Browse Items (16382 total)

Drawing on recent socio- and ethnolinguistic insights, Burnley examines the complex stylistic associations of commonly used language in a variety of spoken and written contexts. The structure of Chaucer's English is not neat and orderly but…

Confronting the Latin world, Chaucer established his own theory of tragedy, which had not developed completely in the English vernacular. Ebi explores the meanings of "dite," "theatrum," and "scene," concluding that Chaucer used theater imagery to…

Twenty-five percent of the Old French loanwords in Rom are "new to English or used with a new English menaing'; most reflect influences of aristorcratic, secularized French romances. Includes chart of loanwords.

Surveys meanings of "ymaginacioun" and "fantasye" in Chaucer's time and discusses his exploitation of their ambivalence.

In 1987, an NEH-supported institute titled "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Medieval Contexts and Modern Responses" addressed concerns that Chaucer's poetry was disappearing from the "standard undergraduate curriculum" and discussed ways to "revivify"…

Mikhail Bakhtin's distinction between "carnivalesque abandon and lenten mortification" and Victor Turner's distinction between liminality and "communitas" illuminate the dual nature of the pilgrimage--or of the material and the spiritual, the…

In KnT, vertical movements are associated with universal cosmic cycles, while horizontal movements are associated with social containment. As Palamon and Arcite move physically and emotionally closer to Emelye, each moves "toward either the…

Unlike the homogeneous portrayal of the two clerks in its two closest analogues--De Gombert et les II clercs and Le Meunier et les II clercs--RvT not only differentiates Aleyn from John but also suggests that John dominates their relationship,…

Chaucer utilizes the medieval icons of the wheel, the stream, and the vessel to represent the life cycle, the passing of time, and an individual's "fluid allocation of vital spirits that gradually dries from cradle to grave." In RvP, the Reeve's…

WBP is Chaucer's attempt to formulate a "gynocentric hermeneutic" that challenges "standard patriarchal hierarchies." Yet, WBT demonstrates the inevitable failure of the attempt since Chaucer was a product of his time, "a fourteenth-century male…

In SumT, exchanges between the friar and the lord of the manor illuminate the friar's bourgeois relationship with Thomas. When Thomas "pays" the friar with a fart, and the friar appeals to the social hierarchy represented by the feudal lord of the…

Examines the multiple meanings of "spirit" in SumT as clarified by scriptural and patristic tradition, exposing satire of friars.

Unlike its two closest analogues--Mars and Anel--the falcon's lament exceeds its own generic and linguistic constraints and functions as both narrative and complaint.

Abstract of an article unfinished because of the author's death, examining the more than thirty verbal contexts for "Fortune."

CYP offers an earthly perspective that counterbalances the heavenly perspective in SNT. Moreover, the structure of CYP/T affirms artistic striving for "something higher and more beautiful" while suggesting the "tendency to corruption that threatens…

Adopting a variety of critical approaches, the fourteen essays range from detailed analyses of religious discourse to theoretical inquiries into the forces that shaped ideas of sanctity. Essays discuss representations of sainthood in the Middle…

By allowing the pilgrims no comment on the hagiographic discourse of the faceless, feminine "Second Nonne," and by allowing the Prioress to identify with the Word and the bearer of the Word, CT interrogates the doctrines on which it rests:…

Examines theory and practice of poetics in medieval English literature, including author-centered, text-centered, and modern theoretical approaches.
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval…

Examines the equation of political and poetic authority in the works of Chaucer and his contemporaries. Historical romance tends to legitimize political authority and to cite poetic authority, while the fabliau pretends to chronicle true occurences…

Chaucer's presentation of himself as a reader of literature is a metaphor for our own reading of his work, an acknowledgement of his concern with the reciprocal relationship between the reader's mind and the text.

The Italian city-state of Lombardy and the life and death of Bernabo, its most famous tyrant, provides inspiration for the fictional realm of "Lumbardye," which functions in Chaucer's works as a spatial metaphor for tyranny.

The characters of individual pilgrims are revealed through their speech, which often serves to underline their philosophical viewpoints. Chaucer's awareness of language and its creative powers reflects a general skepticism regarding the…

The various fictional levels in CT result in a dialectic relationship between voice and genre, especially pronounced in Fragment D.

An illustrated analysis of moral and aesthetic issues raised by Chaucer. The rocks, garden, and study that form the loci of FranT carry iconographic meaning suggesting a true poetics of illusion.

Chaucer's use of the name "Eglentyne" in the description of the Prioress in GP and in a scene of KnT emphasizes the disparity between reality and the courtly love tradition.