Interprets the pear and enclosed garden of MerT by the Christian iconography of a medieval painting of Saint Barbara in an enclosed garden. Lloyd finds both January and May choosing the garden of pleasure over the love of Christ or of Mary.
The shift from the first person of Anelida's complaint to the third person of the narrator's commentary is not an artistic flaw. Attributing the commentary to the Chaucerian narrator is consistent with that character's pose as inexperienced and…
Rejecting Siegfried Wenzel's view that the character Thomas suffers from insensitivity, Malone finds that Thomas shows more sensitivity to the death of his only child than his wife shows in all she says.
Questions the gloss of "gnof" (MilT 3188) in major editions of CT. In all of medieval literature, the word appears only here, and it cannot be elucidated from the context. The editor's gloss ("churl") is inconsistent with the behavior of John, whom…
The use of "gnof" to describe John the carpenter is appropriate because it suggests "churl" and "numbskull" and further emphasizes the "ease with which John is hoodwinked."
The affair between Mars and Venus enfigures three analyses of love: the least negative, "courtly" definition; the classical, "lascivious" definition; and the deterministic vision implied by the statues of the gods as planets.
Blythe, Hal,and Charlie Sweet.
Explicator 55:1 (1996): 49-51.
Argues that CT is a major source for O'Connor's story, evident in their shared motifs of pilgrimage and storytelling, the name Bailly/Bailey, and specific echoes of PardT
Jungman, Robert E.
Explicator 55:4 (1997): 190-92.
KnT 2681-82 do not (as Wolfgang Rudat supposed) echo Virgil's "Aeneid" 4.569-79 but instead adapt Juvenal's "Tenth Satire" 72-73 to identify Emily with changeable fortune.
In PardT, the youngest thief's use of "capouns" rather than "hennes" or "coks" functions both realistically, as an indicator of the value of the chickens, and symbolically, as a reminder of the sterility of the Pardoner.
When Troilus kisses only Criseyde's eyes in TC 3.1352-55, the gesture marks a departure from Boccaccio, whose lovers kiss eyes, lips, and breasts. Following thirteenth-century French literary convention, the behavior may illustrate Chaucer's attempt…
Trevisan identifies in Eliot's "Prufrock" possible echoes of the Monk's description from GP. "Prufrock" may also have been influenced by Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
Reid, Lindsay Ann.
Explicator 72.02 (2014): 158-62.
Identifies the classical sources (Virgil and Ovid) and explores the implications of two tree metaphors that Pandarus uses to encourage Troilus to court Criseyde.
Examines GP portrait of the Monk, and his obvious infractions against monastic norms and regulations, in light of Giorgio Agamben's "The Highest Property: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life" (2011), stressing not only the Monk's disdain for monastic…
Argues that reading "panne" at the end of FrT as clothing rather than cooking utensil closely links the Wife and her tale with that of the Friar. Connects the Friar's criticisms of the Wife and her desires with the depiction of the faithful widow…
Explores why Chaucer sets CT in April, rather than the traditional month of May, and concludes that the disruption of expectations leads the reader to reflect and realize the tales are a mix of the secular and the sacred.
Challenges the use of a mid-line semicolon in FranT, 964, arguing that it and the virgule in the Ellesmere manuscript disambiguate the syntax of the description of the conversation between Dorigen and Aurelius, diminishing the characterization of…
In miniature, the structure of NPT is that of CT. It begins and ends with the village and its folks, as CT was to begin and end with the Tabard Inn. The widow and her house are substituted for the Inn and the animals for the Pilgrims.
Reads HF as an example of science fiction, focusing on its presentation of acoustics and commenting on its recurrent use of "scientific or pseudo-scientific explanations."
