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…
Dean, James.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 21 (1979): 17-33.
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.
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…
Dean, Nancy.
Comparative Literature 19 (1967): 1-27.
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…
Dean, Nancy.
Dissertation Abstracts International 27.05 (1966):1334A.
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.
Dean, Paul.
Essays in Criticism 50.2: 125-44, 2000.
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…
Dearnley, Elizabeth.
Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2016.
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…
Decicco, Mark.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 2489A.
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.
Delahoyde, Michael.
Dissertation Abstracts International 50 (1990): 3223A.
Chaucer's prosody has been underrated. With its unity, completeness, and carefully developed stanzas, TC demonstrates Chaucer's mastery of sound and sense.
Chaucer manipulates names in the TC to add nuance to the individual characters and to make clear their subtle relationships. Although "Pandare" is used first, for example, the name "Pandarus" relates to "Troilus" and implies the insinuation of the…
Delahoyde, Michael.
[Pullman]: Washington State University, n.d.
Pedagogical website that focuses on CT but includes internal links to descriptions of Chaucer's other works and to background information. Individual webpages provide descriptions of the Tales that comment on themes and critical issues, accompanied…
Delahoyde, Michael.
Brief Chronicles: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Authorship Studies 5 (2014): 69-100.
Tallies a number of specific "[i]nfluences, echoes, or borrowings from Chaucer in English poetic tradition as it developed between Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, and Shakespeare," mentioning familiar instances and adding ones previously unnoticed.…
Examines the allusion to Constantinus Africanus's "De Coitu" in MerT 4.1810-11, suggesting that knowledge of the treatise helps us to understand that January's consumption of aphrodisiacs is "manically compulsive" and sinful.
Explores the "ambivalent status" of clerks in the Middle Ages and the significance of clerkly success in "quiting" (defeating, taking vengeance on) carpenters and millers in MilT and RvT. In the latter, Chaucer avoids "quiting" the Reeve and thereby…
Delany, Sheila, ed.
New York and London : Routledge, 2002.
Fourteen essays by various authors who study Jews as an absent presence in medieval England, considering fourteenth- and fifteenth-century texts for their literary, historical, theological, and visual representations of Jews. Some essays reprinted.…
Delany, Sheila.
Florilegium 10 (1991, for 1988): 83-92.
Deeply rooted in late-medieval social and religious ambivalence toward women, Chaucer's poetry both subverts and asserts traditional gender differences, as seen in LGWP, FranT, and WBP.
