Browse Items (16376 total)

Describes and exemplifies the Renaissance genre of epyllion (minor epic), including, as background, discussion of KnT and TC as examples of works that dramatize a hero's "confrontation with the tragedy of mutable love" presented by a distancing…

Reads the Pandarus/Troilus relationship in TC as a variation on the priest/pupil motif also found in works by Ovid, Andreas Capellanus, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, and John Gower.

Treats various characters of CT as figures in or of isolation: Arcite (KnT), John (MilT), Constance (MLT), Friar John (SumT), Thomas (SumT), and the Pardoner. As such, they share characteristics with figures in Old English poetry.

Studies how imagery contributes to theme and operates at an element of structure in BD, HF, PF and TC: light and dark imagery in BD, acoustic imagery in HF, natural versus courtly love in PF, and the contrast of fortune's wheel and celestial light in…

Analyzes the literary treatment of alchemy from Chaucer's CYT through works by John Donne and Ben Jonson; presents CYT as the foundational text in the "long tradition of alchemical satire."

Explores Chaucer's rhetorical, "inorganic," "non-narrative" structuring devices in various works: BD, Anel, selected lyrics, and TC, with comments on aspects of LGW and CT, especially Part 7 and ManT.

Surveys rhetorical traditions in fourteenth-century England and assesses the impact of "artes poetriae," "grammaticae," and "praedicandi" on Chaucer's poetry generally and on NPT in particular. Includes appendixes of medieval rhetorical terms (with…

Quantitative analysis of Chaucer's uses of rhetorical techniques in TC, including "suasive" techniques, proverbial materials, and rhetorical figures.

Assesses ambivalence, conventional morality, and the functions of art in CT and in Juan Ruiz's "Libro de Buen Amor," commenting on the role of the narrator in Chaucer and the "staging" of multiple views on "caritas" and "cupiditas" in both works.

Argues that gestures and postures of the three main characters in MerT contribute to the realism and harshness of the tale.

Contends that Chaucer uses and supersedes the conventions of the classical "exordium" and of medieval prologues in HF, the proems of TC, LGWP, and GP.

Identifies the "dark spirit" in MilT, RvT, FrT, SumT, MerT, and ShT, focusing on their "violence, deception, and sense of continual flux rather than their comedy.

Considers Chaucer's diminishing use of classical stories in various stages of his "development as a creative artist," focusing on the rise of realism in his works.

Alphabetically arranged, cross-listed dictionary of proper names in Chaucer's works.

Focuses on critical commentary on Chaucer by William Godwin, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Walter Savage Landor, concluding with a survey of efforts by Romantic writers to claim that Chaucer shared their outlooks.

Reads LGW, MkT, and HF as structurally successful works when viewed in light of medieval "Gothic" aesthetics of "inorganic" structure, derived from visual tradition.

Psychoanalytic analysis of WBT and ClT, reading the two as parallel transformation stories. The first "seems to commemorate the event of the separation of consciousness"; in the second, Griselda "achieved individuation by recognizing her animus."…

Surveys criticism that considers the Ceyx and Alcyone story in BD, exegetical readings in particular, and edits a version of the tale found in fourteenth-century Ovidian manuscripts available in Chaucer's England, with full apparatus and with…

Surveys two medieval attitudes toward marriage (pro-matrimonial [Aquinas] and anti-matrimonial [Jerome] and their depictions in various tales of virgin martyrs, analyzing SNT most extensively.

Reads TC as a critique of the "old tragic idea" of fall through fortune, emphasizing the poem's concern with human choice derived from Boethius's "Consolation," and observing a "Boethian comedy" in Troilus and a "Boethian tragedy" in Criseyde. TC…

Surveys medieval attitudes toward the women featured as protagonists in Chaucer's LGW and reads Chaucer's characters in light of these attitudes, observing that they vary as "not-so-good" women and "not-so-bad" ones, a reflection of the limits of…

Surveys the interrelated astrological, mythographical, and allegorical traditions of Mars in the Middle Ages, and focuses on the myth of his adultery with Venus and its representations in the plots and allusions of Chaucer's Complaint of Mars, KnT,…

Examines the progressions of events in various French and English Breton Lays; includes commentary on repetition as a narrative technique that leads to closure in FranT.

Surveys medieval understandings of Rome and its history as background to understanding Chaucer's allusions to Rome and Romans, especially his treatments of them in PhyT, SNT, the Caesar and Nero accounts in MkT, and the Lucrece legend of LGW.…

Argues that Thop can be read as a didactic narrative that breaks off at the "point most effective for developing the theme of salvation" which is brought to conclusion in Mel. The tales share similar concerns with vice and with the world, the flesh,…