Browse Items (16381 total)

Chapter 8 discusses differences between aristocratic and lower-class desire in PF, exploring how endless desire establishes sovereignty in the poem. The essay also assesses the relations of the poem with Scots tradition, especially the version of…

Scottish Chaucerians emphasize the different aspects of Chaucer's work--love fiction: "The Kingis Quair;" retribution: Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid;" and diction: Dunbar's "Thrissill and the Rose."

Compares the figures of the Old Man in PardT and Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus," arguing that each represents the "Christian paradox of moral strength manifesting itself in physical weakness."

Examines Fortune in the Roman tradition, in Boethius, in Latin commentaries on the "Consolatione," in King Alfred's adaptation, and in Notker's exegesis.

KnT's structure is paratactic, and the end is repeatedly called for but not brought into being. As a result, the ending is merely a ceasing of action, not closure, which would satisfy our need for aesthetic and philosophical completeness.

Contrasts human song and birdsong in GP, NPT, MilT, PrT, and PF: humans employ reason to understand and appreciate music, while birds sing purely for pleasure. Generally, the human voice is "an indicator of how Chaucer's characters misuse their…

Assesses "iterations of sadomasochistic historophilia"--a term coined term here--in Chaucer's "use of Trojan and Theban history" in TC, examining the "role of Statius's "Thebaid," the place of Criseyde's collar-like Theban brooch, and the narrator's…

Item not seen. The WorldCat record indicates that this is a Dutch prose adaptation of CT for juvenile audience, with illustrations by Carll Cneut.

Maintains that "rondeaux tercet" is the precise name for the verse form of the three stanzas of MercB and of the song at the end of PF.

The Prioress's worldly graces and associations with Mary are well-suited to her esteemed position of religious and social power. Frank speculates that Chaucer chose PrT for its associations with the "cult of Notre Dame du Puy."

Chaucer and his fellow pilgrims saw Madame Eglentyne as the Virgin's handmaiden, reflecting in her foibles and virtues the Queen of Heaven, whose "amor vincit omnia" (love conquers all). Support for the existence of the Marian echoes includes the…

Identifies a politically cautious reference to CT in the "opening lines" of the "Kingdomes Weekly Intelligence," no. 241, "covering the week of Dec. 28, 1647, to Jan. 4, 1648.

Argues that the "emblematic Mary legend of the medieval 'puys'" is analogous to PrT, that the description of the Prioress in GP is "as Marian" as it is courtly, and that Chaucer had access to information about the "puys."

Introduces the goals and intentions of the "Chaucer Review," describing the publishing aims of the newly established journal.

Evaluates LGW as a series of brief narrative poems, assessing LGWP as an account of Chaucer's experiment with choosing a new subject matter for poetry (one that is "essentially alien to the code of courtly love") and gauging the importance of the…

Argues that Chaucer amplifies Boccaccio's "Filostrato" in order "to expand our awareness of both the values and limitations . . . of idealized human love," using brief and long expansions as well as lengthy additions. Complexly presented, the love in…

Reads RvP as a "confession of old age" and RvT as a "tribute" to unrestrained passion and an extension of the concern with love in KnT and MilT. Compares RvT with its analogues, and comments on its characterizations, the straightforwardness of its…

Rejects the argument that Chaucer abandoned LGW out of weariness or boredom on the grounds that Chaucer had long been interested in classical love stories, that he took time to revise LGWP, that he employed abbreviation and "occupatio" effectively in…

Argues that, although derived from differing sources, the three parts of PF--the prelude, the garden of love, and the debate--are unified in their presentation of three perspectives on love. Framed as a conventional love vision, the poem juxtaposes a…

LGW demonstrates the fundamental importance of the tale or story at the end of the Middle Ages.

Through pathos, Chaucer evokes the audience's sympathy, thus transforming PrT, MLT, and ClT from mere tales of wonder or religious abstraction into convincing, dramatic treatments of the virtues they celebrate.

Argues that Chaucerians should assess more explicitly the consequences of critical readings: for instance, interpreting Alison of Bath as a murderer or Criseyde as having an incestuous affair with Pandarus.

Although Chaucer's "tales of pathos"--MLT, ClT, PhyT, PrT, and MkT--do not constitute a genre, they share characteristics: lack of comedy, absence of irony, little complexity, abstract settings, and characters "motivated by a single virtue." Each…

Anti-Semitism is a commonplace in miracles of the Virgin, the special enmity between the Virgin and the Jews deriving from the apocryphal "Transitus." Some miracles end in conversion of the Jews; others in their destruction wholesale; PrT in…

Although only seventy years separated Dante's and Chaucer's creative peaks, different philosophies affected their attempts to communicate divine truth through poetry. Reflecting Augustinian philosophy, Dante believed that all things divine could be…