Browse Items (16381 total)

Argues that the portrait of Chaucer in Rosenbach MS 1083/30 was most likely copied from Harley MS 4866 in the early eighteenth century for John Murray. Both manuscripts are of Hoccleve's "Regement of Princes."

Discusses the blanks left for illustration in Corpus Christi College MS 61, suggesting a possible strategy for prospective illustrations, including initials: the illustration would have emphasized choice as an aspect of narrative structure. The…

Argues that Arcite is as much a romantic hero of KnT as is Palamon, both as a "Chaucerian idealization of love" and as a representative of humanity's "proper relationship to Fortune." Includes comparison of Arcite with Boccaccio's analogous Arcita in…

Argues that Chaucer's use of conventional hunter and prey images in FrT "serves an organic function within the aesthetic whole of the work." Rather than "functioning as mere decoration" it reinforces and deepens "the comic irony both inherent and…

Surveys Chaucer's uses of thematic and stylistic contrast, antithesis, and contention, treating them not as examples of a divided mind "but rather of a mind most aesthetically aware how best to state what is experienced most intensely." Draws…

Explores the "artistic impact" of Statius's "Thebaid" on Chaucer, particularly the influence of Statius's style and his "portrayal of the ideals of Theban antiquity," tracing Chaucer's allusions to and uses of the epic in Pity, BD, Mars, HF, Anel,…

Reads KnT as an expression of the narrator's pessimistic yet stoic view of human "travails and uncertainties," evident in the prevailing "sense of the insignificance of the major actions" of the plot, and reinforced by grim humor and by the tension…

In TC, Chaucer's "greater vehemence," his increase in specificity, and his heightening of emotion characterize his adaptations of Boccaccio's "Filostrato."

Explores the "shock of contrast" between the rejection of worldly love at the end of TC and the celebration of love found in earlier sections of the poem. The address to "yonge, fresshe folks" (5.1835) is consistent with the protagonists' youthful…

Item not seen. Listed in Lorrayne Y. Baird, A Bibliography of Chaucer, 1964-1973 (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977): item 1252.

Summarizes RvT and explores the characterization and motives of Symkyn's wife, suggesting the possibility that she intentionally hit her husband with the staff.

Argues that the subject matter, irony, depiction of love, and touches of humor in KnT are "in no way inappropriate" to the characterization of the Knight evident elsewhere in CT

Challenges the notion that the descriptions of the pilgrims in GP are drawn from real-life models and compares and contrasts Chaucer's techniques with those of Guillaume de Lorris in "Roman de la Rose" and William Langland's in "Piers Plowman."…

The fabliaux must be studied in terms of inversion--the world upside down--evoking the chaos of Dante's hell. They reflect Pauline and Augustinian dichotomies between the flesh and the spirit, the City of Man and the City of God.

A personal memoir recording a childhood experience of reading about "Dan" Chaucer in "The Book of Knowledge," leading to an early understanding of the unchanging drives and characteristics of human nature. A childhood neighbor was like the Wife of…

Argues that function shifts and the development of impersonal constructions reduced the nouns and verbs associated with dreaming in the development of English. Nohara focuses on the loss of forms of "sweven" and "meten" from Middle English, drawing…

Summarizes performance features of WBP (echoes of preaching, animal imagery, range of emotion, entertainment value) appropriate to fourteenth-century encounters with the text as an aural experience.

Surveys the verbal representation of numerals in Chaucer and elsewhere in Middle English and comments on the Germanic basis of composite representations (e.g., "four and twenty") and development of French-influenced forms (e.g., "twenty-four").…

Argues that the intensive use of "wel" in "wel nyne and twenty" (GP 24) helps account for the apparent discrepancy between the phrase and the number of pilgrims in CT.

Surveys Chaucer's uses of ye and thou forms in CT, discussing plurality, formality, and other usage. In Japanese, with English abstract.

Traces the development of the impersonal to the personal construction on the basis of evidence found in Chaucer.

Explores development and uses of plural nouns from Old to Modern English. Modern English plural usage was already established for the most part in Chaucer's Middle English.

Diachronic exploration of the morphology and function of English "independent" (as opposed to interrogative and conjunctive) adverbs, with examples from Old English, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Sidney Sheldon. In Japanese, with English…

The GP description of the Knight engages late-medieval questions of war and pacifism, confronting the audience with an "ethical and political dilemma."

Examines ways in which the dreamer's journey in HF parallels his summary of the "Aeneid," identifying verbal echoes as well as similarities in plot and detail. Emends traditional punctuation of lines 109-13 to reinforce the parallel.