Browse Items (16471 total)

The introductory lines in question (Th-MelL *2143-54), if analyzed syntactically, lexically, and rhetorically, indicate that the "litel tretys" is Mel itself, rather than CT generally or the source of Mel.

NPT achieves the status of high comedy when one perceives that its fowl hero, Chauntecleer, is a commentary on Troilus of the earlier TC.

Chaucer's learned audience would have seen great irony in Daun Russell's allusion to the cock in Nigel de Longchamps's "Speculum stultorum": that cock, unlike Chauntecleer, had the intelligence to refuse to crow. The textual Chauntecleer is…

The elements of NPT--"beast fable, debate, Catonian assertion,Latin translation"--would have evoked in the audience schoolboy memories of Aesop, Cato, and learning exercises.

Establishes relationships between CYP and parts of CYT. The Yeoman shows himself as unstable as alchemy, caught between desire for success and fear of losing his soul.

Examining the ambiguous meaning of "ignotum per ignocius" (line 1457) explains the Yeoman's criticism of alchemy.

Details in ManT parallel the character and life of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix; this is consistent with the tale's interest in gossip and aristocratic misbehavior.

ManP and ManT reveal, through Lacanian insights, Chaucer's position as court poet. The Manciple's silencing of the Cook prefigures the tale in which the regal Phebus, who cages both his free-spirited wife and the truth-telling crow, kills and…

Though often viewed as the most unloved of the CT, ParsT is a fitting climax to the pilgrimage; it is a handbook for the play of the ultimate "sport," the race to salvation.

Like Augustine in his "Retractiones," Chaucer uses Ret to survey his literary career, embodying ideas on the function of memory, experience, literature, and truth.

Although in Bo Chaucer maintains fidelity to his source, he manipulates language through periphrastic derivatives, lexical and syntactic experimentation, combined translations, double and alternate translations, and doublets. Bo as we have it was…

Compares Bo with Jean de Meun's and other versions and discusses Chaucer's translation technique and style. Scholars need more information on Chaucer's use of Jean de Meun and on medieval French translations of "De consolatione philosophae."

In BD, Chaucer uses "the ambiguous status of the dream, as irresponsible fantasy and as vision of truth," to defend poetic fiction. Only in the "context of the figurative" does "the literal possess its full rhetorical power."

BD provides at once a reaction to its French predecessors of three centuries and also the means by which they can be reexamined.

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."