Browse Items (16381 total)

Discusses how Chaucer, while aware of Boccaccio's text, continually downplays Priam's political side in order to emphasize "his interpersonal or familial bond," thus seeking "to interpret events and characters in terms of their most immediate…

Linking the idea of intention to the moral self in the medieval understanding of the subject, considers TC along with Margery Kempe and "The Testimony of William Thorpe."

Identifies the classical sources (Virgil and Ovid) and explores the implications of two tree metaphors that Pandarus uses to encourage Troilus to court Criseyde.

Explores the Ovidian "erotodidactic" combination of "ars amandi" and "ars dictandi" in TC, describing the similar "rhetorical view of love" in the "Rota Veneris" of Boncompagno de Signa. Focuses on Pandarus, letter-writing, and the manipulative…

Compares elements of privacy (e.g., "access, intimacy, and withdrawal") in official documents and records to canonical literary works including TC, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Malory.

Argues that the idealized knightly figure of Troilus in TC is taken from the characterization of Florio in Boccaccio's "Filocolo."

Discusses the relationship between "translation and historical alterity" in TC, examining how Dante's vernacular language in his "Convivio" connects with how Chaucer "exploits the transformative potential of translation" within his own vernacular…

Considers vernacular change and development in Chaucer's work through the lens of a suggested parallel to fourteenth-century Italian poetry that "inspired scribes and translators to develop sophisticated methods of using form to reflect historical,…

Compares LGW and Christine de Pizan's "Book of the City of Ladies" to Boccaccio's "Famous Women," arguing that Pizan's work is on equal footing with the other two texts.

Examines LGW within the sociocultural and intellectual contexts of the late fourteenth century, paying especial attention to early humanist and late courtly traditions. LGWP may be juxtaposed with Richard de Bury's "Philobiblon"; and the legends…

Explores the connection among name, birth, and personal achievements. The study is based on "Lybeaus Desconus," but also draws on other medieval sources such as HF.

In HF the response of "Geffrey" to being asked if he is seeking fame is a version of the proverb "One must drink as one brews."

Examines three interiors within HF, and the use of the "catalogue" as a way of articulating and revealing the spatial relationships within the poem. Compares the "navigation of space" in HF to classical and medieval techniques of a "memory palace."

Focuses on Chaucer's position as lay controller of customs and argues that HF constitutes an attempt to change the field of literature to benefit--in socioeconomic and aesthetic senses--someone in his "liminal" professional position.

Considers the role of the nonsense word as "material supposition"; as prayer; and, in HF, as "tydynges" (rumors), which allows the previously mute poet to speak.

Contemplates the personification of Imagination (as in the cases of personified Nature and Reason) from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, with attention to the particulars inherent in the process of characterization. Focuses on "uncertainty of…

Details two meanings of Chaucer's idea of "fame" in lines 1873-82 of HF: either living a "private, unnoticed life," or not looking for "glory as a poet." Compares Book II to Alexander's Pope's "The Temple of Fame."

In both HF and LGW Chaucer adapts the story of Dido in a way that does not exclusively privilege Virgil's text. Though Gavin Douglas objects to Chaucer's "Legend of Dido" in his translation of the "Aeneid" (providing a humanistic model of reading…

In context of a larger study of dream visions, uses HF as an example of the ironic dream vision, arguing that it treats authority ironically, whereas other dream visions (e.g., Macrobius on Scipio, Julian of Norwich's mystical visions) offer other…

Examines HF in context of architectural descriptions in early English texts, and connects Chaucer's inspiration to an actual building in Westminster.

Addresses both Chaucer's motivation and the meaning behind the poet's crediting the divine in Ret.

Suggests that PrT is the source of George Eliot's reference in "Middlemarch" to a "legend" that Ladislaw believes to have influenced Dorothea.

Differentiates "literary" uses of alchemical terms from those of alchemical treatises and shows that Chaucer's CYT is one of the seven most frequent alchemical sources in the seventy citations within the "MED."

Contrasts Gower's and Chaucer's depictions of alchemy in, respectively, the "Confessio Amantis" and CT, and analyzes what these narratives reveal about the poets' views of money and economy. Unlike the depiction of money in Book V of the "Confessio,"…

Contends that in SNT Cecilia's "sense of incongruity between inner self and social definition" is directed to a pious lay audience. Argues that the Second Nun's use of the word "bisynesse obfuscates" what the tale has to convey to her lay audience