Browse Items (16381 total)

The manuscripts of the CT attest to the continuous, evolving, and unfinished nature of Chaucer's work on them from 1387 onward. The poet's intent in CT was to stretch the limits of inherited genres and expand the perceptions of his audience. The…

The fragment considers how well human beings can understand and order reality. KnT and MilT provide positive solutions: KnT through Boethian metaphysics; MilT by restricting sources of causation. The debate founders in RvT and CkT, where…

Chaucer's digressions distinguish the narrative structure of PardT, WBT, MerT, FranT, PhyT, and ManT from others of the period in a way not accounted for in rhetorical models of the period ("Confessio Amantis," "Decameron," "Ovide Moralise," "Gesta…

The tales in fragment D reveal a " connection between rhetorical and sexual manipulation."

The presence and function of the Knight's Yeoman have been neglected: to a contemporary audience he would represent a retainer of great authority and responsibility; hence the Knight's status is high indeed.

In the GP portrait Chaucer uses the metaphor of food that "snewed" to make an ironic comparison between the Franklin's epicureanism and the spiritual life represented by scriptural manna.

"Burdoun" as an obscene pun in Chaucer's description of the Pardoner in the GP is supported in Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and even more strikingly in Wyatt's poem "Ye Old Mule". The latter shows the ribald possibilities of the word as…

The bitterest controversy between "ancients" and "moderns" in fourteenth-century medicine concerned the treatment of wounds. Whereas Boccaccio in "Teseida" aligns his "medici" with the ancients and prolongs Arcita's death, Chaucer in KnT aligns…

MilT 3589-92 alludes to Matt. 5:27-30, where Christ condemns lechery, using the images of hand and eye. Chaucer uses the same imagery to condemn the lecher Nicholas, whose punishment is to be burned a "hand-brede aboute" his "nether ye." The same…

Stylistic or linguistic thickening is a key to meaning, as in selectional politeness. Abrupt shifts of topic, disruption of narrative frames, and lack of deference to the reader's expectations make MilT more "impolite."

Making the improbable seem momentarily probable, Chaucer risks offending his audience by telling a bawdy story, but he excuses himself and blames the Miller for any breach of good taste. Chaucer catches the reader off guard with the abrupt…

Tudd, the third shepherd of the Chester play, may be a priest's bastard (son of Tibb); his hauteur recalls the Miller's wife in RvT.

Only one analogue, Jean Bodel's "Gombert et les deus clers," includes after the cradle story a "moralitas" against the danger of harboring strangers (in Bodel, friars). The moral of RvT, spoken by the Cook (CkP 4331), recalls the passage.

MLT reflects the occupation of its teller both in its concern for "legal particularities" and in its vision of the beauty and order of the law, in such terms as "prudence" and forms of "govern." Constance's own name suggests "justitia."

"Thy wo and any wo man may sustene" is always printed thus, perhaps because the Ellesmere MS has a virgule between "wo" and "man." Hengwrt does not include a virgule, and a persuasive case can be made for printing "Thy wo, and any woman may…

The slandered Trotula as Dame Trote, or as a "trot," serves as a "type" of the Wife of Bath, personification of medieval misogyny, both medical and clerical.

The Wife's portrayal of the rape, the judgment, and punishment of the knight reflect wish fulfillment, legal anachronism, and the inversion of the natural order of legitimate authority, though the tale ends in "true freedom and order."

"At hom" referred to "one's native dwelling," while "bord" signified "meals." "Gossib" referred to the baptismal sponsor and suggests that the Wife may well have had children. Jankyn's being "At hom to bord / With my gossib" implies that he lived…

The two tales have a common ancestor, but the very different motives of the Confessor and of the Wife are reflected in the language texture. Gower's style complements his vision of order and harmony; WBT is more vivid, dramatic, and suspensful.

The energy of WBP derives from the Wife's "awareness of the tension between her centrality as speaker, and her experiential understanding of her marginality as female," since she voices her woman's feelings toward an overwhelming male audience with…

From the perspective of feminist criticism Hagen opposes the Kittredge "Marriage Group," insisting that what the Wife implies in "who peyntede the leon" applies to critics' versions as well as to the clerks' versions of the Wife's behavior.

Examines irony of WBP based both on antifeminism and on antimaritalism of medieval European literature and shows that Alison is a comic, dramatic character.

Recognizes the progress from "conflict" to "harmony" of authority and experience seen in both WBP and WBT within the framework of CT.

The astrological passages provide "alternative explanations of the same behavior"--both freedom and determinism--and explain antifeminism partly as male impotence. The Wife as "subject" exists in unresolvable tensions and indeterminancies.