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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…

Ret is a mature expression of a poet in command of his faculties and intent. The Canon's Yeoman's disillusionment in CYT provides preparation for Ret, while ParsT prepares for the abandonment of sin. Structure and design of CYT and ParsT validate…

Ret is a well-crafted, planned conclusion to ParsT rather than the result of a deathbed religious crisis.

Chaucer often used the horse-and-rider image as a metaphor for sexual "maistrie." In Anel the image illustrates Arcite's failure to exercise mastery over either of his ladies, chafing like a restless horse in the service of Anelida while playing the…

Astr (and probably Equat) may serve to show that Chaucer was not merely curious about astronomy but was, in the modern sense, an active amateur who made astronomical observations.

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…

Chaucer's concern is in part with forms of subjective experience, expressed in a dialectic between images and "nothing" in a series of lateral movements of the aesthetic imagination. At the end the poet converts retrospection to anticipation, as he…

A focus on book 1 of this dream poem shows the poet moving among several attitudes toward authority: they include meek acceptance and assertion of the author's own independence of it.

The decade of residence over Aldgate, the gateway to the teeming life of medieval London, supplied Chaucer with the buoyancy and liveliness that characterize HF.