Browse Items (16381 total)

The Monk's bald head and gleaming eyes recall medieval representations of Fortuna and her victims.

Edward Schweitzer has linked the scene of Absolon's kissing the "naked ers" with medieval medical cures of lovesickness. However, the episode may also draw on Ovid's proposal in "Remedia Amoris" that desperate lovers may be cured by witnessing the…

The instruments that January uses to solemnize his wedding in MerT are trumpets, the only instrument capable of making "loud mynstrancye."

A ballade by Eustache Deschamps poses a "demande d'amour" similar to that of the Loathly Lady in WBT, wherein a courtier is required to render judgment on a question of love.

Suggests that Spenser was influenced by the structure of SqT as well as by its subject matter.

The Host's question of Chaucer-the-pilgrim, "what man artow?" elicits triadic contexts for reading Th, whose prosody, parodic style, and plot are particularly informed by debate structures. These same contexts deconstruct Harry Bailly as adequate…

The exchange of Criseyde for Antenor in TC inserts "peple" and a "Parlement" into the negotiations described in "Il Filostrato," a change resulting from the political context of 1381, when the peasants revolted and Parliament became more sensitive to…

Chaucer's many references to Rome in CT reflect an interest that originated in a visit there. In particular, classical associations and the decoration of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere illuminate the style and meaning of SNT. A visit to Rome may have…

Leigh Hunt's "The Tapiser's Tale" amplifies our understanding of Hunt as a nineteenth-century Chaucerian. The poem both imitates Chaucer's language and verse and utilizes the setting, plot, and key motifs from Charles MacFarlane's account of…

Chaucer's MerT may have influenced William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury." Each work presents the pear tree as a central symbol in a plot focused on greed and deception, one comic and the other tragic. Chaucer's and Faulkner's narratives also…

Argues that the Host's oath by the "precious corpus Madrian" in CT (MkP 7.1892) refers to St. Hadrian or Adrian, adducing details from the "Golden Legend" and citing the Host's "untrained ear," as well as parallels with Melibee's wife, Prudence, and…

Adduces evidence from late-medieval maritime law and practice and from details in the GP description of the Merchant (compared with those of the Friar and the Clerk) to argue that the Merchant "has probably committed every money-crime in the books."

Reads Hoccleve's references to Chaucer as evidence of conventional respect for the older poet's work, rather than evidence of a personal relationship.

Traces the legacy of gladly learning and gladly teaching, from Plato's "Timaeus" in Chalcidius's translation through Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose" to the GP description of the Clerk (1.308), also noting the presence of the legacy in the…

Explicates the allusion to Joshua 9.21 in KnT 1.1422, and hypothesizes that KnT 1.2415-17 may allude to Samson.

Reads "hostes man" in SumT 3.1755 as referring to the "servant of the innkeeper at whose inn the two friars are staying," and adduces paleographical evidence for retaining unemended "swan" as a suggestive detail in SumT 3.1930.

Describes the commonplace "medieval notion of the hare's sexual peculiarities," locating it in several sources, and explicating its implications when applied to the Pardoner and his staring eyes in GP 1.684.

Pearcy traces the history and literary use of amphibology-'in Chaucer, a statement capable of two interpretations, uttered by a speaker with supernatural or oracular powers to a listener who can perceive only a meaning at variance with the true…

This final essay in a forum responds to preceding essays and argues that vernacular writing about religion is a political act subject to study as a "single area of discourse." Literary critics examining this area will find that "the logic that…

Robertson introduces a series of seven essays responding to Nicholas Watson's Speculum essay "Censorship and Cultural Change in Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel's Constitutions of 1409" (Speculum 70…

Pedagogical report on how to study animal and human identity in Hebrew Scripture, Ovid, and medieval narrative to acquire the interpretive skills to understand postmodern texts and culture. Animals in the imagery and narrative of KnT enable readers…

Argues that Chaucer's role in Spain in 1366 was as a "confidential messenger" of the Black Prince, adducing historical and biographical evidence as well as the attitude expressed about Pedro of Spain in MkT 7.2375ff.

Explores "inversions of the material and the immaterial" in the description of the temple of Mars in KnT, describing how the narrator of the description is both "subjectless and immaterial," and investigating "how we think about what we imagine we…

Includes the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in conceptualizing the global North Atlantic, and argues that in several places in CT (e.g., GP description of Knight, MLT, Pedro in MkT) Chaucer uses paradigms that are similar to those of "settler…

Explores the sources and ironies of the disquisition on dreams that opens HF, and argues that its list of "six dream words" (HF 7-12) are made up of "three contrasting pairs," each of which is "distinguished by a contrast between a dream that conveys…