Browse Items (16376 total)

Criseyde's garden and Pandarus's home are integrated symbolically with the theme of mutability in TC. Both sites display Pandarus's dream of circumventing mutability and figure his attempts as a go-between to shape an unchanging earthly union in the…

Places Troilus's Hymn to Love, based on Boethius, in the context of Neoplatonic metaphysics, cosmology, and theories of love (pp. 78-79).

Although the format (alphabetical) of ABC limits it somewhat, it follows the style of fourteenth-century religious courtly lyrics with a heightened sense of emotionalism. The struggle of the Virgin with the devil in ABC can be equated with the…

A heretofore overlooked list of internal evidence for Chaucer's authorship of Wom Unc concerns the source of the mirror image--the latter used by Chaucer in his Bo. Since Chaucer's lady is described in terms that smack of Boethius's Fortune, the…

Chaucer repeatedly depicts himself as a poet of love frustrated. Several critics look at the thwarted erotic elements in PF, TC, and CT, focusing on PardT, WBT, ShT, MilT, MerT, MkT, and PrT and the tellers of tehse tales.

The success of Chaucer's early translations from French cannot be attributed solely to his knack for finding the "mot juste" or to his "good ear" for English idiom. He drew on the native English poetic tradition for visual concreteness and…

A primer on Chaucer, introducing Japanese students to Chaucer the poet, his age, his language, and other basic aspects related to Chaucer's world.

Written by various hands in the fifteenth century, Bodley 638,the latest of the so-called Oxford Group, contains HF and BD, found in only two other manuscripts, as well as Anel, LGW, PF, Pity, ABC, For, and Compl d'Am. Includes a bibliography.

"Part One" contains five moral or "Boethian" poems, four humorous poems addressed to individuals, four love lyrics, and one gnomic poem: Truth, Gent, Sted, Form Age, For; Purse, Adam, Buk, Scog; Ros, MercB, Wom Nob, Wom Unc; and Prov.

Offers new support for the old theory that PF represents Anne of Bohemia as the "formel eagle" and King Richard, Charles of France, and Friedrich as her three suitors, presenting new ararguments for dating the poem in 1380 and new evidence that both…

Discursive review of Chaucerian scholarship and research published in 1980.

Surveys Middle English references to Spanish people, places, and things, concluding that, among Middle English authors, Chaucer "reflects the greatest and the most diverse knowledge" of Spain. He was familiar with Spanish geography, "hispano-Arabic…

Characterizes several differences between the archaic (prescientific) and modern mindsets: literal vs. relative, oral vs. literate, mythic vs. scientific. Includes a brief discussion of Chaucer's mixture of the two.

Friar Lawrence of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet echoes Pandarus of TC. As rhetors, both are fond of apothegms; dramatically, each acts as a go-between; thematically, each reflects how truth escapes human efforts to capture it in fiction.

Includes discussion of the influence of KnT on Shakespeare's play, focusing on the play's structure and its concern with "reconciling a faith in cosmic order with our experience of life's apparent chaos" (256).

Assesses "incongruity in the sheer quality of style" in Pericles, especially the Gower passages, suggesting that Shakespeare was inspired by Thopas--Chaucer's experiment in incongruity produced from the "inferior art" of an earlier tradition.

Chaucer and Shakespeare use different narrative techniques to lend ambiguity to the characterization of Criseyde/Cressida, but each uses ambiguity to create sympathy for his character.

Assesses Astr as a piece of technical writing, admiring Chaucer's use of a personal voice, everyday examples, devices of cohesion, and other indications of audience awareness.

The tension between sensual love and orthodox truth in TC can be seen in nascent form in Boccaccio's "Filocolo," even though Chaucer depends for his plot on "Filostrato." The tension is rooted in Dante's "Comedy" and in the "Roman de la Rose," but…

Smith assesses characterizations of Criseyde, focusing on Chaucer's, Henryson's, and Shakespeare's characterizations but commenting on others. She argues that the character must be understood in light of contemporaneous attitudes toward, for example,…

A facing-page Middle English/Spanish verse translation of PF, with notes and introduction by the translator.

Comparison of manuscripts of CT enables inferential conclusions about their exemplar (which does not survive), but the complexity of these conclusions justifies reliance on the Hengwrt manuscript. Blake considers the likelihood that the manuscripts…

Assesses character names in works "from 'Beowulf' to Robert Henryson, tracing patterns in onomastic function, language philosophy, and literary form." Includes discussion of names from HF, TC, and CT.

Offers a "partial explanation" for the paucity of fabliaux in Middle English: lack of concern with courtly sentiment in Middle English romance fails to "provide conditions conducive" to "parody and ironization of romance" that is fundamental to the…

Using evidence of paleography, orthography, watermarks, and indications of provenance, dates booklet 1 of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C.86, as the second quarter of the fifteenth century; dates booklets 2-4 as early sixteenth century.