD is a courtly poem offering the consolation of art, the solace that one can achieve through "makyng" or listening to poetry. The alleged Boethian aspects of BD reflect the French…

Although PF ends inconclusively, Chaucer gives it a sense of ending through the concluding roundel, which provides an image of resolution, affirming that, while life may be inconclusive, art can provide an ending.

The last tales of CT form a closing sequence of transformation: SNT (conversion fervor in the early church), CYT (alchemical madness of fourteenth-century England), ManT (debasing of myth), and ParsT (change of soul through penitence), as Chaucer…

Chaucer alters Boccaccio's antifeminism and practical conclusion to "Il Filostrato" to emphasize contempt of the world and poetry.

Though Chaucer is not a poet of enigmas, he uses spiritual allegory in FrT, PardT, CYT to deepen the mystery of characters and situations.

In Form Age, as in medieval tradition, Nimrod represents the final stages of decline, especially the lust for political dominance, in the world after Adam's Fall.

Both Chaucer and Gower expressed the sentiment that the world had grown old and cast the passing of time in moral terms. But they also ultimately relied on personal sensibilty to render the feeling or experience of time passing because they were not…

In ManT, Chaucer intentionally thwarts his narrative skills, thus creating an "anti-tale" or a "farewell to his book." Providing "images of linguistic destructions," the tale prepares for the Parson's new direction in language and thought.

Modern prose adaptation of PardPT, designed for children, with illustrations by Chris Mould.

Chaucer sees joy in Boethian terms as arising form what a man loves. Unlike the Man of Law and the Monk, the Nun's Priest affirms both worldly joy and heavenly bliss; he suggests that lost joy may be recovered if one, like Chauntecleer, actively…

Surveys the status of the complaint as a formal genre in classical and in medieval French, Provencal, Italian, and English traditions as background to discussing Chaucer's uses of the genre in BD, TC, Mars, and elsewhere. Focuses on Chaucer's…

Argues that Ovid's "Tristia" and "Ex Ponto" influenced the ideas of Fame, Fortune, and Rumor in HF, along with several details in the poem.

Studies Chaucer's uses of Ovid in Mars, Ven, Pity, Anel, BD, HF, and TC, focusing on complaints and depictions of women, and providing lists of observed parallels between Chaucer and Ovid, work by work. This dissertation was completed in 1963.

Assesses the genre, fictional self-consciousness, and religious elements of "Pericles," suggesting that Chaucer influenced Shakespeare's decision to include the character Gower onstage throughout the play, an aspect of its literary…

Explores "the practice of translation from French into English in medieval England, and how the translators themselves viewed their task," including discussion of LGWP as Chaucer's "self-aware, playful" analysis of the factors complicating…

Includes a brief comical introduction to Chaucer's poetry and a modernized selection from the conclusion to NPT, with b&w illustrations by Philip Reeve.

Suggests that Griselda's excesses of bodily humiliation, self-sacrifice, and assent to contractual obligations, in response to her husband's rational program of complete control, actually represent a mystical negation of the self as subject that in…

Completed in 1513, Douglas's was the first and only full translation of Virgil's "Aeneid" into an English vernacular until Dryden's. The status of Middle English as a literary vehicle had been established by Chaucer. Douglas did the same for Middle…

The first two in a series of essays Dédéyan published on Dante in England in Les Lettres Romanes, volumes 12-15 (1958-1961). The first surveys references, allusions, and uses of Dante in TC, PF, and HF. The second continues the discussion of HF,…

Traces the development of "all" and "quite" in English usage, focusing on Spenser's uses of them as adverbs and adjectives, and investigating Chaucer's usage as precedent. Tabulates the usage of both poets. In French, with an English summary.

Reviews seventeenth-century lexicographical interest in Scots dialect, and includes information about the extent to which Junius used Gavin Douglas's "Eneados" to understand Chaucer's vocabulary.

Chaucer's prosody has been underrated. With its unity, completeness, and carefully developed stanzas, TC demonstrates Chaucer's mastery of sound and sense.