Browse Items (16381 total)

The letters provide a new perspective on the uprising of 1381,the usurpation of 1399, and exploitation of the language of love.

Appreciative criticism of CT, particularly Chaucer's realism, stylistic variety, and deft characterization, including that of his own persona. Comments on his life and language and on the appropriateness of individual tales to their tellers. Reads…

Provides "some scholarly background information" about the Pardoner intended for teachers of high school senior English classes, summarizing studies by Tupper, Kittredge, Curry, and Patch, and focusing on why Chaucer may have invested this Canterbury…

Appreciative character description of the Host as director of the tale-telling contest, literary critic, and tour guide.

Advocates imitative role-playing as a way to teach Chaucer. Students select pictures from newspapers and magazines, create characters from the pictures, and develop stories for the characters to tell. Stories are told during an imaginary journey,…

Pedagogical approach to CT for an eleventh-grade honors survey of British literature, combining popular twentieth-century music with activities related to CT: analysis of GP descriptions, story-telling, and writing assignments.

Describes an approach to teaching CT involving the composition and recording of rap lyrics and the creation of illuminated manuscripts.

Suggests that efforts to create "verse-narratives" in the manner of Dante and Chaucer might be useful tools in the teaching of writing.

Traces idiomatic usage of "yes" and "no" in responses to questions in the English language, comparing it with German usage to illustrate the influence of the Celtic, Brittonic language. Concludes by exploring roots of the English method of response…

Discusses Chaucer as the first English poet laureate in a larger argument for the political impetus behind the selection of Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Samuel Rogers, and Alfred Tennyson as laureate poets of the Victorian period.

Treats the scansion of "high" and "sly" in works by Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve--all "careful metrists"--as evidence of the demise of "inflection of monosyllabic adjectives (final -e for weak and plural adjectives)." Posits that irregularities in…

Absolves the Merchant of the illegal practices, usurious dealings, and insolvency previously inferred by critics, providing historical information and examples that indicate that the GP description portrays a skilled practitioner who "gives a public…

Reads Chaucer's summary of Virgil's "Aeneid" in Book 1 of HF as comic--a parody of several practices of "exegetical grammar," including translation, "dictiones ethicae" (soliloquies), paraphrase, and moral interpretation. The purpose of the parody is…

Reads the noun "swan" as "swain" in the rhyming comparison with "Jovinyan" in SumT 3.1930, adducing logic, consistency of imagery, and source material.

Describes the extract/summary of the "Plowman's Tale" in Henry Vaughn's "The Golden Fleece" (1626, under the pseudonym "Orpheus Junior") and explores his claim that Chaucer influenced Wycliff through this spurious tale.

Identifies lines from Machaut's "La Fonteinne Amoureuse" and from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" as direct sources of words and details in BD.

Studies the "ape-image" in HF 1212, identifying analogues in Dante's "Inferno" and in Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose," and observing that the topos poses the "difficulty of distinguishing true from false, original from imposture," and art from…

Identifies details in TC and KnT that reflect the influence of the version of the Thebes legend found in the "Ovide Moralisé."

Comments on the possible meanings of the phrase "in worth" in the apostrophe to Venus in the Proem to Book 3 of TC.

Suggests that a portion of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5.23-24) is a source for the Wife of Bath's comments on precedence at the offertory (GP 1.449-522).

Documents various "medieval representations of Hell's Mouth," and suggests that the example in ManP (9.35-40) complements the concern with Last Judgment in ParsP.

Joseph's Conrad's epigraph to "The Rescue" quotes FranT 5.1342-44, and the two works share concern with "chivalric idealism" and 'amour courtois'." The heroines of the two works are "captives of illusion," and they abandon courtly suitors when…

Criseyde's allusion to Prudence with "eyen thre" is derived from Dante's "Purgatorio," 29.132; but since the Italian reference is cryptic in style and symbology, Chaucer was probably also influenced by glosses and illuminations for the passage,…

The famous descriptive epithet of the Clerk, "And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche" (GP, 308), may have been suggested by a sentence from Seneca's epistle to Lucilius (VI,4): "Ego vero omnia in te cupio transfundere, et in hoc aliquid gaudeo…

In forecasting Monday as the date of the flood, Nicholas seized on John's belief in current superstitions of the day's ill reputation, due both to its etymological association with the unstable moon and to the tradition of certain "perilous Mondays,"…