Browse Items (16381 total)

Comments on the rhetorical shifts, manuscript variants, and editorial choices of PF 1-2 and 12-14, exploring tonal implications.

Argues that members of the "School of Christian Interpreters" err when seeing the transcendent ending of TC as implicit throughout the poem, and evaluates the actions of Troilus and Criseyde in terms of courtly love and the operation of Fortune,…

Reads MerT as a "striking example" of the "tension between the tale and its teller" insofar as the Merchant fails to understand the "true significance" of the Tale. His "moral perception has been disturbed by anger and by a ludicrous…

Argues that KnT is "mainly about" the tragedy of Arcite rather than the success of Palamon. The latter mistakes both the nature of Emelye and the rivalry of Arcite, who is a "worthier" man. Like Troilus, Arcite falls in fortune, and ultimately fails…

Argues that tensions within FranT indicate that Chaucer was subtly reinforcing the notion that male sovereignty in marriage is, realistically, advisable when combined with mutual trust and cooperation between the partners.

Argues that the Franklin as narrator presents the characters in FranT as both "living people and as standard types from courtly romance," not worrying excessively about consistency of characterization and revealing more wisdom than we expect from…

Responds to Dorothy Colmer's critique (Essays in Criticism 20 [1970]) of Kearney's earlier discussion of FranT (Essays in Criticism 19 [1969], taking issue with Colmer's notion that "quadruple irony" redounds upon the reader.

Critiques James Smith's essay "Chaucer, Boethius, and Recent Trends in Criticism," while admiring his sensitivity to nuance in Chaucer's quotations of and allusions to Boethius in KnT and TC; argues that Smith mistakenly attributes the attitudes of…

Focuses on close analysis of words and details in GP description of the Knight ("worthy") and in KnT ("erthely," 1.1166) to argue that Arcite is a morally flawed lover, Theseus is an "anti-hero," and the Knight pompous--especially when read in light…

Shows how concern with lack of "self-control in speech" unifies ManP and ManT, especially in its traditional association with anger, one of the "sins of the tongue." The theme also occurs in SumT and MerT, but it is presented with greater "subtlety"…

Comments in critics' "pun-hunting" in Chaucer's works and describes two kinds of bawdy puns in MilT (those that carry connotations of subtlety and secrecy and those that connote pleasure and entertainment), tracing their complex interrelations and…

By intention Chaucer like Shakespeare was a phonetic speller, so that manuscript variations in spelling provide clues to his metrics. The text of the LGW Prologue in MS. Gg of the Cambridge University Library is perhaps the nearest to Chaucer's…

The solemn tone of an unusually learned vocabulary, the skillful syntax, and the architectural strength of the ababbcbc eight-line unit combine to give Chaucer's "image of regret" in "Form Age" what Joseph Campbell calls the "force of living myth"

In TC, PF, HF, and CT the narrator/author split permits a veiled and implicit expression of judgment at the beginning to be suspended until the end.

Argues that internal evidence (meter, repetitiveness, exaggeration, etc.) is sufficient to establish that "The Fair Maid of Ribblesdale" is a parody, comparing examples drawn from the poem to similar ones in Chaucer's MercB, MilT, and, especially,…

ManP reveals Chaucer's art at its most assured. The Host, Manciple, and Cook are united by their role in London's catering trade, and their exchange in the passage shows the Manciple as a blend of malice and circumspection, the Cook as a carnival…

Chaucer adapts the conventional dawn-song contrast between work and love as activities appropriate to day and night, respectively, in TC and the fabliaux, where "bisynesse" is used to connote lovemaking as the proper work of the night.

Examines the role of Dryden's conversion to Roman Catholicism in his literary career, with reference to his adaptations of Chaucer, expecially his recasting of the Parson.

The discrepancy between the vice of the teller and the moral of his tale requires the pilgrim audience to revise and postpone its judgment and thus to contribute to the meaning of the exemplum.

John Shirley's comments about the relationship of Ven to court scandal have been misconstrued, disguising the poem's connection to Otto de Graunson's "Cinq ballades." Chaucer used five ballades to realize Graunson's "curiosite" (intricate…

Assesses the genre, fictional self-consciousness, and religious elements of "Pericles," suggesting that Chaucer influenced Shakespeare's decision to include the character Gower onstage throughout the play, an aspect of its literary…

The Loathly Lady's lecture on "gentilesse" in WBT goes beyond sexual sovereignty to encompass dominium, a concept central to Wyclif's challenge to authority. Without naming his source, Chaucer channels orthodox, Boethian ideas about "gentilesse"…

"Laus" (praise) and "vituperatio" (rendered by Chaucer as "sklaunder") find their way into medieval "ars poetriae." Using the "idiom of odium" (e.g., traditionally disreputable animals and bodily functions), Chaucer focuses on reporting angry…

Studies fame, death, and related motifs in William Dunbar's "Lament for the Makars" ("Timor Mortis"), including comments on his echoes of and references to Chaucer.

Sketches "the mode of literacy" that "occupies a borderland just beyond the precincts of surviving evidence," exploring "the role of dictation" rather than "a sequence of errors in copying that stands between" versions of such texts as TC and "Piers…