Browse Items (16472 total)

Covenants, a pervasive theme in CT, may bind guest and host, ruler and subject, spouses, kin, or God and humanity. The covenant supports a willingly assumed hierarchy, a model for order; yet these bonds may be reversed.

In a remarkably innovative use of received tradition, the aubades in TC reveal personalities, adumbrate the end of the story, and inspire a fresh aubade tradition in English poetry.

Instead of the single and individual voices that Kittredge found in CT, several voices may appear in a single tale. When analyzed by Bakhtin's discourse theory, ClT reveals not one but three distinct contending voices.

Examines psychological portrayals in TC, inner monologues, and audience response as compared to sources in Benoit, Guido, and Boccaccio. Compares Criseyde's inner monologues with Troilus's.

Examination of all references and allusions to the Christian God and pagan gods in TC reveals that Chaucer works within a broad spectrum of tonal variations in the classical and medieval traditions. The poem carries simultaneously two opposing yet…

On the bases of manuscript illuminations, ivory and stone carvings, and typological windows, Chmaitelli examines Dante's pageant at the end of "Purgatorio" and Chaucer's WBPT. The former shows the degeneration of the Church, while the latter reveals…

Drawing on sources in rhetoric and preaching, Chaucer saw rhetoric "not merely as a collection of stylistic figures, but as a process defined by the interaction between a speaker, his words,...and the audience." He made the audience "active…

A study of appropriate "medieval traditions of mythography, symbolism, iconography, religious devotion, and textual exegesis" demonstrates the coherence of GP portrait of the Squire and SqT.

Both the portraits of GP and the representations of the Deadly Sins in "Piers Plowman" (B text of "Visio") achieve a new form, combining the traditional with "individualized details." Such a pattern is analogous to the development of late-Gothic…

Controversy has arisen over Derek Price's theory that Chaucer wrote Equat. Apparently, Chaucer did not. Although Morton's "stylometry" test supports this view, the test itself reveals weaknesses.

Way studies Chaucer's "trouthe" as meaning both troth and truth, with consequent conflicts arising in his poetry. In TC, "trouthe" is kept by silence even when the "trouthe" is broken. Absolute troth keepers (Griselda, Virginia) suffer. Truth…

That theme relates to numerical structures is apparent not only in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" but also in FranT,where each of the three parts reveals a pattern of A ("a major trouthe"), B (complaint), and C (helpful human intervention). Thus,…

Moore studies the influence of varied forms of dramatic presentation on Chaucer, Langland, and the "Gawain"-poet; significant use of voice and gesture is implied in their work although the poets were aware of a new audience of readers.

In KnT, the medieval view of the deficiencies of classical ideals is demonstrated through the tacit presence of Christianity. In its light, the ancient order breaks down; thus, KnT fills a significant place in CT as Christian pilgrimage.

Hewitt studies BD, HF, and PF with reference to Chartrian allegorists and the "Roman de la Rose," using theories of Heidegger, Derrida, and Lacan.

Questions raised by and through many tales (KnT, Th, Mel, and PardT) and characters (Prioress, Wife of Bath, and Pardoner) disclose Chaucer's composite view of truth. The medieval Christian poet, however, would assume absolute truth to be beyond…

Chaucer's method of creating romance (unlike the techniques of Milton, Hawthorne, and Faulkner) requires scrutiny of the placement of formulaic phrases to reveal meaning and theme.

Medieval literary influence should be understood through borrowing not only of phrasing but also of literary devices. Chaucer's grasp of the totality of Jean de Meun's technique pervades Chaucer's handling of allegorical conventions.

The strictly medieval method of casting and interpreting horoscopes shows--in the developing dialectic of free will, Providence, and neccessity--the shortcomings of some CT pilgrims too worldly for ideal pilgrimage.

Rehyansky studies classical allusions Chaucer introduced into TC: they underscore its themes. Oenone, Daphne, Europa, and Venus represent the folly and tragedy of love; Niobe, Tantalus, Ixion, and Tityus show the folly of pride, greed, and…

Fanale examines pertinent materials to construct a portrait of the confessor figure in fourteenth-century English literature, including the God of Love in LGWP, Pilgrim Parson, Gower's Genius, and the Green Knight.

Originating as a device of classical rhetoric, the exemplum became a genre in its own right through the church. Preachers brought it to a lay audience, and poets (Gower, Chaucer, Hoccleve, and Lydgate) eventually secularized it in various ways.

Approached through anthropology, psychoanalysis, and theory of literary response, the two works resemble female initiation rituals.

These two post-Ockham works treat absolute truth as unknowable and explore language and its manipulation, especially in their different renderings of the Griselda story.

Showing his perception of inadequacies in the practice of medicine through the Physician's portrait in GP and PhyT, Chaucer reveals his belief in the balance of mind, body, and soul and the need for God as physician in BD, GP, WBT, MilT,MerT, KnT,…