Browse Items (16472 total)

The nine surviving Anglo-Norman fabliaux (three translated from manuscripts are appended) differ from their seven English counterparts (five in CT) in depicting higher social ranks, incorporating less violence, and introducing less antifeminism. …

Medieval musical allusions provide an internationally shared set of signs for allegorical poetry and help unify medieval literature stylistically. Ruiz ironically conflates the fleshly and heavenly aspects of music, and Machaut employs harmony to…

Critical views of the Pardoner range from total condemnation to interpretations of him as Christlike, with current views seeing him as evil. Interpretations can be immediate, direct, and simple, or complicated sociopsychologically or…

Comparison of Chaucer's poem with Boccaccio's reveals the narrator in conflict with the story as Chaucer himself both came into conflict with the ideas and ideals represented and also understood his role as poet. As lovers are seduced by a seemingly…

The Breton lay evolved from Celtic tradition to generic identity with Marie de France to art form in Chaucer's WBT and FranT. Most clearly characterized by the "merveilleux," it has crossed cultural boundaries in such a way as to lose its motives…

The narrator's eight-year sickness may refer to the last illness of Henry, Duke of Lancaster. The portrait of Lady White departs significantly from that of Machaut's lady in "Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne" to reconcile courtly with Christian love.

In Chaucer, as in patristic writings, true marriage proceeds from physical to psychological to spiritual union, even emblematizing the relationship of God to church or soul. Analysis of marriage in CT further reveals sexual politics.

HF classifies memory as an aspect of Prudence, as reflected in its three-part structure and reinforced by its thematic meditation on fame. GP portraits develop with details of "artificial" memory, as do the pilgrimage itself and the game. KnT…

Chaucer's lyric mode developed from the conventional toward the original, from everyman-speaker toward individual voice,from vague to concrete, from realist toward nominalist in philosophical outlook.

Medieval romances reflect changing attitudes toward social conflicts with chronologically developing alterations in their audiences. Chaucer's romances are studied briefly.

Besides Brooke's "Tragicall Historye," TC seems a significant source for Shakespeare's play. Although verbal parallels are scanty, speeches comparable in rhetoric, imagery, and theme appear in greater density than could be mere conventions of…

Gower and Chaucer treat the same traditional stories differently: Gower typically narrates them as exempla in "Confessio Amantis," whereas Chaucer, breaking from the fixed pattern of LGW, tells them in CT to explore truth.

The medieval understanding of "translatio" comprises not only recasting in another language but also literary interpretation. In drawing on the "Roman" (already richly allusive), Chaucer adapts Jean de Meun's "mirouer" technique for works of various…

Certain fourteenth-century works (the York plays, "Confessio Amantis," "Piers Plowman," CYT) function by placing inadequate characters in crisis situations. The audience learns from their limited reactions. Most complex is MerT: the narrator's…

Certain twelfth-century mystics, especially Bernard of Clairvaux, interpreted the Song of Songs as figuring the love of God and man not only through heterosexual love but specifically as an ideal of marriage. In Chaucer's works both the concept of…

Chaucer's use of philosophy, classic and medieval, goes far beyond Boethius. KnT explores order and disorder in terms of scholasticism; TC treats will and determinism in the light of views from Augustine to Bradwardine; and NPT subtly inverts…

"This study argues that, in major Middle English works, authority is the central issue involved in concepts of character and of relationships beween characters. 'Havelok the Dane,' 'King Horn,' 'Sir Orfeo,' Malory's works, and 'The Canterbury Tales'…

In PrT, MLT, ClT, SNT, and PhyT, Chaucer manipulates the genre and rhetoric of the saint's life in differing ways to evoke audience response to the professional stereotypes of the narrators.

Significant Victorian writers, concerned with social problems as encountered in the past as well as in their own day, revolutionized Chacuer's reputation.

Assesses character names in works "from 'Beowulf' to Robert Henryson, tracing patterns in onomastic function, language philosophy, and literary form." Includes discussion of names from HF, TC, and CT.

Working in a tradition of opposing elements, Chaucer emphasizes differences yet achieves unity in diversity.

Medieval medical writings on love-sickness emphasize memory. Memory of Criseyde's beauty, initially the cause of Troilus's malady, remains with him, combining with facets of Augustinian tradition, to permit his final transcendence. Annotated…

Produced at a time when authors as individuals and literary structures were emerging, Chaucer's texts should be read both as an individual author's work and as the work of a "construct." The relationship appears in HF and develops through TC to the…

Shakespeare depicts the Trojan War through the characters' pride, hypocrisy, and materialism. Examines TC, Chapman, and Caxton as sources.

Scottish Chaucerians emphasize the different aspects of Chaucer's work--love fiction: "The Kingis Quair;" retribution: Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid;" and diction: Dunbar's "Thrissill and the Rose."