Browse Items (16472 total)

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."

Analyzes the "organization and assumptions" of four medieval rhetorical handbooks, focusing on their "methods of amplification," and assesses the influence of rhetorical tradition on the characterizations in TC, in comparison with those of Boccaccio…

Includes comments on the lack of remorse among the Jews in PrT.

Studies English/Flemish relations and Chaucer's contact with the Low Countries as a diplomat and as Controller of Customs, gauging the extent to which this contact affected his fiction in SqT, MerT, and WBP, and the ways that his "realism" can be…

Considers lyric poems "not as statements but as imitation of statements," and includes discussion of the "Brooch of Thebes" (i.e., Chaucer's Mars and Ven). Also comments on Chaucer's relations with Eustace Deschmaps and Oton de Grandson.

Includes chapters on Benoît, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Henryson, Shakespeare, and Dryden, treating Chaucer's Criseyde as "the most delightful of them all"--a character of "infinite complexity and infinite charm."

Identifies a "consistent pattern" in Chaucer's works of comparing "the songs and melodies of lovers to sacred and philosophical medieval musics," religious and astronomical. Examines concord and discord in musical references in KnT, PF, ManT, TC,…

Psychoanalytic exploration of the "fantasy-structure" of MLPT, arguing that medieval and modern audiences "would have similar unconscious responses to the text." Suggests a similar, broader reading of all of CT.

Reads PF in light of its sources as an allegory of aristocratic responsibility for maintaining natural law and a just society; KnT as an exploration of lawlessness set against the background of Status's "Thebaid," focusing on the tournament; and the…

Considers TC to be "amphibious," both a tragedy and, ironically, a comedy, when read in light of Chaucer's changes to Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and his additions from Boethius's "Consolatio."

Includes discussion (pp. 206-27) of the ways in which WBPT are antithetical in tone and detail to various treatises that treat virginity as a standard of perfection: "Hali Meidenhad," Innocent III's "De Miseria Humane Conditionis," and Jerome's…

Seeks to identify the "Latin manuscript closest to Chaucer's source for his translation" of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy'," examining features and variants in manuscripts of Boethius's treatise.

"[I]nvestigates Chaucer's artistic and philosophical debt to the poetic tradition stemming from the twelfth-century School of Chartres," exploring Chaucer's sources and considering the (neo)platonic concerns in BD, HF, PF, and CT.

Describes the shifts in perspective and changes in the point of view of the narrator in TC, arguing that they guide the reader to the outlook that concludes the poem, particularly through allusions to the biblical book of Ecclesiastes.

Evaluates twenty of Chaucer's standalone lyric poems, considering their prosodic features, poetic qualities, and representations of various "aspects of experience."

Psychological analysis of six of the Canterbury pilgrims (Knight, Man of Law, Narrator [in Mel], Pardoner, Clerk, and Second Nun, followed by "six recreations" in prose that attempt to project the characters as modern storytellers.

Examines the methods and results of Thomas Tyrwhitt's editing of Part 1 of CT, focusing on his notes and glossary.

Rejects the traditional three-part structure of HF and assesses the "structural function of its two juxtaposed narratives," i.e., the summary of Virgil's "Aeneid" and the journey, considering the poem's relation with Dante's "Divine Comedy, the…