Browse Items (16472 total)

Although probably not formally educated as a lawyer, Chaucer shows familiarity with common law, church, and "customary" courts, as investigated in a wide variety of his works.

Despite Skeat's allegations of 1897, Usk's work proves to be both substantially original (free of plagiarism from Bo) and stylistically effective.

In his most Boethian poem, Chaucer relies heavily on Nicholas Trevet's "Commentary" on the Consolation of Philosophy, even versifying one of Trevet's glosses and adopting his Aristotelian interpretation.

Comedy arises from various methods of breaking paradigms in NPT, Th, MilP and MilT, and WBP.

Although classical and medieval rhetorics stress conventional "topoi," love poetry also supposedly emphasizes originality and sincerity. Certain classical and medieval poets including Chaucer ironically play off convention against their own ideas.

Critical views of the Wife, though based on the same Chaucerian texts, vary widely--roughly between realistic approaches and those that ignore or deny realism.

A sixty-year-old Chaucer is represented as reading from his works to students at an English school, digressing for audience understanding; includes commentary, playscript, and videotaped reading for beginning students of Chaucer.

Body language, grouping, and voice level used by characters signify intent; in Chaucer's works, typically, appeasement manifests itself as the intent.

BD provides at once a reaction to its French predecessors of three centuries and also the means by which they can be reexamined.

Consider "the two quite different versions of the Dido and Cleopatra stories as they appear in the works of major Latin and English poets, beginning with the commissioning of Virgil's "Aeneid" ca. 29 B.C. and carrying through to the publication of…

Aware that he was writing in an increasingly literate milieu, Chaucer adapted his text to listening or reading audiences. A development is traced through TC, LGW, CT.

Corrects critical equations of narrative fiction with prose fiction; investigates narrative strategies and apocalyptic closure in TC.

Italian, French, English, and Spanish collections of tales, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, show women in increasingly significant roles. Though often satirized, women appear in lifelike situations and reveal contemporary attitudes.

The headdress, cloak, and jewelry of the Prioress, correct or appropriate according to fourteenth-century views, conflict ironically with her character.

Studied in the context of bird debates, of works by Andreas Capellanus and Machaut, and of Chaucer's own KnT, WBT, and FranT, PF shows generic mastery and artistic integrity.

Although the principles of order are not treated in medieval rhetoric books, they govern the structures of representative texts, including TC.

Studies Troilus as a parody of the virtuous pagan.

To Chaucer, Dante, Henryson, and Milton, the heavens were a celestial text, and movers of the spheres governed earthly affairs. Astral configurations allegorized to serve theological ends show the poets using accepted interpretations.

Studies the literacy, education, and cultural milieu of Chaucer's audience, the courtly circle and the upper socioeconomic echelons, especially the GP portrait of the Pardoner and PardT, to suggest reader response based on theories of Iser,…

The similarity in "rhythmic structure and characteristic variations" of Chaucer's iambic pentameter in TC to Machaut's French "decasyllabe" in "Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne" has "implications for wider issues" in criticism. Using Parkes-Salter…

Studies medieval assumptions about and deformations of Virgil's "Aeneid." Chapter 3 presents the "self-conscious ironic" version of the Dido story in LGW; chapter 4, Chaucer's assumptions about the "Aeneid" in HF. Notes on Chretien, Caxton,…

"Pearl" is much more closely related to Dante than has previously been shown. Chaucer draws on Dante not only in HF and PF but also for Criseyde's dream (TC), drawn from the "Vita nuova." Only a few other English works (Lydgate's "Temple of Glass"…

CT is read as an experiment in allegory in the sense of Isidore of Seville's "alieniloquium." The School of Chartres, the "Cosmographia" of Bernardus Silvestris, and Guillaume de Lorris contribute to the techniques of tension between rhetoric and…

In attempting to make of literary criticism a science, the profession falls into illogic and absurdity. Readings of KnT and MerT differ wildly. From Kittredge to 1980s, critics have been self-deluded.

Study of the Cardigan MS (CT and two poems by Lydgate) by the method of Gruijs reveals that Manly and Rickert were wrong in assuming that the codex was produced under close supervision in a shop. Instead, "Scribe A" standardized its language. …