Browse Items (16472 total)

Though Ovid's influence on Jean de Meun and Chaucer has long been recognized as far as mythology and irony are concerned,Ovid's "neoteric" narrative techniques also provided models for the two writers; cf. Chaucer's BD, TC, and WBT.

In contrast with Augustinian models, the poetic use of obscenity provides a nontraditional method of self-definition. For Rutebeuf, the obscene served to establish his own poetic identity; for Chaucer, it provided a means for characters to establish…

Higden's Latin universal history reflects his critical and individual approach. Trevisa's translation and its continuations further this individuality. The Wife of Bath also reworks authorities in a distinctive way, bending them so that Chaucer's…

A comprehensive study of CT glosses (except Mel and MkT), indicating that Chaucer himself provided many of them; summary of previous scholarship and descriptions of the glosses.

Latin and French antifraternal works preceded English ones, which display a distinctive treaatment of friars as peddlars,as in Chaucer's SumT. In the Renaissance, antifraternal writing gradually disappeared from Britain, along with the friars.

The two great poems of Chaucer and Spenser employ poetics even closer to each other than previously recognized. Just as Th in contrast to KnT revises perception of CT, Spenser's Thopas subverts orthodox interpretation. Both poems, by deferring…

Permeating Chaucer's writing, Augustinian psychology and philosophy can be foregrounded in interpreters' theater productions of TC.

As poets representing themselves in their works and as civil servants, Chaucer and Spenser shared much. Instead of misreading his predecessor, Spenser reveals more grasp than previously noted of Th, SqT, and PF.

With few exceptions, medieval German and English texts depict female authority figures as truth-tellers. Female saints reveal the falseness of male antagonists, but queens lose their power to men who lie, act violently, and rule efficiently. CT…

Although critics have generally seen Mel as a simple allegory in fairly close translation, the Tale departs from Renaud in significant ways to question the nature of authority (good advice can be wrong; authorities can disagree; motivations can…

Beheading appears frequently in Indo-European, Old Germanic, and Old and Middle English narratives, with varying connotations. The textual history of PrT shows this element as sometimes deleted and sometimes restored.

Half a millenium before Freud, Chaucer's WBT asks "What does woman want?" In light of recent critical theory, this question is explored in the works of Gabriela Mistral and Gillian Clarke as well as in WBT.

Ovid and the Ovidian tradition provided Chaucer with a poetic ranging from the "game" of Ars Amatoria to the "ernest" of Tristia. Chaucer uses rhetoric to various ends with the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, and the Canon. In Ret, however, Chaucer…

The "forms of allegory" found in Walter of England's Latin "Fabulae," as well as its "structure and vocabulary of scholastic presentation, profoundly influenced the fables of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and Robert Henryson." Discusses NPT,…

With the fourteenth-century philosophical division between faith and reason, or single and multiple authorities, English poetry reveals new tensions, as shown in "Pearl," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and "Piers Plowman." HF,with its many…

Discusses Pasolini's trilogy of films adapted from Boccaccio's "Decameron," Chaucer's CT, and "The Arabian Nights." Looking at the trilogy in the contexts of film and of literature, Rumble investigates the cultural and ideological implications of…

Though some of Chaucer's works are now considered ironic, satirical of the narrator's persona, Chaucer experimented with genuine pathos in SNT, MLT, PrT, SqT, and LGW.

MLP and other comments suggest that late-medieval readers were "disconcerted" by Gower's repeated treatments of incest. Examination of his poem reveals him (through Genius) turning Amans from the incestuous love of Venus and Cupid to pure heavenly…

Studies the ways "expressions of romantic fulfillment are disrupted by the excesses and inconsistencies that desire produces in the narrative developments and rhetorical gestures" of works about love by Chaucer, Montemayor, Sidney, and Shakespeare.

Middle English "hap" develops a network of meanings among texts--from providential in "Patience"; to Chaucer's Boethian applications in TC; to the varied ill luck, astrological destiny, and providence of Malory--thus demonstrating the impossibility…

The term "Scottish Chaucerians," evolving from Henryson's "Testament of Criseyde," proves inaccurate, overly limited, and unfortunate, since the fifteenth-century Scottish poets,superior to their English contemporaries, initiated their nations great…

Explores "narrative space" as represented in the Bayeux Tapestry, a world map of 1300, two French romances, Dante's "Commedia," and CT to show that the modern anxiety generated by them can be dispelled by understanding built-in signs.

Discusses thematic and structural implications of parody and analogy in various Chaucerian works and other medival literature.

Though reduced to a symbol in KnT, Emelye foreshadows the Christian virgin; in MLT, despite her passivity and the rhetoric surrounding her, Constance engages audience sympathy and imparts a Christian message; in SNT, Cecilia reveals divine light.

HF, PF, and LGW are examples of "play" in Huizinga's sense. At once occasional poems and investigations of poetic theory, they act together to permit Chaucer to depart, in CT, from traditional poetics and perhaps politics.