Browse Items (16381 total)

Describes the interrelationship in HF between oral and written forms of transmission of literature. Only through the poet's journey through space (bk. 2) can limitations imposed by literary conventions of written text be overcome.

In HF, Chaucer makes parodic use of traditional topics of the "artes grammaticae," especially in the Eagle's explanation of the propagation of sound and in Chaucer's treatment of the reliability and importance of "auctores."

Examines Froissart's and Christine de Pisan's treatments of fame and the role of the poet in bestowing it. Questioning this tradition in HF, "Chaucer's art is to mask his own opinions and to reveal his readers' to themselves."

In HF, the Eagle is a shamanistic guide; the labyrinthine House of Rumor, a shamanistic symbol.

Without arguing that Chaucer was a "source" for Mann, Riehle discusses stylistic and thematic parallels between HF and the Joseph novels. The epic humor of both Chaucer and Mann "reflects their deep sympathy with human life."

Although classical and medieval rhetorics stress conventional "topoi," love poetry also supposedly emphasizes originality and sincerity. Certain classical and medieval poets including Chaucer ironically play off convention against their own ideas.

In LGW, Chaucer uses the narrative approaches of hagiography (brevity, narrative selection, and focus for commemorative and edificational purpose) to achieve variations in tone and perspective. The heroines, however, are exempla of human, not…

Pairing three legends from LGW with three of the CT results in useful categories of Chaucer's pathos: Lucrece, PrT--naive portrayal of saintlike stereotype; Philomena, MLT--stock romantic figure of lady in distress; Hypermnestra, PhyT--pathetic, but…

In LGW, Chaucer explodes "the notion that women are, or should be, self-ordained victims." Women in Cupid's Paradise wallow in an "orgy of self-congratulation" for having died for love. The pathos of women destroyed by passion is emphasized in the…

Studied in the context of bird debates, of works by Andreas Capellanus and Machaut, and of Chaucer's own KnT, WBT, and FranT, PF shows generic mastery and artistic integrity.

Questioning the validity of searches for unity, Walker posits structural disunity residing in 'contentio' to account for how PF "hangs together."

A comparison of Criseida and Criseyde.

A total of 284 items including reviews.

Cassandra's "olde stories" of the Calydonian boar and of the siege of Thebes are not digressions but analogies that draw prophetic parallels between Troilus's situation and the circumstances of both the Trojan and the Theban wars. Past disputes led…

William Empson writes of the concentrated imagery and controlled partial confusion in TC. In book 5, Chaucer manipulates the imagery of the voyage, star-steer, sun-son, etc., to bring the poem to its climax, wherein the narrator cannot indict…

A shortened version of a paper in Medievalia et Humanistica 12 (1984): 167-85.

Chaucer alters Boccaccio's antifeminism and practical conclusion to "Il Filostrato" to emphasize contempt of the world and poetry.

In his most Boethian poem, Chaucer relies heavily on Nicholas Trevet's "Commentary" on the Consolation of Philosophy, even versifying one of Trevet's glosses and adopting his Aristotelian interpretation.

The prayer for might to "make in som comedye" (TC 5.1788) is not a scribal error but an indication that Chaucer may have seen the poet, like God, as a creator who enters his own fictive world and creates from "within" it.

The development of literary imagery and language in TC, book 3, reveals the distinctiveness of Chaucer's approach to Dante's "Purgatorio;" Chaucer's power and control over the language far exceed Boccaccio's in the "Filostrato."

In Pandarus's seduction of Criseyde in book 2 of TC and in Diomede's seduction of her in book 5, the gestures invite plural interpretations.

Corrects critical equations of narrative fiction with prose fiction; investigates narrative strategies and apocalyptic closure in TC.

Chaucer's changes from Boccaccio's 'Il Filostrato' in the swoon scenes develop the characterization of the three participants, adding comedy and reflecting medical treatments of the swoon.

In Brasdefer's "Pamphile et Galatee" appears Houdee, a professional go-between. Possibly Chaucer used Houdee as a basis for his Pandarus in TC, thus providing the earthy undercurrent beneath the Boccaccio source.

Invoking recent attempts by Minnis and by Allen to establish a medieval literary theory by which to measure Chaucer, Millett analyzes Chaucer's use in TC of the "auctor," "Lollius," a "transparent literary artifice." Through his "parody of the…