Browse Items (16382 total)

Mythological lovers alluded to in TC were associated in medieval letters with "amor stultus," foolish love. Allusions to Oenone, Tereus and Procne, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Myrrha help characterize the love of Troilus and Criseyde as foolish,…

Explores the scriptural roots of medieval attitudes toward women, focusing on how various kinds of abstraction and aestheticizing led to fundamentally misogynistic contradictions. Examines French romances, lays, and lyrics for the ways they elevate…

Surveys views on sex and marriage in Chaucer's works and argues that his fabliaux reflect human desires to escape from and to re-create the couple. The brevity of the fabliau limits the possibilities of readers' identification with the characters…

Explores the life of Edmund Gonville--cleric, shrewd land agent, and man of affairs--and Chaucer's depiction of the Parson. Despite his considerable financial successes, Gonville was like the Parson in that he did not rent out his benefice.

Focuses on Mel as the central and unifying section of CT, reading it as an expression of Chaucer's preference for unvarnished moralism over poetry.

Chaucer's borrowings from "Decameron" are more often poetic strategies and individual episodes than complete plots. The wife in ShT echoes Peronella in "Decameron" 7.2; MilT reflects "Decameron 2.4 more than RvT does 9.6. Generally, Chaucer extends…

Briefly describes the books and materials exhibited at the January 11, 1991, Sorbonne conference on Chaucer-French relations.

Compares Chaucer's WBT and Gower's "Tale of Florent" as indices to the authors' social and moral outlooks. Whereas Gower consistently emphasizes maintaining a hierarchical status quo, Chaucer's concern for the individual and his recurrent…

Originally produced by Thames Television, titled "Middle English, Knowlege About Language: Chaucer, 1991."

Explores Chaucer's uses of the word "gloss" to argue that he followed the model of the Roman de la Rose and included glosses in his own texts-marginal glosses at times, but also glosses incorporated into his texts to guide interpretation. Draws…

Surveys interactions between women's speech and silence, on the one hand, and generic conventions, on the other, in KnT, WBT, ClT, MerT, FranT, and ShT. Chaucer variously confirms or complicates the expectations about female speech embedded in the…

Describes and compares Chaucer's use of adverbs ending in -e, formed from adjectives, and those ending in -ly/-lice.

Shakespeare's alterations of KnT in A Midsummer Night's Dream and (with John Fletcher) in Two Noble Kinsman resulted from the exigencies of the stage and produced works of a new tenor and thematic emphasis.

Traces the "progressive desacralization" of the "Matter of Thebes" from KnT to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The gods have power in KnT, but they diminish comically and then tragically disappear in Shakespeare's…

Ajiro investigates editorial differences in manuscript readings between Robinson's second edition of PF and the text in Benson's The Riverside Chaucer; considers what manuscripts were used in their editing.

Using Hayashi's Quantification Method Type III (a multivariate analysis), Matsuo describes distinctive features of several linguistic structures and clarifies clusters of similarities and dissimilarities. Cites examples from poetry by Chaucer and…

A detailed comparison of the Job story and Boccaccio's Decameron 10.10. Boccaccio's novella is seen as a variation of the biblical Job story that lacks the justification of God's divine attributes. Schöpflin argues that Boccaccio and subsequent…

Explicates FranT, focusing on the characterization of Dorigen and how it reveals the "social compromises which women are conditioned to make." The "cracks in mutual understanding" between Dorigen and Arveragus also reveal how the values of women and…

Documents Douglas's theory of literal translation, "with its stress on the integrity and inviolability of the text," and gauges his success in achieving his goal. Douglas's theory is evident in his critiques of Caxton's translation of the "Aeneid"…

Argues that the figure of Pandarus-as-magician from Chaucer's TC and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" lies behind John Keats's allusion to Merlin in his "Eve of St. Agnes."

Summary description of Chaucer's life and each of his major works, with a bibliography and a chronology of the works accompanied by manuscript and publication information. Treats CT most extensively, focusing on the "quiting principle" of the tales'…

Argues in detail that the "Gawain"-poet develops a "visually focused descriptive poetic" in his works and, by way of conclusion, asks whether such a poetic is unusual in late-medieval English literature, going on to treat works by Chaucer, "Sir…

Exemplifies the variety of Chaucer's comedy in CT, particularly the GP, and comments on the compatibility of "Christianity and the comic vision."

Historical novel about the lives of Philippa de Roet and her sister Katherine, focusing on their relations with Chaucer, John of Gaunt, and the English court circles.

An anthology of comic selections, including (pp. 9-17) the Nevill Coghill translation the GP description of the Wife of Bath and selections from WBP, with a brief introduction. The volume includes a commentary on literary humor, illustrations by…