Browse Items (16472 total)

Chaucer's digression from Boccaccio concerning Arcite's career at court should be interpreted not biographically but rather in the context of the career of Havelock the Dane. Both tales show the social stigma of being a page; Arcite's role…

Chaucer draws on the medical and literary traditions about poison current in his day. In KnT, Arcite's love for Emelye is pictured as a deadly infection.

Similarities between Chaucer's description of the knight and the descriptions in "Warwick Pageant," a fifteenth-century complimentary biography of the Earl of Warwick, indicate that Chaucer's description contains not irony but praise.

Precise astrological material and medical details pertaining to the disease "amor hereos" support the theory that Saturn and the fury that startles Arcite's horse dramatize the consequences of human choice rather than fatalism. Chaucer uses…

Analyzes plot and content to show that MilT is a popular tale, not a bookish one, and is based on twelve "joke motifs."

Despite recent scholarship of MilT that equates Alison's "pa" (line 3709) with the Wife of Bath's "ba" (WBT, line 433), the two words should be distinguished. "Pa" seems to be a shortening of "pax," the liturgical embrace of Christian love. In…

In the character of Absolon in MilT, Chaucer exploits the literary fact that "the minor orders were not taken seriously as lovers, but were found precisely in the burlesque world of the 'fabliau'." The willfulness and sexual appetite of the Wife of…

"Astromye" is neither a scribal error nor an acceptable variant for "astronomye" but a malapropism that probably appeared originally as "arstromye," containing a pun in the first syllable.

A valuable edition based on British Library Arundel 248 with variants from other texts of the late-thirteenth-century Latin song sung by "hende Nicolas" in MilT. In addition to its sources, Stevens discusses it as a type of canto that eventually…

John of Arderne's "Fistula in ano" and the "Book of Quinte Essence" provide insight into the illness references in MilT.

The use of regional dialects in RvT and the "Second Shepherd's Play" indicates a sporadic literary exploitation of dialect differences in the fourteenth century and implies an ability, at least among the educated, to classify the different dialects…

The Man of Law's allusion to the story of the nine daughters of Pierus, as presented in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" 5, is viewed as literary criticism that emphasizes the fact that the Man of Law is reluctant to be compared to the daughters--who lost…

The disparity between Chaucer's allusion to Lucan in MLT 400-403 and the actual passage in Lucan may be explained by commentaries that Chaucer might have known. The "Pharsalia" shares thematic parallels with Chaucer's story, and may reflect his…

After discussing various readings for the phrase, "In termes hadde he cas and doomes alle..." (GP 323), Wentersdorf argues that "term" is equivalent to a court session: thus, when courts were in session, this man of law had at his disposal all the…

Similarities in the career of Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny, Ireland, and Chaucer's Alice suggest that the case against the former may have influenced Chaucer's portrait. Alice Kyteler was married four times and was accused of carnal relations with a…

Tries to reconcile the change from the naturalism of the "Prologue" to the abstract quality of the tale. Gives an extended definition of "gentilesse."

The deafness of the Wife of Bath is viewed as an iconographic reflection of her unbalanced intellectual and spiritual position. Hearing as she does with only one ear, the Wife's views are skewed to improper attention to the present--to the things of…

Chaucer employs scriptural allusions in Thomas's gift and its codicil; typological exegesis demonstrates that, if Jankin's division of the fart suggests Pentecost, Thomas's first gift recalls the events in the lives of Moses and Elijah that Pentecost…

Christine de Pizan uses the Griselda tale to illustrate the virtues of patience and constancy in her "Livre de la Cite des Dames," derived from a French prose version of Philippe de Mezieres, perhaps also consulting the anonymous French prose…

An explication of the MerT and FranT using the Hengwrt manuscript order, the article surveys some critical interpretations of the two tales, concerning the clerical or secular nature of the tellers.

Hole's "Remarks on the Arabians Nights' Entertainments" contains speculations about the sources of the pear-tree motif and the magical objects in the two tales. While many of his guesses are without substantiation, he does suggest a pear-tree…

The legend of Moses' magic, alluded to in SqT 247-51, first occurs in Peter Comestor's "Historia scholastica." Nicholas Trevet and Gower also mention this motif, but probably Chaucer's source for the allusion is Roger Bacon's "Opus maius."

The Franklin is a gentleman with old-fashioned but praise-worthy standards. FranT treats the fourteenth-century interdependent virtues of "trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie" (A46)--moral values in ambiguous wrappings.

Discusses the Franklin "class" of late-medieval England: etymology, legal status, land tenure, wealth, rank, and social position. Adducing contemporary evidence, some of which is here discussed for the first time, the author explores the clues…

In spite of an appearance as a tragedy, the tale by the sanguine Franklin quickly arrives at the conclusion of a happy exemplum. It is the narrator himself who most keenly enjoys the tale.