Browse Items (16376 total)

In most of his poems Chaucer exploits the traditional material to create a double view, one inherent in the material and the other produced by his handling of them. He inherited this technique from Jean de Meun; in BD and the "Roman," for example,…

Provides context for the link between death and the tapping of a barrel in RvP, 3892-94, and for the relationship between the Pardoner and Kit the Tapster in the prologue to the "Tale of Beryn," mentioning other English analogues and describing…

Discusses various critical readings of TC 3.1093 and suggests that the line should be read "at once ironically and without irony."

The characterization of the male hero in the four portraits of Troilus exhibits "gender slippage" through "linguistic slippage." The second and third portraits show Chaucer subverting gender assumptions, while the other two are more "essentialized"…

Argues that the use of similar techniques by Chaucer, Spenser, and Dryden constitutes a "distinctive English fabular tradition," discussing ManT, PF, and NPT, as well as Spenser's "Shepheardes Calendar," "Mother Hubberds Tale," and "Muipotmos," and…

By confining his version almost entirely to observable details, Chaucer achieves more in MilT than do writers of analogous stories. He does not interpose his narrator between the reader and the narrated events, and he spares the reader the glib…

Studying four families of emotion words (wrath, anger, annoyance, grief) in the Chaucer canon, Diller draws several conclusions: the introduction of emotion words from French and their rivalry with native English words deserve close scrutiny;…

Explores crossing patterns of suspense in TC: the "maximal audience suspense and minimal participants' suspense" of the early books are reversed in Books 4 and 5. Attitudes toward predestination complicate the patterns.

While six Middle English terms of emotion are in some measure coterminous - "onde," "affect," "mood," "spirit," "passioun," and "affeccioun" - only the latter two closely approximate modern usage. "Passioun" connotes a state of being acted upon;…

Describes an eight-step "algorithm" for enabling computers to aid in the recognition and cataloging of prosodic traits, and explores the utility of such practice by discussing the data from a computer-assisted scansion of a 1000-line sample of…

Reads the Clerk's sketch in GP as an idealized depiction of academic life in fourteenth-century Oxford, summarizing typical activities and outlooks.

An alphabetical dictionary that lists people, personifications, and allusions (direct and indirect) in Chaucer's works, providing brief identifications and exhaustive citations of occurrences. Entries for sources, such as the Bible, Boccaccio, Dante,…

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

The discrepancy between the vice of the teller and the moral of his tale requires the pilgrim audience to revise and postpone its judgment and thus to contribute to the meaning of the exemplum.

Historicist introduction to Chaucer's life, works, literary context, and influence.

BD deals with a universal concern, response to the death of a loved person. In a Christian world the knight, mourning his lady, finds consolation by expressing her beauty and goodness in words; he returns to the present world with a suggestion of…

BD displays the process of consolation as emotional change effected through the medium of epideictic discourse. In the act of speaking, the grieved knight apprehends the cause of his grief in a new way, and is consoled.

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…

While Chaucer undoubtedly mined John of Wales's Communiloquium for details in PardT, he also consulted Jerome's Letter 22, to Eustochium, for details not found in John's florilegium. Comparison of PardT with Jerome's letter elucidates Chaucer's…

Behind the mysterious "vitremyte" that Zenobia is forced to adopt in MkT 2372 lies the Maeonian mitra, a cloth cap worn by Greek women. As a symbol of effeminacy, it is used in Boccaccio, for example, in the humiliation of Hercules. In Zenobia's…

Kittredge's argument that Chaucer's reference to "Trophee" (MkT 2117) is due to a misreading of Latin "tropaeum" is indirectly supported by difficulties with the Latin word in a Middle English translation of the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle.

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."

Suggests that the source for Nero's fishing nets of golden thread and for the cutting of both Seneca's arms as he lies in the bathtub come from the unedited "Alphabetum narrationum," ca. 1308.

The apparent "magic" of SqT is explicable via medieval understanding of the rational explanation of marvels. Surveying medieval attitudes toward science and technology, DiMarco argues that the gifts of SqT are presented as scientific objects that…