Browse Items (16472 total)

KnT, FranT, MLT, NPT, and ParsT all reveal the Providential plan for the world as benign. Despite the irony, CT upholds Boethian Christian ideals.

Comparison with its sources reveals that the changes in ABC destroy the unity but not the coherence. Chaucer's version comes closer than its source to fulfilling Augustine's recommendations. SNT falls short of its sources in conveying the ethical…

Medieval thinkers reverenced the word for its power to give order to experience, but Chaucer throughout his writings calls attention to the unreliability of the word.

Chaucer's poetry should be regarded as aural rather than oral. Aural poetry is less formulaic and digressive than poetry composed extemporaneously, but it too has special characteristics since it was to be heard and not read. TC reveals Chaucer's…

Theological commentators in the Middle Ages distinguished between the roles of "auctor" and "compilator." Gower seems to have modeled his main literary stances (as "propheta" in the "Vox Clamantis" and "sapiens" in the "Confessio Amantis") on the…

TC is used (along with later works) to draw conclusions about authorial self-consciousness. There are applications to the "persona" and the author's fictionalization of his audience.

Dante and Chaucer in effect parody classical tragedy while adapting their Ovidian imitations to a medieval notion of tragic form. They preserve the notion of suffering into truth, but they focus on the truth to be gained by the reader from the…

The romances of Chretien and Chaucer introduced the psychologically self-conscious character into medieval literature. KnT and TC make a distinction between the socially defined male, and the psychologically individualized female.

Chaucer's line shows tension between accentual-syllabic meter and strong stress. The result is a complex prosody full of variety. Chaucer's prosody should be studied in texts that use the virgule because modern punctuation blurs the prosody.

BD and HF show thematic unity of conflict between appearance (attractive externals) and reality (the authority of books). Replacing reality with worship for the artificial, mutable object is error.

Theoretical "auctoritee" and "auctoritee" as misunderstood by characters in Chaucer are worlds apart. Chaucer was more interested in the violability than in the inviolability of "auctoritee." Many of the Canterbury Tales depend on cases which…

Includes discussion of Chaucer's PrT as well as Aeschylus's "Suppliants" and works by Phillis Wheatley, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin.

The action of TC takes place in both naturalistic and schematic space. This opposition is reinforced by the creation of an intrusive narrator and a fictional audience. Schematic space functions as a principle of limitation, reinforcing the…

Chap. I studies Chaucer's awareness of the assets and liabilities of working within a tradition in PF and Purse. Chap. II argues that HF is finished. Chap. III sees the contradiction between the Pardoner's confession and tale as an effort to put…

A reading of Chaucer's dream visions as a genre reveal a controlling tension between the narrator's awareness of the demands of Christian doctrine and his human compassion for those enduring the rigors of life on earth. He is sympathetic to human…

LGW provides an important statement of Chaucer's poetics. It recognizes his genuine debt to his French contemporaries. The poet-dreamer does not reject or parody the tradition of "fin amor," but under its direction he acknowledges the poet's duty…

The "Song of Songs" has received little attention for its influence on other literary works. In two of CT tales, Chaucer exploits the allegorical interpretations of the "Song." The ambiguity of the interpretations in the Christian era made the…

Chaucer does not attempt to work within the framework of such established literary forms as romance and fabliau. The flaws in the genre approach become evident when the tales are judged from the broader perspective of medieval rhetoric and poetic.

The rhetorical and narrative conventions used by Chaucer in his saintly tales reveal him an accomplished hagiographer. An analysis of the narrator's rhetoric in describing the characters in GP produces a better understanding of the relation between…

When King Alfred translated Boethius' "Consolation," he changed some of the materials so that it could be understood by his people whereas Chaucer tried to translate as accurately as his Middle English would allow. The two translations are as…

When the Griselda legend first appears in English literature, in ClT, Griselda is praised for her patience. In subsequent versions, as the centuries pass, her patience loses its moral worth and comes to be equated with unhealthy submissiveness.

Even though Chaucer's characters are defined by the strong theological framework in which they appear, they still achieve an effect of individualized feeling and characterization. Although TC reveals elements of a controlled classical approach to…

"The Isle of Ladies" was attributed to Chaucer until 1878. It is primarily a lover's complaint to his lady. The characters are based on Chaucerian models (like Criseyde) but play somewhat different roles.

The contradictions surrounding the Pardoner are an important thematic element in PardT. The trickster figure found in mythology represents a figure that is supposed to embody contradictions. Viewing the Pardoner as such a trickster figure allows…

In medieval narrative theory, "aporia" is set forth as a way of examining the moment when the ironic process begins. BD relies on a withdrawal from literal statement which brings the author's intention to the reader through the process of irony.