Browse Items (16376 total)

Other enduring attributes of the Criseyde character complicate and perhaps mitigate her infidelity. From the start, as Homer's Briseis, she engages sympathy as a woman unwillingly transferred from one man to another. Dares made Briseida attractive;…

An analysis of evidence from CT, "Piers Plowman," and "The Divine Comedy" as well as from the writings of medieval saints and modern scholars indicates that generalizations regarding Christian behavior, the motivations of artists, and concepts of…

A detailed commentary upon "armee" in the description of the Knight (1.60) in GP; upon the homeoteleuton in the description of the Friar (11. 252a-b); upon "fyue" in Prologue to WBT (11. 44a-f) as an omission in some mss due to the scribal "yielding…

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.

Describes Chaucer's life and works in chronological sequence, commenting in detail on events and on literary concerns of all of his major works, exploring most extensively characterization in TC and variety of genre in CT. Includes a bibliography.

Item not seen; the note(s) to the WorldCat record provide the following description: "Dr. E. Talbot Donaldson, a foremost Chaucerian authority, overviews the historical and literary milieu of Geoffrey Chaucer ans [sic] his Canterbury tales, outlines…

Reads MerT as an "intensely bitter story," dilating upon the "central juxtaposition of the seemingly, or potentially, beautiful with the unmistakably ugly," examining the nuances of several words, discussing the "vacuity" of the marriage encomium,…

Twelve essays by Donaldson, eight of them previously printed, with a comprehensive index. For the four newly published essays, search for Speaking of Chaucer under Alternative Title.

Explores suggestive ambiguities in the characterizations of Emily in KnT, May in MerT, Criseyde in TC, and the Prioress in GP, considering narrative techniques, points of view, and ways that Chaucer adapts and manipulates the ideal of a romance…

Shows how the narrator's "wildly emotional attitude" toward Criseyde contributes to her characterization in TC, describing how and where nuances of style and point of view raise questions for the reader despite--even because of--the narrator's…

Focuses on the single use of the word "sin" in MilT (1.3589), suggesting that the Tale and, more generally, the "best medieval literature" do not "necessarily have anything to do with sin," but offer "joy to the reader."

Explores the "literary value" of Chaucer's "pretended inferiority complex on the subject of poetry," commenting on the "modesty convention" (or humility topos) in the GP description of the Prioress, the moralization of NPT, the question of Providence…

Challenges patristic criticism for its claim that medieval literature is univocally concerned with asserting Christian "caritas" allegorically, arguing instead that poetry has a right to "say what it means and mean what it says." Illustrates the…

Describes illusions of objectivity in recension, the genetic method of textual editing, cleverly though earnestly articulating that subjectivity--or "common sense"--is needed in the process of editing. Challenges the principle of grouping manuscript…

Absolon appropriates the language of courtly love, thereby rendering himself deaf to Alisoun's realistic language and setting himself up as a glossator of Alisoun's body/text. When Alisoun disrupts his gloss by exposing "hir hole" (i.e., her…

MLP and other comments suggest that late-medieval readers were "disconcerted" by Gower's repeated treatments of incest. Examination of his poem reveals him (through Genius) turning Amans from the incestuous love of Venus and Cupid to pure heavenly…

ABC is intended not for private prayer but as a pedagogical "English-teaching" text. The poem's manuscript illuminations, visual imagery, and rosary-like structure reinforce the general medieval association of the Virgin with the education of youth…

Investigates "constructions of Mary as Lady Rhetorica, 'magistra' for language studies, muse for poetry, and exemplar of perfected speech in a fallen world." Chapter 4, "Chaucer and Dame School," considers how ABC, PrT, and SNT "depict a hierarchy of…

A cross-cultural, transhistorical anatomy of one motif in the "mythology of sex" in literature and film--the "story of going to bed with someone whom you mistake for someone else." Discusses structuralist and psychoanalytic explanations of variations…

Chaucer's method of creating romance (unlike the techniques of Milton, Hawthorne, and Faulkner) requires scrutiny of the placement of formulaic phrases to reveal meaning and theme.

Chaucer's use of sources, traditions, and images leaves his text too open-ended and ambiguous to admit of any single interpretative pattern for the "matere" of BD. Diverse incidents of the poem are united by Chaucer's "structural integrity,"…

Chaucer's "open-endedness" and "lack of an ending" relate to the fact that he was writing in a "time of crisis" (the Black Death, the corruption of the church). He sought to confront conditions of his time through pluralism, and his lack of closure…

Surveys interactions between women's speech and silence, on the one hand, and generic conventions, on the other, in KnT, WBT, ClT, MerT, FranT, and ShT. Chaucer variously confirms or complicates the expectations about female speech embedded in the…

Chaucer was not an inept translator in Bo, as some contend, but an innovator who expanded the vocabulary of English ideological writing by some 500 constructions, anglicizing new Latin and Romance terms and extending the meanings of existing English…

In translating Bo from the original Latin and a French translation, Chaucer often adapts a word from the latter to create new concepts, especially with English gerunds.