Browse Items (16472 total)

Describes the presentations of selections from CT in nineteen fifteenth-century manuscripts, and explores what these presentations indicate about understandings of the tales.

Argues that the unity of PF is anchored in the principle of the hierarchy of love, an aspect of the Great Chain of Being. By exploring a wide and interconnected range of kinds of love, Chaucer achieves humor and thematic richness.

Studies aspects of style in understanding medieval literature, examining features of the "Roman de la Rose" as well as the "moral imbalance at work" in KnT, particularly as evident in the visual rhetoric and movement in the Temple of Diana and…

Divides Chaucer's allusions to Jove into two groups: those that present him as dream-like or fantastic and those that present him as actual or historical. Chaucer consistently presents Jove in allegorical ways even when he does not relegate him to…

Surveys criticism of ClT in order to show the "inadequacy" of this criticism and reads the Tale as a "typological allegory" even though it goes steps beyond its sources in depicting the plot realistically.

Studies the historical underpinnings of the GP descriptions of the Knight and Squire and discusses KnT and SqT for the ways they reflect the development of the Squire's "Romantic Chivalry" out of the Knight's "Religious Chivalry," questioning the…

Reads LGW as an ironic, comic poem that offers a positive view of women in LGWP and in the legends themselves.

Defends the notion that TC presents an ambivalent view of human love, grand yet transitory, arguing that this ambivalence is rooted in Chaucer's treatment of love as mythic material.

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."…