Browse Items (16381 total)

Argues that Chaucer's decasyllabic lines are based on metrically significant, statistically normative feet, with clear and significant caesuras. Chaucer's and Shakespeare's iambic lines deviate from prototypical lines in similar ways. See Thomas…

Critiques Youmans and Li's assessment of Chaucer's verse (in this same volume, pp. 153-75), urging metricists to avoid "importing phonological analyses" into theory of meter.

Of roughly 30,000 lines of Chaucer's iambic pentameter, only a tiny subset are variant. The majority of his lines follow a template of ten syllables, each foot beginning with a weak syllable. The essay refers specifically to FranT.

Olson examines Gerard of Odo's "Facetus, multa documenta," a commentary on Aristotle's "Nichomachean Ethics," as background to the Prioress's description in GP. The Franciscan commentary may indicate that the courtliness of the description is more…

The treatment of Cupid in the various works of Bodleian MS Fairfax 16 reveals a cultural transition from the Gallic tradition of the supremacy of love-and from the Latinate tradition of the supremacy of religion-to a new English poetic tradition.…

In TC, Criseyde's appeals to Hector for clarification of her status in Troy suggest that Criseyde seeks a romantic response from Hector rather than the official response she receives. This disappointment acts as a catalyst for future behavior in the…

The description of the Prioress's rosary exemplifies Chaucer's word play and his literary engagement with other writers, particularly Jean de Meun and Ovid. Fleming compares the Prioress's rosary with rosaries in medieval art and assesses the…

Brosamer investigates hell-mouth imagery in PardT, MLT, and LGWP, drawing upon a number of sources, especially De miseria condicionis humane by Pope Innocent III. The corruption of sin has an alimentary dimension, from ingestion to defecation.

Jager draws upon commentary by Jacques Le Goff and Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum regarding how time was measured in the late Middle Ages. He argues that ShT indicates how merchant time, space, and values triumph over those of the Church, because of an…

Kolve investigates the iconic importance of Criseyde's dream of the eagle and Troilus's dream of the boar and their embedded affiliations with the sun. In TC, these images illustrate the gap in the worth of two men and underscore the poor choice…

Ganim argues that Mary Shelley was influenced by her father, William Godwin, who wrote "Life of Chaucer" and from whom she learned a dual attitude toward the Middle Ages: people are shaped by historical circumstances, and they must seek to rise above…

Compares RvT with its analogue in Boccaccio's "Decameron" and with the Middle High German "Studentenabenteuer," exploring their concerns with disorder and its effects.

Challenges patristic criticism for its claim that medieval literature is univocally concerned with asserting Christian "caritas" allegorically, arguing instead that poetry has a right to "say what it means and mean what it says." Illustrates the…

Summarizes theories and meanings of conventional mythographic images and allusions in medieval literature, derived from classical fables and allegorized in late-classical and medieval commentaries on such fables. Includes comments on the allusion to…

Advocates a "contextual" approach to source study, arguing that several discussions of Dante's influence on Chaucer depend upon weak correspondences, better treated as shared tradition than direct influence. Discusses the lists of lovers in PF and…

Examines critical opinions about the presence of mythic, folkloric, and ritualistic images and allusions in medieval English literature, commenting on various works and critical views of them: "Beowulf," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," accounts of…

Contrasts the unequivocal hermeneutics of "eating a book"--i.e., internalizing the text of the Bible and its "one true meaning"--as depicted in the illustration of the Cloisters Apocalypse (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection, MS 68.174)…

Interrogates Chaucer's diminishment or elimination of Scottish, Irish, and especially Welsh aspects of his narrative materials in WBT, FranT, and MLT, arguing that he associated the Celtic fairy world with death, as it is also associated in "Sir…

Explores textual and lexical ambiguities in the scene of Arcite's mortal fall in KnT (I.2684–91), discussing "furie" (forty manuscripts read some form of fire), "pighte," and "pomel" (neither of which is lexically certain). Suggests that emending…

Objects to the labeling of the loathly "wyf" in WBT as a "hag," arguing that the latter term is inappropriate and tendentious, especially since the Tale lacks a description of ugliness found in its analogues.

Points out lines of ClT not included in either of the Latin and French sources and considers the meanings of these additions by Chaucer. Argues that Walter is characterized as stricter in ClT, and discusses the narrator Clerk's position in relation…

Examines the women in Chaucer's fabliaux in connection with the antifeminist tradition. Hamaguchi argues that Chaucer's view of women was complex, partly affected by the antifeminist tradition yet partly sympathetic to the feminist position.

Postcolonial analysis of the Dido account in LGW reveals that when Dido accuses Aeneas of ruining her reputation, Chaucer simultaneously accuses Virgil of "epistemic imperialism," a function of the "unreliability of representation." Hamaguchi…

Items not seen; the WorldCat records indicate that these studies were published in English.

Discusses whether the dubious Eglentyne of GP is the right person to tell the pious tale. Chaucer's genius makes her succeed in putting deep human and feminine emotion into the tale.