Browse Items (16472 total)

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…

A universal theme of metamorphosis, compelled or voluntary, relates to both the natural mutability of human life and the boundaries and hierarchies set by society, as shown in four texts ranging from KnT (Actaeon) through Gower's Ovidian passages,…

William Thynne, the first true editor of Chaucer's oeuvre, performed fewer duties for the royal household than has been believed; thus, he had more time for editing. Familiar with the three previous printings and with many manuscripts, he built on…

Chaucer puts the allegorized Latin epic to various uses in five works: HF, TC, KnT, MilT (as comic and unsuccesful rebellion against the hierarchies of KnT), and LGW

Aware that their husbands (as chosen by their families or communities) will determine the nature of their lives, women have sought to choose their own husbands, a daring assumption of sovereignty in a patriarchal society. The Wife of Bath,…

The world view of the Breton Lay, as conceived by Marie de France, changed little before 1400. In FranT, Chaucer expands the genre with increased emphasis on passionate and "egalitarian" love in marriage, troth, and magnanimity, as solution to the…

Before Richard II's deposition, Chaucer affected an apolitical stance, while Gower became pro-Lancastrain. Poetic self-representation later gave way to politicized views in the works of Hoccleve, Scogan, and Lydgate. The dissertation also treats…

Considers the opposing theories of James Thorpe and G. Thomas Tanselle and emphasizes the need for full understanding of the aesthetic of meter, as with Chaucer's "heroic" line.

Examines right relations of individuals in the medieval Christian hierarchy as shown in the writings of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, the "Pearl" poet, Julian of Norwich, and Guillaume de Deguileville.

The body of Chaucerian apocrypha, "largely ignored" since 1900, deserves reconsideration for its relation to the canon and to Chaucer's reputation. The latter was affected less by the apocrypha than by linguistic factors and changing tastes. …

Analysis based on Michel Foucault and Judith Butler shows that, in a wide variety of medieval texts including CT, the speakers' situations affect their social position and their ability to refashion genres.

The complicated matrix of late-medieval law, with its efforts to seek truth (even by torture), sheds light on the historical dynamics of various works.

CT develops "horror and abjection" through struggles for mastery of many kinds, leaving its characters suspended between the Tabard and Canterbury amid images of mutilation and death. Chaucer critics may also be seen as pilgrims struggling among…

Though Chaucer has been scorned for creating humor, the bulk of CT is serious, and seriousness and humor should no longer be perceived as mutually antagonistic. Chaucer's humor develops as a structuring "glue" arising through literary methods that…

Argues that Gg is the earliest surviving effort to create a corpus of Chaucer's poetry and that codicological analysis of the manuscript reveals much about the reception of Chaucer in the fifteenth century.

Ovid undercuts epic male heroism, treating the emotional cost to the women deserted by Achilles, Theseus, Ulysses, and Aeneas and casting a shadow on these heroes in the works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer (KnT, LGW, TC). Bakhtin's views…