Browse Items (16381 total)

RvT is a denunciation of the university system and its participants. The two clerks abandon their learning and stoop to the anti-intellectual level of the miller.

Medieval convention and iconography support the view that the rebec is associated with the female voice (and thus suited to Absolon's effeminate character). It is implied that Absolon neither sings nor plays very well.

Wetherbee examines the literary history of KnT in classical epic, Statius, Dante, and Boccaccio to demonstrate (1) how, in a "deliberate, political" move, the Knight attempts to suppress psychological and historical reality to produce an "optimistic…

The feminist film criticism theory of the "male gaze" articulates the "triangulated" male-female relationship of KnT and MilT as they arise in response to Boccaccio's elucidation of the gaze in his "Teseida" and in relation to two classical…

Chaucer prepares for Arcite's Samsonlike vow to cut his hair by drawing on the traditions of Samson as a fool for love and by reworking and adding details to the story of Boccaccio's "Teseida." Samson was commonly paired with Hercules as biblical…

An understanding of legal terminology and of legal history clarifies two passages in KnT.

Proposes that KnT has a "two-fold focus: one centering on theories of human nature--Franciscan, Dominican, and Chaucerian; the other centering on theories of valid language use, whether literal alone or figurative as well." Allegory is not the right…

While critics have recently emphasized classicizing influences, KnT's portrayal of courtship, its enigmatic heroine's resistance to courtship, and the marvels in Diana's temple should be understood in light of romance conventions. Chaucer's…

Studies images of youth and adolescence in eleven major authors, including Chaucer, showing that adolescence is portrayed as a time of "turbulence, excess, and passion." Chaucer's GP Squire fits the pattern.

Chaucer's GP actively encourages the adoption of a "disenchanted perspective" on society, on the pilgrims, and on discourse itself by constructing traditional estates-satire classifications. The narrator successively adopts and then discards first a…

Describes the characteristic foods and methods of public and private food service in London during eight historical periods, deriving much of the information from literary sources and presenting the information in association with literary figures…

Chaucer's descripiton of the Franklin as a "vavasour" (GP 360) reflects his acquaintance with the Vavasour family. Like Chaucer, Sir William Vavasour testified in the Scrope-Grosvenor controversy; other Vavasours held offices similar to the…

Examines several mythological winds and traces the use of Zephirus as a "revivifying wind" in Isidore, Bersuire, and Boethius. Chaucer uses the myth of Zephirus and Flora in BD to suggest psychological healing; in TC 5.10, for ironic effect; in…

CT contains risings and fallings, which occur naturally within the text in a variety of genres, tones and modes. They show Chaucer's shift toward Italian-based humanism and away from the Christian tradition. Wilhelm examines KnT, MilT, MLT, ClT,…

Medieval texts and medieval societies imagine themselves self-regulated through structures essential to both social formation and destruction.

Chaucer's religious tales (Mel, ParsT, ClT, MLT, PrT, SNT, PhyT, MkT) are "predicated upon the assumption that the significance of human life is the transcending of its secular limitation through Christian faith." The only tales in CT not written in…

The "special quality" of MLT, ClT, PrT and SNT is their focus on spiritual transcendence rather than simply religious or moral values. All four tales "reveal exactly the same incandescent core of prayerful faith and spiritual aspiration presented…

CT is treated, along with the "Decameron," in part 2, chapter 4, following background analysis of "One Thousand and One Nights" in Arabic tradition and preceding consideration of Cervantes and Borges.

Wyclif believed in the absolute authority of Scripture, with the mission of the Church as simple transmission without modification. In SumT, CYT, NPT, and ParsT, Chaucer questions the possibility of rehearsing truth inasmuch as the speakers distort…

Treating "impersonated artistry" and "unimpersonated artistry" in light of current theory in the human sciences, Leicester addresses the "dramatic principle" in CT, assuming the position that the "tales are radically voiced." Each is "an expression…

With CT, Chaucer raises many feminist cultural issues, exploring gender stereotyping and the limits it imposes on individuals. The men of KnT contrast with those of MilT and MerT, and all diverge from the overtly Christian ParsT. Exemplary female…

Influenced by modern critical approaches such as new historicism and cultural studies, Knapp reworks some material published earlier and adds new essays in a volume designed to examine the pilgrims' social contest and the "larger social contest"…

As the competition between men intensifies in fragment A of CT, competition becomes an end in itself, and the women become increasingly objectified as persons.

Focusing on such critics as Thomas Lounsbury, E. Talbot Donaldson, D. W. Robertson, John Fleming, and Derek Pearsall, Georgianna suggests that twentieth-century scholars, like their sixteenth-century predecessor John Foxe, have constructed a…

CT examines such religious practices as pilgrimage, pardon, and penance within medieval soteriological traditions, which often analyzed redemption in commercial language. Particularly in GP and PardT, "Chaucer's understanding of the terms of…