Browse Items (16381 total)

Explores the implications of the name "Malle" that is given to the widow's sheep in NPT 7.2831: the sheep is a ewe and suggests the widow's "simplicity, her poverty, and one of the ways in which" she is a dairy woman.

Contrasts the Wife of Bath's uses in WBP of the Pauline image of marital debt with commentaries found in St. Jerome and Thomas Aquinas, showing how she uses it to claim male debt only.

Identifies an allusion to the final couplet of CkT in an issue of the "Female Tatler" (12 September 1709) which presents the wife in the Tale a seamstress as well as a prostitute. Observes that several other near-contemporary allusions to the Tale…

Argues that the "Kynges Noote" (MilT 1.3217) refers to "Gabriel from hevene came," a Middle English poem accompanied by a Latin version in one manuscript.

Proposes that Cicero's "De Inventione" is the source of TC 4.407-13; the subsequent reference (4.414-15) to "Zanzis" is Chaucer's corruption of "Zeuxis."

Outlines the "origins of early modern traditions of 'lives of the poets' and biographical reading" of their works. Includes analysis of Thomas Speght's "Life of Geoffrey Chaucer" in his 1598 edition of Chaucer's Workes, commenting on revisions made…

Examines the "unconscious content" of RvT through a number of Chaucer's own "identifications": with Sir Edmund de la Pole, owner of the mill at Trumpington and brother of Sir Roger de la Pole; with Symkyn and the exorbitance of his social…

Chaucer enhances the rhetorical authority of SqT by following classical authorities, using figures such as Pegasus, the Trojan horse, and Sinon's persuasive deception as models and figures for the poem's rhetorical operation. Chaucer understood and…

Various late-medieval English texts (including the Wycliffite "Twelve Conclusions" and Roger Dymmok's "Reply" and other Wycliffite discourse) reflect "anxiety" about laypeople's inabilities to discern clerical hypocrisy. In FrT, Chaucer distinguishes…

Discusses Chaucerian resonances in Spenser, especially from Th.

Francis Kynaston's translation of TC in Latin rhyme-royal stanzas was influenced by Henryson's and Shakespeare's depictions of Criseyde. Substantial omissions in Books 4 and 5 of the translation simplify the character and reduce readers' sympathy by…

Discuses the complex response to Chaucer in Jonson's annotations on his copy of Thomas Speght's 1602 edition of Chaucer, especially the affinity of ethical and poetic thought, concentrating on two poems, "The Remedie of Love" and "Of the Cuckow and…

Spenser's depictions of the Bower of Bliss and the Temple of Venus ("The Faerie Queene" 2 and 4) are indebted to PF and, to a lesser degree, Th for explicit references and more general personal and cultural allusions.

In arguing that a genuine study of Renaissance works is impossible without examining their literary and historical context, Hamilton briefly cites Chaucer's importance in the formation of the English canon that initiated the English literary…

Barasch traces puppetry from Socrates to the Renaissance, arguing that Elizabethan puppet theatre conveyed popular learning. Chaucer's descriptions of the pilgrim Geoffrey as a "popet" (7.701-2) and of Alison as a "popelote" (MilT 1.3254) may reflect…

Spenser's adoption of Chaucerian humility should be understood in light of Elizabethan debates about Chaucer. Although Chaucer is universally listed as preeminent among English poets, his detractors find him lacking in moral or stylistic weight,…

Argues that Shakespeare and John Fletcher's adaptation of KnT in "The Two Noble Kinsmen" emphasizes the failure of same-sex friendship, darkens tone, and approaches tragic pessimism--in contrast with Chaucer's "cautiously optimistic philosophical…

An edition of the fragments that survive from Thomas Alsop's Tudor adaptation of MLT, "The Breuyate and shorte Tragycall hystorie of the fayre Custance, the Emperours daughter of Rome." About 30 percent of the adaptation survives in British Library…

Item not seen. MLA International Bibliography record indicates that this essay discusses the "ethical and religious" quality of PF. In Japanese.

Handwriting, materials, decoration, and language indicate that the scribe of Oxford New College MS 314 also copied Bodleian Library MS Dugdale 45 (Hoccleve's "Regement of Princess"). Though not first-rate, MS 314 was executed by a paid scribe.

Doubtful of M. L. Samuels's argument that Equat is Chaucer's work, Benson examines dominate and recessive spelling forms to argue that it is not. Compares spelling in Equat with that of various manuscripts of TC and CT.

Compares the vocabulary and style of Equat, Astr, and other contemporary scientific treatises, concluding that variations between Equat and Astr cast doubt on Chaucer's authorship of the former.

Examines the layout and annotation of some of the sixteen surviving manuscripts of TC, focusing on Bodleian MSS Rawlinson Poet 163 and Selden B.24. Repetition of headings and glosses may indicate that some parts of TC existed as discrete fragments…

Largely ignored for forty years, Manly and Rickert's "The Text of the 'Canterbury Tales'" is being reconsidered because it favors the Hengwrt. Chaucer's text is now being reconstructed by "Hengwrtism." The soft approach takes Hengwrt as a guide but…

Anayzes scribal activity in medieval English administrative documents, and contends that Adam Pinkhurst, and other English scribes, may have been involved in "both literary and documentary work."