Browse Items (16381 total)

Functioning in the tradition of "melancholia canina" treatises, Chaucer's dog in BD acts as a catalyst for the melancholy dreamer and enables him to relieve his sorrow.

Muscatine's "Gothic form" applies to BD with its "linear series of discrete episodes" and foci, as well as its shifts in viewpoint, style, and voice. Interpretations move in a hermeneutical circle without resolution: from parts to whole, from whole…

Contrary to N. F. Blake, textual evidence does not support a rejection of Thynne's edition and his unique lines 31-96 for BD; nor do textual and linguistic matters prove their authenticity. The passage fits into the poem and its thematic patterns…

The hunt passages in BD involve technical terms that have not been fully understood, e.g., "embosed," "forloyn," and "strake." The literal hunt dissolves to a metaphorical one in which the dreamer seeks the hurt heart. In terms of the narrator's,…

Controversy has arisen over Derek Price's theory that Chaucer wrote Equat. Apparently, Chaucer did not. Although Morton's "stylometry" test supports this view, the test itself reveals weaknesses.

By dating HF's composition and first public reading in December, 1379, we can see the unfinished last lines as a joke purposely played on Cardinal Pileo's messenger, Nicolo,whose news that no marriage would take place between Richard II and Caterina…

Chaucer transforms Bede's commentary on the symbolism in Saint John's vision. Chaucer twists the beryl, the eagle, the four beasts, the seven stars, and numerology, giving a sense that Lady Fame is an unlawful ruler. HF is purposely unfinished.

Using the three parts of the "virtue of Providence" as the basis for the three-book structure of HF, Chaucer implies that, although time moves forward through history, the past,present, and future exist all at once.

In the first line of HF, "say," the reading of the better texts, is preferable to that generally adopted, "singen."

Though the first two sections of HF abound in expressions of personal experience--"I saw," "I heard"--the pattern of use and the shaping force of art and science undermine the trustworthiness of appearance. The switch to third-person narrative in…

"Cloude," the word that ends the narrator's description of his celestial journey, calls attention to the diminished vision of Geffrey compared to that of Boethius's Thought, and the blurred understandings and dream categories offered in HF. The word…

The eagle in HF, pt. 2, with its immediate source in Dante's "Purgatorio," also parallels a passage in the "De vulgari eloquentia" (2.4) that cautions poets not to follow the "astripetam aquilam" ("star-seeking eagle"). The eagle is a parody of the…

Chaucer responds to the God of Love's charges against TC and the translation of Rom by avoiding confrontation. This response is not noncommittal but carries the message that one should be evenhanded, not extremist, when dealing with feminism.

LGWP may be viewed as the poet's last of four experiments in the dream-vision form and as a self-contained dream poem rather than a simple prologue. Chaucer affirms the visionary's initial views and attitudes but mocks the authority of its central…

Also published in Sheila Delany, Medieval Literary Politics: Shapes of Ideology (Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 74-87.

LGW's "Legend of Thisbe" paraphrases Ovid's story in "Metamorphoses," pt. 4, according to the rules of classical rhetoric. Chaucer's changes in Ovid's story resemble those of other medieval paraphrasers: his neutral narrative style is changed to…

The reader shares Chaucer's struggle with the difficulties of retelling the classical myths. Traces the adaptation of the persona to "Heroides," and Chaucer's renderings of stories to indeterminate readings and judgments. The use of sources entails…

As an ars poetica, LGWP shows that the poet is not a creator but a mediator, balancing vision with experience. This action serves to mediate between the extremes of "cupiditas" and "caritas," tempering the former with the latter.

In the Dido episode of LGW, Chaucer minimizes both Aeneas's destiny and his character, focusing on Dido's character and thus producing a (negative) feminist exemplum.

Argues that missing quires, rather than Chaucer's abandonment of LGW, account for its incompleteness and that a redactor, not Chaucer, revised LGWP in MS Gg.4.27.

A new text offered for these lines returns to the manuscript reading of "he" for Robinson's "she" in line 882, and with different punctuation. The new text resembles more closely the lines of Ovid that Chaucer is paraphrasing.

Although PF ends inconclusively, Chaucer gives it a sense of ending through the concluding roundel, which provides an image of resolution, affirming that, while life may be inconclusive, art can provide an ending.

By studying pre-Chaucerian and fourteenth-century traditions of Saint Valentine, springtime, hagiography, heortology, etc., Kelly tests the hypothesis that Chaucer invented the patron saint of matchmakers.

"Hood" is used both literally and figuratively by Chaucer. The problematic occurrence in TC 2.954 probably means "Don't be deferential."

To be part of the courtly love tradition, TC must exist outside the patriarchal feudal order and allow male and female equal power. However, the reality of a hierarchical social order creates ambivalence in the narrator toward his material.