Browse Items (16381 total)

Uses TC to show why Boethius "so compelled Chaucer's imagination" and demonstrates that the outcome of Chaucer's plot is "fitting" to the characters as established earlier in the poem. Focuses on Troilus's Boethian soliloquy and on Criseyde's…

Argues that the Wife of Bath is a distant source (not necessarily intentional) for the characterization of Molly Bloom in James Joyce's "Ulysses." Both characters are sensual, hedonistic, heterodox, touched by despair, shrewish, and unfaithful--part…

Contrasts the consummation scene of TC with its source in Boccaccio's "Filostrato," arguing that the changes produce a "far greater emotional intensity," largely because the narrative puts the reader through the process of partial fulfillment…

Shows that in details and atmosphere the relation between RvT and its analogue, Jean Bodel's twelfth-century "Gombert et les Deux Clers," is a "good deal closer than has been realized." Suggests that Chaucer's source combined details of "Gombert" and…

Transcribes witnesses to three of Chaucer's short poems--"For," "Truth" (both from Leiden University Library Vossius 9), and Gent (from Cambridge University Library Gg 4 9.27.1b)--all previously unpublished and here supplied from, perhaps, "the final…

Reports on book length-studies, articles, and dissertations in progress, arranged in topical categories.

Argues that the Monk was the original teller of the MerT, a response directed against the ShT as told originally by the Wife of Bath. Discusses puns and implications in the GP description of the Monk to characterize the Monk is an "amorous man," a…

Shows that in the Wife of Bath's account of her three "goode" husbands Chaucer "adopted a means of amplification which he found described and illustrated in the 'Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi' . . . attributed to Geoffrey of…

Analyzes the relations between verse form and meaning in ShT and PF. In the first, patterns of closed and open couplets (where rhymes do or do not "coincide with syntactical closure") align with sententiousness and its uses; in the second, the…

Identifies a "number of medieval commonplaces" in KnT that support the notion that "greater idealism" is what distinguishes Palamon from Arcite, i.e., a "loftier" view, more a matter of theodicy than determinism.

Rejects exegetical readings of BD that construe the poem as a wholesale Christian allegory, but argues that Christian consolation is nevertheless conveyed through resurrection imagery (birds, horns, harts, etc.) and details of "sleeping, dreaming,…

Describes the contents of a page in Nottingham University Library, MS ME LM 1, that includes a "genuine witness" to Gent and several English and Latin proverbs,; also shows that the version of Gent in Cambridge University Library Gg. 4.27.1b "has no…

Details way in which the dialogue between the Dreamer and Black Knight in BD "closely follows the pattern of the first two books" of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," with the Dreamer paralleling Philosophy and the Knight the character…

Suggests that behind several legal maxims found in RvPT stands the broader principle of measuring one law by another: "the old by the new, the Continental by the English, the private by the public, the Mosaic by the Christian."

Suggests that in the drama of CT the Summoner's idea of friars residing in Satan's arse (SumP) was prompted by the demon's promise to the summoner in FrT that he would know the devil's "privetee" (3.1637), an echo of the Miller's claim about "Goddes…

Characterizes Criseyde in TC as a good, even perfect, courtly heroine until she is unfaithful to Troilus, a result of the very human "weakness in the face of death." More than does Boccaccio in "Filostrato," Chaucer creates a sense of inevitability…

Uses allegorical interpretations from Hugh of St. Cher to show how the exegetical equation of cock and preacher is consistently upended in the description and actions of Chauntecleer in NPT, offering a mock allegory where "fruit is chaff."

Identifies "structural similarities" among BD, PF, and HF, arguing that each poem is an "elaborate narrative orchestrating a moral theme from some work of antiquity . . . foreshadowed in [its] preamble." Each is reminiscent of Macrobius's "enigmatic…

Associates the Wife of Bath with the antic "rogue figure of wife" from conventional "low comedy" or "pantomime," more lively and vivid than realistic. Derived from the "topsy-turvy" world of conventional comedy, the Wife gains readers' sympathy…

Discusses references to five saints in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and comments briefly on Chaucer's uses of four of them (Peter, John, Julian, and Mary).

Observes that Chaunticleer's mistaken reference to Macrobius as the author of the "Somnium Scipionis" (7.3124) may suggest that NPT predates PF (i.e., "no later than 1386"), where Macrobius is accurately identified as the author of the "Commentary"…

Establishes Nikos Kazantzakis's familiarity with Chaucer, evident in his discussion in "England: A Travel Journal" (1941) of a passage from SumT; then suggests that the Tale may have influenced Kazantakis's depiction of a monk in his novel "The…

Reports on the activities and membership of the Chaucer Library Committee, with a statement of its goals and prospective publications.

Describes similarities and differences "between fourteenth-century and modern biography" and argues that medieval writers of verse fiction were interested in characters "as individuals." A "sense of abundant life" is generated by the ironies and…

Treats the Host of CT as a psychological character whose recurrent levity disguises neither his pride nor the fact that he is "hen-pecked" by his wife, Goodelief. Essentially comic and naturalistic, Harry participates significantly in the marriage…