Chaucer freely coins derivations, such as the Summoner's "preambulacion" from "preamble" (D837), for the sake of rhyme, rhythm, economy, and forcefulness.
Donner, Morton.
Western Humanities Review 27 (1973): 189-95.
Argues that Chaucer adapts his first-person narrators throughout his career in order to explore aspects of the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. Chaucer achieves a greatest sense of objectivity when his subjective narrator is most…
A topically arranged survey of female same-sex desire in Western literature, with a brief discussion (p. 6) of MLT as "perhaps the earliest example in English" where "mutual passion between two women . . . moves the story along."
Donohue, James J., trans.
Dubuque, Iowa: Loras College Press, 1979.
Complete translation, with portions previously published: GP (1954 and 1966); KnT (1958 and 1966); MkT (1961 and 1966); and PardT, NPT, and SNT (1956 and 1966).
Donohue, James J., trans.
Dubuque, Iowa: Loras College Press, 1974.
Verse translations of all of Chaucer's poetry, with the exceptions of CT, TC, and Rom, based on Skeat's edition and arranged in his chronology. Each translation follows Chaucer's verse form and is preceded by a one-page foreword that comments on…
Donohue, James John, trans.
Dubuque, Iowa: Loras College Press, 1966.
Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this collection includes modernizations of GP, KnT, PardT, MkT, NPT, and SNT, portions of which were previously published in 1954 and 1960.
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univeristy of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 59-69.
Glosses in Class Alpha mss of Claudian's "De Raptu Proserpinae," which Chaucer could have used at school, explain his description of Pluto and Proserpina as Fairies, his "many a lady" following Proserpina, the terrifying tone of Pluto's "grisely…
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Mortimer J. Donovan. The Breton Lay: A Guide to Varieties (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), pp. 173-83.
Describes the features of FranT that affiliate it with the genre of the Breton lay (Breton lai) and those that make Chaucer's work unique. Considers the sources of FranT, and explore its aesthetic success as an "imitation" of the genre, including…
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56 (1957): 52-59.
Considers possible sources and analogues for three passages in FranT (5.721-25, 829-34, and 1113-15), explaining how diction, style, and rhetoric indicate the likely influence of Alanus de Insulis's "Anticlaudianus" (Alain de Lille's "Anticlaudian")…
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Philological Quarterly 36 (1957): 49–60.
Identifies parallels between the characterizations of January and May in MerT and those of Pluto and Proserpine in Claudian's "De Raptu Proserpinae." Anticipating the role of the fairy deities in Chaucer's Pear-Tree episode, Claudian's "myth of…
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 57 (1956): 237-46.
Explores Chaucer's association between love-longing and the song-thrush in Th 7.772-74, clarifying the significance of the bird in patristic commentary, bestiaries, and poetic tradition, and suggesting that it may indicate that Thopas's passion for…
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Modern Language Review 50 (1955): 489-90.
Clarifies nuances of the title "shipman" and the seriousness of the Shipman's lack of conscience about his cargo (GP 1.396-98) in light of late-medieval English maritime law.
Doob, Penelope B. R.
Chaucer Review 7.2 (1972): 85-96.
Interprets Pandarus's reference to "corones tweyne" (TC 2.1735) in light of lapidarian tradition, suggesting that it refers to the two kinds of "caraunius" (thunderstone), differently colored gemstones that emblematize Criseyde's beauty, lightning,…
Doob, Penelope B. R.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974.
This study of madness in Middle English literature generally mentions Chaucer only in passing, but includes a brief discussion of a "pedestrian and highly traditional account of Nebuchadnezzer" in MkT. Clearly based on the Book of Daniel, the account…
Doob, Penelope Reed.
Chapter 11 in Penelope Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity Through the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N. Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 307-39.
Familiar with the "visual and verbal labyrinth traditions" and their metaphorical significances, Chaucer incorporates in HF a controlling labyrinthine uncertainty, chaos, and obscurity in its "disoriented turnings back and forth, its paradoxical…
Doob, Penelope Reed.
Ithaca, N.Y., and London : Cornell University Press, 1990.
Considers models, taxonomy, metaphor, etymologies, and verbal implications of the labyrinth; mazes in medieval art and architecture; moral labyrinths; and textual labyrinths in medieval literature. Examines Chaucer's use of the labyrinth in BD, CT,…
Doob, Penelope Reed.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 167-84; 4 b&w figs.
Surveys relations between female literary characters and labyrinths from mythic accounts to Lady Mary Worth's "Pamphilia to Amphilanthus," commenting on Virgil's "Aeneid," Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," Dante's "Commedia," WBPT, and the…
Dor, Juliette (De Caluwe).
A. M. Simon-Vandenbergen, ed. Studies in Honour of Rene Derolez. (Ghent: Seminarie voor Englese en Oud-Germaanse Taalkunde, 1987), pp.143-56.
Part of a larger sociolinguistic project on the status of French in fourteenth-century England, Dor's study examines the uses, distribution, and frequency of words of French origin in the conversational sections of CT.
