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Chaucer's TC responds to antifeminsit treatment of the Criseida character, especially Boccaccio's; Henryson's version replies to Chaucer.

TC shows Chaucer's ambivalence about the language of courtly love; he uses it denotatively with romantic meaning yet reveals its duplicity through Troilus's idealism, Diomede's cynicism, Pandarus's manipulativeness, and Criseyde's combined sincerity…

Later medieval literature (as represented by Chaucer and others) demonstrates "cultural anxiety," manifested through marginal glosses, commentary, and illumination that make each manuscript unique, unlike modern printings.

"Sonotations" (generated by sound patterns that affect both denotation and connotation) appear in rhymed and alliterative verse.

Not mere ornament, the "effictio,"or physical and spiritual portrait, had become a fixed literary convention by the time of Geoffrey of Vinsauf. Bice analyzes Chaucerian characters from GP, KnT, NPT, and MilT, as well as from "Sir Gawain and the…

The popular tradition of conviviality in Merrie Olde England stretches back through Shakespeare to Chaucer.

Richard II's reign produced political upheaval that redefined treason not only politically but also as reflected in literary depictions of love.

In medieval literature, the human (especially the female) body is treated ambivalently--as ideal, as erotic, and as grotesque, as with Chaucer's Pardoner ("feminized male grotesque") and characters in BD, LGW, KnT, MLT, PrT, ClT, and SNT.

Medieval optical theory recognized two types of mirrors, one aiding vision and the other inverting images.

Writing for an audience that knew animals and animal lore well (from physical interaction, folklore, and religious tradition), Chaucer appealed to, influenced, and manipulated this lore in HF, PF, PT, and TC.

Among the narrative techniques employed to achieve authorial purposes, Chaucer's characterization of Dorigen in FranT shows her postponing her ultimately necessary conformity with male ideologies by contemplating authoritative tales based on those…

Lane's previously unedited and unprinted pastoral poem of 1621, modeled on Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender", follows Chaucer in using verse narratives of varying genres (e.g., fabliau and romance) to illustrate its themes (the vices of the age;…

The outworn paradigm of courtly love has been discarded but not superseded by a model flexible enough to contain the many variations developed by "moralists and gameplayers." Treats troubadour verse, French and English romances and lyrics, and…

After the anonymity of earlier times, fourteenth-century writing reveals increasing individuation and attention to the gender of an author. Chaucer's fictional women writers indicate an anxious sense on his part of declining "auctoritas, whereas…

Warfare and plague made English people of the later fourteenth century unprecedentedly aware of death. The Black Prince and John of Gaunt's first father-in-law, despite their heroic image in chronicles, died of unromantic diseases.

Comparison of Criseyde with Boccaccio's Criseida shows that Chaucer sets forth her characterization in Books 1-3: She is fearful, alone, aware of her position, and easily manipulated. These traits, which foreshadow her future, are less evident in…

In the flux that overturned feudal patriarchal society, the position of the widow was destabilized; the social station of Chaucer's Criseyde contrasts with that of Shakespeare's Cressida, as well as that of widows in other Renaissance works.

Morris's effort to alter romance to the art of the community evokes the image of Chaucer as a forerunner. The envoy sends the book forth to meet its public and its master, Chaucer.

Since the fourteenth century can be seen as a distant mirror of postmodern culture, "Walter's abuse and Griselda's passive resignation" merit study in the light of twentieth-century psychological insights.

In the light of medieval "artes poetriae," rhetoric is perceived as feminine. Chaucer's hagiography, courtly romance, and fabliaux demonstrate rhetoric in various modes: as chaste, "pedestal," and wanton, especially as voiced by the Clerk and the…

Cross-disciplinary evidence (since the publication of Phillipe Aries's "Centuries of Childhood") indicates that strong love between parents and children existed in medieval culture. Chaucer, Gower, and the "Pearl" poet represent children and family…

Though recent studies of Dunbar emphasize the traditional, the Scottish, and the Renaissance elements of his poetry, his aureate verse derives from familiarity with the rhetoric of Dante and Boccaccio, and his prosody from Chaucer. He is closer to…

Chaucer and Marie de France simultaneously contribute to the development of vernacular literature and subvert its conventions through parody, pastiche, and resistance to existing gender models.

Despite the apparent variablility of the genre in English, six Breton lays demonstrate distinctive characteristics, influenced by the turbulent fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England that produced them. Though they deal with difficult issues of…

Chaucer's Troilus derives from three reflections of the "Iliad": classical, the Christian-allegorical, and the romance. Sarpedon's feast is central to TC, with classical, Scholastic, and finally Dantesque treatment of free will, fate, and…