Browse Items (16381 total)

Although Chaucer typically "covered his tracks," a major source of HF is Plato's "Timaeus" in the translation and commentary of Chalcidius.

The Aeneas story as cliche is appropriate for the poem's subject: fame. The fame of Aeneas was important in Christian historiography, but ambivalent because of his betrayal of Dido. Biblical language and allusion rather than "the story of Troy or…

Architectural details, including rows of pillars and statues in Fame's hall, are probably exaggerations of the Palais de Justice, which Chaucer had seen in 1377.

Among poets who "present images of themselves both as poets and as readers" was Chaucer, though the idea-language model was not fully appropriate, as in HF.

The wording of these lines closely resembles the phraseology found in an Italian translation of Ovid's "Heroides." The line "Youre anker which ye in oure haven leyde" (line 2501) may be a sexual pun. Treats Boccaccio's "De genealogia deorum" as…

The "Legend of Dido" explicitly evokes its pretexts: the narrator names Virgil and Ovid and summarizes, paraphrases, and purposefully distorts the texts.

After a wide variety of classical treatments, Medea was transformed through the medieval concept of "fin' amor." Although her earthly passion is negatively contrasted with divine love in some works, she is canonized as a saint of love in LGW and in…

Treats Alceste as Christian emblem of transformation in LGW.

In LGW, Chaucer adheres closely to Ovid in the Pyramus and Thisbe legend. By omissions, by shifts in tone and emphasis, and by the frame of LGW, Chaucer emphasizes seeds of comedy in the original.

Presents an overview of Ambrose's "Hexameron" and argues the informing presence of the hexameral tradition on a deep level--though it scarcely rises to the surface--in the text of PF.

PF describes various aspects of love, but the continual shift of perspective works to supersede the previous interpretation in the following scene.

The symbolic structure of PF reinforces meaning; its three sections mirror the divisions of time; allusions to time and nature point toward a natural rather than social hierarchy. As an epithalamium, PF involves the natural world in a…

As a translation of "Roman de la Rose," Chaucer's Rom is remarkably faithful; nevertheless, Chaucer did make changes to create greater "ease" and intimacy."

Eugene Vance's belief that Criseyde's love is a matter of sexual arousal culminating when Troilus rides by is at odds with Chaucer's depiction of the growth of Criseyde's love, changed from the "Filostrato," to show Criseyde falling in love at first…

The narrator makes the reader see Criseyde from Troilus's point of view.

In TC, Chaucer used the tradition of Joseph of Exeter and Benoit (who had drawn on Dares) to emphasize Troilus's public career rather than his private affairs.

Hundreds of references in TC to the heart are not casual but calculated. The heart is both a vessel and something that can be placed within a vessel. Allusions contrast Pandarus and Diomede with the two lovers and also contrast Criseyde with…

In TC 2.78ff., Chaucer distinguishes between Statius's "Thebiad" and the "Roman de Thebes" to characterize Pandarus and Criseyde, to emphasize the uncle-niece relationship, and to affect tone and atmosphere. In 5.145ff., he uses Statius to develop…

Discusses the narrator's function in the comedy of TC.

Like Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato," TC is veiled literary autobiography. About love, TC is also about love poetry but rejects Boccaccio's philosophy and poetics.

In TC, especially bks. 2 and 4, Chaucer selected and reconstituted details from Dante and the classics for ironic purposes, treating sources as "history." Appendix: Petrarch's annotations to "Aeneid."

In TC, a vision of love and death, Chaucer uses black and white to portray Criseyde as ambiguous: she shares her whiteness with Venus but is linked with death and its symbolic blackness.

Chaucer's "inventio" results in a rearrangement of concepts at the end of TC--a result of the process of composition. Exploiting the narrator, TC is in accord with Boethian and Aquinan aesthetics.

Compares the narrator of Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato" with the narrator of TC.

Through the virtue of hope and a sense of penance, Troilus's courtly love and death in TC parallel divine love and salvation, showing the influences of Dante's "Commedia" and Boethius's "De consolatio philosophiae."