Browse Items (16471 total)

In HF, concerned with the nature of poetry, Chaucer reflects fourteenth-century culture, reveals his debts to Dante and Boccaccio (Lollius), and deals with literature.

Nabokov, Barth, and Joyce have rediscovered the solipsistic mode of fiction of which Chaucer was an accomplished practitioner.

Allusions to several Christian saints in HF show that, contrary to the arbitrariness of Fame's judgment, the "natural consequence of meritorious action" is "recognition both worldly and other-worldly."

By deliberate excision lines 1188-1203 of LGW can be reduced from decasyllables to octosyllables, illustrating the different effects of the lines, especially the longer "breath" of the decasyllable.

Matches Augustine's "("De mendacio") moral distinctions among kinds of utterance with Anselm's logical distinctions among kinds of predication; discovers that Augustine refuses to recognize the possibility of "beneficent lying." Argues that Chaucer…

Ret, an "authorial form of self-elimination," is formally like irony; it is also a penance, which, also like irony, protects the author from adverse judgment. Thus CT irony can be neatly exchanged for Ret penance. Penance, however, a sacrament and…

Coss surveys Continental and English historical and literary uses of the term "vavasour" to demonstrate its varying meanings. Applied to Chaucer's Franklin, the term might convey an "old-fashioned air," but such connotations must be drawn from…

Reads HF as an index to English literary culture of the late fourteenth century--as Chaucer's "idea of fourteenth-century literature." The variety of genres of the work, its complex relations with literary traditions, its concerns with science and…

Characterizes the nature and conventions of Middle English lyrics, looking briefly at representative examples. Includes discussion of Chaucer as both a representative lyricist and one who breaks boundaries in his short poems.

Examines arithmetic aspects of Chaucer's poetry in an effort to understand the mind of the man. The arithmetic devices of RvT, ShT, SumT, etc. indicate the strong vein of "modernistic rationalism" in Chaucer, a distinctive feature of his mentality.

Demonstrates that "the parent-child relation is one of the central motifs" of CT. Focusses on MkT, MLT, PrT, PhyT, and ClT to argue that Chaucer explores not only the power relations between parent and child but those parallel relations as well…

Explores relations between literary inheritance and father-child relations in Chaucer's works. Chaucer's "unfavourable attitude toward the power of the father" is reflected in his plots and his attitudes toward his literary ancestry. Of Chaucer's…

Posits FranT as a major source for Shakespeare play, focusing on similarities between the two magicians. Revised version published as "Deceiving Appearances: Neo-Chaucerian Magic in 'The Tempest'," in Hillman's Intertextuality and Romance in…

Sensitive to contemporary political events, Shakespeare parodies Spenser's Tears of the Muses in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In addition, the dream of the elf queen in Chaucer's Th is the source of Bottom's dream, as well as Arthur's dream in Faerie…

Hurst argues that Shakespeare's Cressida is an "embryonic feminist"; Cressida compares favorably with Chaucer's Criseyde, who was elsewhere demeaned in subsequent accounts.

Brewer surveys the presence (and absence) of music in Chaucer's work, suggesting that Chaucer knew its celestial, theoretical underpinnings and enjoyed its zesty, earthy pleasures.

Arguing that "Chaucer changed the direction of the Middle English lyric," Robbins comments on Chaucer's lyrics, on fifteenth-century lyrics, and on the influence of TC on the latter.

Windeatt compares several of Chaucer's works and their sources to show that through variations in narrative pace and increased attention to pinpointing time, Chaucer makes something quite new. Considers PF, MLT, TC, KnT, and several of the tales in…

Reads PrT as satiric, an exposé of the horrors of "institutional ignorance," both Christian and Jewish.

Flavin argues that Milton may have been influenced by Chaucer: like Chauntecleer in NPT, Milton's Eve ignores her prophetic dream and falls victim to flattery. Milton's Adam is also similar to Chauntecleer in passionate submission to beauty.

The "homo ludens" tradition from Erasmus to Huizinga and the recent development of sociobiology reveal three motives in life and art: play, purpose, and game. Critics focusing on allegory or "idea" see purpose as Chaucer's primary motive, but his…

Assesses depictions of the working class by Langland, Chaucer, Gower, and the chronicler Walsingham, considering what they disclose about conditions and attitudes at the time of the 1381 Uprising (Peasant's Revolt). Sharply criticizes Gower's and…

Traces the medieval tradition of translating or adapting Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" into vernacular languages, especially French, and argues that Walton's verse translation of 1410 is an "improvement upon his model, Chaucer's prose" Bo,…

Explores comic allusions in John Gay's pastorals "The Shepherd's Week" and "Trivia," along the way identifying "several allusions" to Chaucer's work in "The Shepherd's Week"--allusions to the Wife of Bath's red stockings, the use of "queynte" and the…

An exchange of letters in the PMLA Forum section that comment on openendedness and closure in CT and the influence of Arabic literary models on Chaucer.