Browse Items (16471 total)

In his portrait of the village parson, the Reeve uses the language of traditional complaint literature, especially in attacking simony.

Clerk John's oath by "seint Cutberd" (line 4127) is to the appropriate saint Cuthbert, but Chaucer puns on "cut-beard," suggesting sexual deceit.

Characterized by shortcomings and privation, the Reeve succeeds in his villainy as ruler of darkness.

From KnT to CkT, tales degenerate from magnificence to grossness. MLT attempts to establish decorum but backfires on the teller, who "courts the sin of presumption."

Argues that "a ful greet bryngere out of bisynesse" means "remover of worries."

The Wife of Bath's allusion to the fable of "A Lion and a Man" indicates the "sentence" unifying her Prologue into cogent satire and emphasizes the aim of her rhetorical devices.

Investigates traditions of medieval antifeminism to show the ambivalences present in the Wife, whom Chaucer presents as both a satire on womanhood and a threat to orthodox male authority.

Margery has much in common with Alisoun: middle-class status, outspokenness, avid interest in or obsession with sex, devotion to Christianity, and passion for pilgrimages.

Although the two pilgrims look very different, they have similarities.

Folklorists describe liminal tales as experiences that are part of a rite of passage from one realm of experience to another. Viewed thus, FrT assumes new complexities: it reflects the total pilgrimage experience of CT.

FrT reflects hostility, especially among the lower classes, against widespread corruption and double standards among archdeacons and summoners, as surviving documents of the period amply and graphically suggest.

Discusses the friar, comparing Chaucer's anticlericalism to Boccaccio's in the "Decameron."

Some medieval readers or hearers would have considered ClT incredible or cruel. The Clerk agrees with the Wife that gentilesse means "trouthe," fidelity and integrity.

Walter and Griselda embody qualities to be found in medieval discussions of tyrants and "commune profit," but they go beyond abstract ideas as characters in their own right.

Although Chaucer's version of the Griselda story closely follows that of Petrarch, ClT makes the marquis less sympathetic and Griselda more so.

Both "Pearl" and ClT use comparatives for contrasts with a notion of satisfaction signified by the words "enough" and "suffisaunce." The set of related words in ClT, including "sadness," "suffraunce," "outrely," and other words of degree and…

Analyzes the function of the proper names as playful, complex allusions, and associates with January--holder of the silver "clyket" to the garden--both Janus, god of passageways, and Saint Peter, who holds the keys to paradise.

Romances that parallel the SqT's interest in "meticulous attention to the niceties of courtly life joined with an inexhaustible appetite for marvels" were fashionable for Chaucer's age.

Analyzes the Canacee episode in SqT through "poetic and biblical exegesis" and compares it to similar materials in Malory's "Morte Darthur."

At first lacking in "gentillesse," Aurelius knows how to insist u0pon his rights, but in the latter half of FranT, he is transformed into a gentle squire.

Chaucer does not equate with his own morality that of the Franklin, who does not understand the issues he has raised.

Chaucer may be satirizing the pretensions of the contemporary upwardly mobile.

Melvin Storm's article indicates that pardoners were rarely accused of carrying false relics.

In PardT details from poison lore add to the sophistication with which Chaucer develops the central paradox of the tale: the Pardoner as a channel of grace despite his evil character.

"Modern" medieval sermons, as contrasted with patristic sermons, are not structurally rigid, but PardT follows agreed-upon elements and sequences of material and relates theme to form.