Browse Items (16443 total)

Fifteen essays by various hands. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Historical and Editorial Studies in Medieval and Early Modern English under Alternative Title.

The introduction to this critical edition addresses cultural, historical, syntactic, and metrical aspects pertinent to Chaucer's works as well as to those of Charles of Orleans.

Nine essays on medieval food and drink, including their representation in medieval art and poetry.

On Charles d'Orleans's debt to Chaucer

Similarities to Ovid's young Medea give Criseyde's character innocence; to Helen, guile, and reluctance to decide; while references to Oenone prefigure treachery in the connection to Paris' betrayal and the war. Ovidian references undercut the…

Describes and analyzes a deed of property conveyance indicative of the complex relations and interactions among Thomas Chaucer, Richard Wyot, William Paston, Sir John Fastolf, John, duke of Bedford, and others. Compares Thomas Chaucer's appended seal…

Explores the medievalism of three contemporary English writers; includes discussion of Chaucerian echoes in John Fowles's "A Maggot."

John Fowles's novel"A Maggot," set in eighteenth-century England, is similar to CT in several ways, from its opening premise to its general structure as a series of "tales" (reconstructions of mysterious events surrounding a death) told by various…

Explains how the "vernacular rising" expanded Chaucer's and Gower's readership to include "lesser merchants and prosperous artisans" (Introduction and Chapter 1). Chapters 4 and 5 emphasize LGW. In contrasting Gower and Chaucer, argues that in LGW,…

Describes the limited presence of Chaucer in the early American films, commenting on a Motion Picture Academy educational promotion and a "distorted" version of PardT, "On Borrowed Time" (1939). Offers five reasons for this scarcity:…

Examines Chaucer's use of Boccaccio's Teseida as a source for KnT. Also argues that by having the Miller parody the story of Palamon and Arcite, Chaucer transforms his own work, as well as Boccaccio's text, into a fabliau.

In TC, Diomede, rather than Troilus, functions as the second Hector, and Diomede is the only hero who escapes the cycle of Theban and Trojan violence. At a dangerous time in English history, Chaucer desires a healing ideology for England; his turn…

Focuses on how the idiomatic phrase "for goddes love" is used in TC as "an expression of power" and how the phrase "appeals to a divine system of mercy and justice" when used by Troilus, Criseyde, and Pandarus.

Explores "the historiographic importance of Troy . . . in the formation of an English literary tradition as defined by the idea of authorship and negotiated through genre . . . . particularly epic, romance and history." Studies the sources and…

Shows that Lucan's "Bellum civile," the medieval "accessus" tradition, and "vitae Lucani" together depict the Roman poet as a "violated female," victimized by his "tyrannical emperor," and abruptly silenced, arguing that this legacy influenced LGW…

Applies portrait of the Physician in GP to a close reading of PhyT; the imperfect Physician is Chaucer's criticism of medical doctors.

In light of linguistic, legal, and folkloric traditions, Dorigen's speech to Aurelius in the garden--a moment of dialogue within the larger dialogue of the pilgrims--does not constitute a promise. Rashly made promises were not considered legally…

Chaucer's proverbs in HF point up the provocative tension between orality and literacy in the Middle Ages. Ultimately, however, the poem illustrates that Chaucer favors literacy.

Argues that lines 81-120 of HF are Chaucer's adaptation of the topos of the "book curse," tracing the "speech act origin" of the curse and exploring Chaucer's use of the device to "tease his audience and manipulate its expectations."

Suggests that in TC 1.531-32 Troilus is referring to Tristan as a much-rhymed-about fool in love, adducing evidence of general familiarity with Tristan's foolishness in John Gower, Robert Mannyng, and PF.

Argues that Shakespeare's works have more often been adapted to the screen than Chaucer's works because the latter have widely been considered to be "guarded by experts." Comments on the Troilus frontispiece, Jonathan Myerson's animated adaptation of…

Aronstein shows how Henryson, influenced by late-fifteenth-century attitudes toward women, especially prostitutes, returns the story of Criseyde to its pre-Chaucerian misogynistic purpose. The article examines the story's literary history and its…

Explores interrelations among youth, old age, virginity, and chastity in PhyT and WBPT as they "reveal the links between eroticism and control over bodies." Includes an abstract in English.

MerT is an ethical narrative in which the aenigmalogue (puzzling narrative surface) is blended with the apologue (Augustinian "oversense"), thus revealing the Merchant as a Manichean and January as a parody of Jovinian. The apologue is signaled by…

The Sara mentioned in MerT may not refer to Sara the wife of Abraham, as is commonly thought, but to Sara of Rages from the book of Tobit--a symbol of ideal marriage and a strong thematic contrast to January and May. The Merchant's late reference…