Browse Items (16381 total)

Questions claims that BD is a poem of consolation, arguing that it is instead a "renewal of grief," focusing its three units of "reading, dreaming, [and] remembering," attending to source materials, and suggesting that the Black Knight may have been…

Responds to criticism of TC, especially that of C. S. Lewis on courtly love, and examines the poem's emphases on human vulnerability and limitations, reinforced by recurrent colloquialisms, juxtapositions of the sublime and the risible, and concern…

The narrator of this work, pretending ignorance, is conscious of his position as a poet, and a humorous but skeptical attitude towards utterance. Like a nominalist, he examines everyday speech, which is only "eyr ybroken," from the point of view of…

HF might best be perceived "as a comic monologue, as a series of jokes with comic business instead of a controlling theme." It is thus closer in tone and intent to W. S. Gilbert than to Dante or Boethius.

Like many other medieval English poets, Chaucer was much concerned with the nature of truth, especially in FranT and TC. The Late Middle Ages still showed a "vestigial orality" in approaching the subject.

Because Dame Prudence in Mel embodies the qualities her name implies--reason, intellect, circumspection, providence, docility, and caution--she is a model of medieval female virtue.

The reference to the ape in ParsT is usually understood as an allusion to the sin of pride, the ape being an apt embodiment of the pomposities of fashion. This image is, however, also congruent with the extensive imagery of poison in the tale, since…

Argues that BD was composed after John of Gaunt made plans to remarry--or even after his second marriage--and that the poem constitutes both an elegy on the death of Blanche and a "carefully argued justification of Gaunt's second marriage." …

Explores the relations of Lawrence's The Fox to NPT, arguing that the former is a tale about "threatened identy."

Reviews approaches to CT, esp. Donald Howard, "The Idea of the Canterbury Tales" and advocates return to CT with the freshness of the amateur.

Advances computer data-based theory that if various manuscripts of CT represent "compilationes" with the "Tales" as "auctoritates," study of incomplete manuscripts may reveal how readers used them to discuss moral-ethical issues.

Examines various fourteenth- and fifteenth-century historical and literary texts to demonstrate that law and tradition encouraged parental and communal responsibility for the proper raising of children. Mentions PrT and the hagiography of Hugh of…

As in late-medieval lyrics and drama, the suffering of mothers and children in Chaucer's works is presented as analogous to the suffering of Mary and Jesus. Surveys the presence and absence of references to children in Chaucer's works.

Explores the imagery of oxen, stalls, and yoking in Boethian and Christian traditions, arguing that they underlie Chaucer's allegorical uses of the imagery in Truth, ClT, NPT, and the CT at large.

Produced in Leicester, Harley 7333 supplies information about how Chaucer was known in the "provinces" outside of London. Shonk disagrees with several of Manly and Rickert's (1940) ideas about the manuscript and challenges their suggestion that it is…

Plenary address to the Illinois Medieval Association; adapted from Dinshaw's Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (SAC 23 [2001], no. 184). Discusses late-medieval court records concerning cross-dressing and…

Compares Chaucer's use of history in BD with that of Langland in "Piers Plowman," suggesting that focus on contemporary events is common to the poets and perhaps indicative of their common audience. Such commonalities and the habits of mind they…

Nachtwey applies the "vertical" social relations of chivalry as understood by Geoffroi de Charny to MLT and FranT. As a perfect Christian, Constance "muddles" the chivalric ideal of a wife, and Dorigen's rashness makes her somewhat inconsistent with…

In LGWP, PF, and HF, Chaucer absorbs several conventions and concerns from the commentaries that he used as sources, thereby suggesting that his audience was familiar not only with traditional texts but also with the commentaries on them.

The language used to describe Hippolyta in KnT undermines the praise of Theseus and exposes "the dramatic irony in the Knight's perception of Theseus's military exploits and subsequent exchange of ethnic women."

Explores why Chaucer was more marketable than either Gower or Lydgate in sixteenth-century England: Chaucer's variety, flexibility, and malleability made him more adaptable to various publics and therefore more attractive to early printers than other…

Benson describes the very different views of London produced by Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, as well as the depictions in William FitzStephen's "Description of London" (1174) and "London Lickpenny" (fifteenth-century). These representations…

Reviews scholarship on Chaucer and London and briefly examines the impact of the Black Death, noting that "the threat of death is everywhere in Chaucer's work." An appendix lists "Recent Studies Treating Chaucer and London."

Close reading of CkT, of descriptions of Roger the Cook in CT, and of relevant late fourteenth-century laws and statutes reveals that Chaucer's powers of observation extend to the lower levels of society and the workings of London's "underworld."