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Reviews Augustinian criticism of R. P. Miller, B. F. Huppé, Lee W. Patterson, G. L. Kittridge, and D. W. Robertson. The Pardoner criticizes the church that licenses him for its follies and corruption. His performance is considered a "social gaffe,…

Allusions to serpent and sting intensify the irony of the Pardoner's posture as preacher. The imagery is further complicated and intensified by the natural association readers make with the Pauline passage on the sting of death.

The complex relationships of Pardoner, audiences, and the Host reveal a character who simultaneously believes in the efficacy of pardon and in the foolishness of those who believe in it. The pilgrims laugh at him rather than being outraged, and he…

Readers frequently imagine the Pardoner to be a real person. He is, of course, Chaucer's fiction, and the poet shows his mastery of narrative by combining the "Prologue" and the "Tale," underscoring the unity of the two by iterative imagery,…

The Pardoner threatens to lead the pilgrims astray to venerate his dubious relics, not to seek Saint Thomas. PardT mirrors this aberrancy. Thus the Host, as acknowledged leader, must be the one to snub him violently before order can be restored.

In Panfilo's tale of Ser Ciappelletto in the "Decameron," we are directed to respond, disapproving, to that character's hypocrisy, but the Pardoner, in the tradition of philosophical nominalism, so confuses the differences among word, intent, and…

Suggests Chaucer's borrowings from "Roman de la Rose."

The garden encounter between Daun John and the merchant's wife is a parody on man's first sin in Eden. The three characters exhibit the sins of lechery, avarice, and vanity. The Monk parallels the tempter; the Wife, Eve; and the Merchant, Adam.

The chief French sources and analogues of Chaucer's four dream poems, presented here in translation, are brought together for the first time. Included are Machaut's "Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne," Froissart's "Paradys d'amours," Jean de Conde's…

Medieval literary commentators uniformly assigned "literary works" to the category of ethics: poetry served as a kind of "enacted ethics" for the medieval audience. The commentators define and describe this material in terms of the "forma…

Anti-Semitism is a commonplace in miracles of the Virgin, the special enmity between the Virgin and the Jews deriving from the apocryphal "Transitus." Some miracles end in conversion of the Jews; others in their destruction wholesale; PrT in…

Although earlier scholarship has recognized the importance of the Feast of the Holy Innocents in PrT, a reading of the entire mass as it occurs in the Sarum use suggests that the "greyn" is not a mere prop but a symbol with rich liturgical…

To describe the arming of Sir Thopas, Chaucer employs a repetitive style that parodies that of arming scenes in Middle English romances.

Readers have been too ready to dismiss Th as a parody of popular romances. Chaucer's achievement is something much more subtle: he invents his own English, his own literary idiolect, and then goes on to parody not merely the romances but also the…

The poetic purpose of Mel is critical rather than aesthetic. Chaucer's use of prose is itself a trope for the Christian humility espoused in the tale.

Following medieval rhetorical tradition, Chaucer has hidden his own name in the tale in anagrammatic fashion: "Ge" (for Geffrey, Chaucer's spelling of his own name) plus "Chau"ntl"c"l"er" results in "gentele Chaucer," employing the roman letters…

Medieval fable cannot be read as though each animal or figure held a fixed allegorical meaning. NPT, for instance, could signify as many meanings as subsequent readers have postulated.

Many details and images of NPT become obvious symbols of eroticism if compared to more explicitly sensual literary and artistic works of the Midddle Ages.

Chaucer's revision of the Saint Cecilia legend emphasizes her desire to act as a free agent. Her virginity and her aggressive activity on behalf of Christ assert a "freedom of action to do her work" that parallels the Wife of Bath's.

Chaucer introduces the new pilgrim so that his confession may form an imperfect paradigm of repentance, as prelude to the more successful portrayal of this concomitant of pilgrimage that we find in ParsT.

The yeoman's discourse on alchemy is carefully crafted by Chaucer: each "occupatio" is followed by a catalogue ("descripcio") and "poynt" ("sententia"). The technique enables Chaucer to establish the rambling character of the yeoman.

Chaucer makes some of his most valid observations on life through inconspicuous characters such as the Manciple, in his tale of the crow.

The reference to the ape in ParsT is usually understood as an allusion to the sin of pride, the ape being an apt embodiment of the pomposities of fashion. This image is, however, also congruent with the extensive imagery of poison in the tale, since…

Discusses the canon-law tradition and the sources of ParsT 565-69 but concludes that "the question of Chaucer's learning on this subject...must remain unanswered."

Detailed lexical and literary comments, based on passages of identical or very similar wording in medieval religious writings, on the following passages in ParsT: 79-81 (the "way" of penance), 113-16 (the tree of penance), 157 ("groyn"), 319…