Browse Items (16381 total)

This collection of essays by various authors addresses the rivalry and tension among characters, themes, styles, and genres in CT.
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Rebels and Rivals under Alternative Title.

In ABC, BD, and HF, uncertainty and duality-producing irony emerge as basic patterns that may be applied to all of Chaucer's poetry.

Sees Chaucer the Pilgrim and his inverted doubles--the female image of the Wife of Bath and the male image of the Host--as three parts of Chaucer's personality. Similar unity can be found among WBT, Th, and Mel.

To Chaucer's audience, the name "Eglentyne" suggested the lost clerk-knight debate "Hueline and Aiglantine." While Alice of Bath must have been the second lady of the debate, the other pilgrims stand for the qualities and defects of clerks and…

The anti-Semitism of PrT is not Chaucer's, and the tale is less about it than about the divine power of Mary to destroy the enemies of the Christian faith.

Discusses the conflict between the letter and the spirit in NPT, providing a short survey of the history of literal interpretation. Chaucer freely accepts the letter as literature without excluding the morality. The Priest makes us turn away from…

In TC, Chaucer is both a translator and a creator. He combines the model of ancient authors with a mythological world and a symbolic construction.

In the Voir dit, La prison amoureuse, and TC, different genres are different ways of producing meaning and possess different forms of fictionality.

Troilus's illicit love causes his involvement with the Seven Deadly Sins.

Disagrees with modern critical arguments that CkT, SqT, HF, and LGW are intentionally open-ended. Surveys the textual history and continuations of these poems to show that recent opinions probably result from post-Romantic "taste for the…

Surveys the historical, literary, and rhetorical development of the Middle English verse love epistle, tracing its precursors in Latin and Continental traditions, the roles of TC and Gower's Cinkante Balades, and the flowering of the genre in the…

Traces the history and theory of vernacular translation to its roots in Latin tradition, exploring classical translation theory as a product of the academic struggle between rhetoric and grammar (or hermeneutics). Medieval translation, a kind of…

Introduction to Piers Plowman as a lively mirror of fourteenth-century English society, directed to a nonspecialist audience. Includes a synopsis, derives Langland's biography from the poem, and reads it in light of contemporary social and religious…

Argues that "Chaucer--drawing on a long tradition of Biblical commentary--is well aware of the sexual dimensions of word choice, even of the double meaning of 'man'." He "plays on the relationship between naming and sexual differentiation";explores…

The controversy regarding "the moral intelligence of the narrator" of FranT maps the "poetic terrain" of the tale., i.e., rhyme, meter, poetic structure, and complex literary plan. Gaylord examines the tale by two complementary and yet contradictory…

Considers whether the Prioress was capable of "love celestial," examining her invocation to the Virgin Mary and suggesting that the heaviness of Mary's pregnancy is analogous to the Prioress's need to be delivered of her tale. In PrT, "affective…

Explores the "joining of contradictions in irony" in the GP portrait of the Prioress and the "joining of contraries" in the "sublime paradox" in the allusion to the Incarnation in PrT. A further contradiction is "that the Prioress, whose faith and…

LGWP reflects concern with poetic art, especially the notions of translation and transformation, "making" and "enditing." Cupid's accusations against Rom and TC privilege social over artistic meaning although Chaucer and Alceste subvert this "social…

In the traditions of Indian and Greek frame narratives, tensions exist between the framing story and the enclosed tales, although Western aesthetics promote tighter structure and more detailed characterization. Medieval framed narratives florished…

Discusses historical reliability of witness lists as evidence of magnate activity and relationship to the crown. Provides tabular inventory of witnesses and percentage of charters witnessed by year.

Thirteen essays by various authors. For six individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Olde Daunce under Alternative Title.

Dates the macaronic lyric "On the Times" ("Syng y wold, butt, alas!") at 1380, reading it as a commentary on events and attitudes leading to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

Of the five parts of classical rhetoric, "memoria" (including semiotics) has been insufficiently recognized. Chaucer's dream visions reveal interaction of memory and invention; "memoria" is also significant in Renaissance and Romantic poetry.

Chaucer's works explore and promote "cognitive credence"--belief as a way of knowing the truths reflected in fiction. In BD, HF, PF, and LGWP, the narrators' confrontations with various fictions show that belief and emotional involvement are…

Chaucer employs traditional garden topoi (locus amoenus, hortus conclusus, and paradys d'amours) to draw attention to precursors, to create discrepancy between CT context and tradition, to individualize narrators, and to show literary indebtedness in…