Browse Items (16377 total)

Equates "mistress-knowledge" of Sir Philip Sidney's "Defence of Poesy" with the "concept of an architectonic . . . usually related to self-knowledge as an ideal," traces the concept from classical to Renaissance treatments, and applies the critical…

A study of unity in CT focuses upon justice and law. Commentaries available to Chaucer and his audience include the writings of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Sacred Scripture. Legal texts include Glanville, Bracton, Horn, and court records. …

The incongruity of the method of theological "quaestiones" (humble) in WBP with the Wife's aggressive, arbitrary approach and some of her orthodox assertions create the comic effect. WBT exhibits a transformation: the intellectual authority of the…

The Manciple, Physician, and Clerk strain the notion of fictive propriety with their stories. They exploit the storytelling occasion by attempting to come to terms with their estates and the often oppressive audience through replicating conditions…

In CT, Chaucer examines or modifies various elements of the romance genre: adventure, wonder, medieval didacticism, and love. Three narrators of the tales comically muddle the romance: Sir Thopas, the Squire, and the Franklin. KnT is Chaucer's…

After William Caxton's 1485 edition of CT, Richard Pynson's is the earliest (c. 1492). Pynson's printing practice and his role within the historical scope of English printing provide backgrounds for analysis between the two texts of major variants…

Comic irony was used by Chaucer throughout CT, even in the tales generally considered to be serious or pious. ManT, SumT, FranT, PhyT, MLT, PrT, SNT, and ClT all display Chaucer's ironic point of view, although the reader's appreciaiton of this…

The manners in which the Miller, Summoner, and Manciple tell their tales are evidence of Chaucer's interest in the psychology of class conflict. The social events of medieval England and Chaucer's own situation reflect class issues.

LGWP reveals the God of Love's misreading of TC and Rom. The stories that follow must be read with Alceste's self-sacrifice and resurrection in mind. With Alceste's powers of "translatio," the sinful pagan lovers rise again to live in Christian…

Virgule placement in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere mss. is highly regular. Syntactic and metrical rules can be used to predict 80 percent of the placements. The two mss agree in virgule placement 77 percent of the time. The 23 percent rate of…

The signs of unfinishedness which appear most prominently in Chaucer's unfinished pieces are also present in the more finished pieces, where they make a major contribution to Chaucer's meaning. Chaucer's unfinishedness is due in part to the uses he…

KnT is a scholastic romance whose primary subject is universal human nature conceived in varying combinations of will and intellect, and its overriding concern is human freedom. From its position as the first Canterbury tale, one might infer that…

Computer-generated concordances and frequency lists help in deciding which part of a character's vocabulary is especially significant. Pandarus' vocabulary emphasizes his expertise in using social and family relationships. Criseyde applies words to…

In TC the questions of free will and predestination are analyzed in argumentative patterns which may be related to Strode's "Consequences." Measured against Strode's rules, these patterns reveal that the most valid logic is used by the character…

The stories in LGW represent a first attempt by Chaucer in a series of framed stories to deal with the relation between experience, authority, and ideal sentiment. Comparison with their Ovidian sources and close reading reveals that even though…

The poets' adaptations of Chaucer's work in this era reflect the nature and principles of Chaucerian transformation for the eighteenth century. In his "Fables" Dryden emphasized the moral nature of the original poems and thus established a tradition…

The dramatic Welsh work written in Shakespeare's time is a unique and important contribution to the Troilus-Cressida tradition. The author eliminates any elements of plot, theme, or character from his sources (Chaucer's TC and Henryson's "Testament…

The complex and suggestive analogies between the "Teseida" and Statius' "Thebaid" force a re-evaluation of the question "What did Chaucer do the the 'Teseida'?" in light of what Boccaccio had already done to the "Thebaid." The "Teseida" is modeled…

For Chaucer, a poem was an imaginative focus for the representation of a larger pattern of experience. The patterns created by the opposing figures of speech in his poetry (the concrete and empirical/the archetypal) reflect a complex sense of…

The labels "antifeminism" and "courtly love" misrepresent the medieval literary treatment of women. Three types--the chaste wife, the "manly" virgin, and the martyr of love--dominate the catalogues through the Middle Ages.

Though CT was neither orally prepared nor heavily alliterative, traces of both traditions are present in the work. The oral tradition almost certainly influenced Chaucer's work more predominantly. The evidence of formulaic diction in CT is strong;…

Chaucer and Rojas shared common sources and concerns, and their works are most alike in their use of sophisticated dialogue, but Rojas' vision is more destructive. Troilus and Calistro are both "courtly" lovers, but Calistro is a debased version of…

The central issue for interpretation in TC is the nature and source of human value. The two primary ways in which values are established and tested in the poem are through the use of a significant amount of philosophical material relating to the…

In spite of the limitations imposed on Chaucer by virtue of his socially inferior position in relation to his courtly audiences, his thorough mastery of rhetorical principles and techniques allowed him to transmit his "sententia," namely, the…

Reads KnT as a veiled, enigmatic "literary game," disclosing it to be a "pagan analogue of the Old Testament" and a prefiguration of the New, ripe with figurative characters and events, and deeply inscribed with archteypes.