Browse Items (16382 total)

The tension between Harry Bailly's governance over the pilgrims and the tolerance and permissiveness of Chaucer's fictional narrative voice is implied in three link passages: between KnT and MilT, in the Prologue to MLT, and in the Prologue to ParsT.…

Explores the themes of debt and indebtedness in CT, showing how they are established in GP and how throughout the work attempts "to manipulate obligations to one's own advantage" result in "superficial or ambivalent success." Material advantage often…

Describes the conventions of late-medieval English "literary dreams," and explores how Chaucer, William Langland, and the "Pearl"-poet exploit the "potentialities of the form," including discussion of the development of the dream narrator in BD, HF,…

Examining how post-Chaucerian writers and critics even to the present day have added and responded to CT, Higl argues that their works are analogous to the pilgrims' fictive contest. The dissertation assesses the evidence of reception in select CT…

Explores why Chaucer was more marketable than either Gower or Lydgate in sixteenth-century England: Chaucer's variety, flexibility, and malleability made him more adaptable to various publics and therefore more attractive to early printers than other…

Reads continuations of CT in light of new-media theory, treating the apocryphal tales as textual interactions invited by the story-telling frame.

Treating a book or a "corpus" of literature as a body encourages a prosthetic approach to texts and to narratives. Henryson's addition to Chaucer's TC in his "Testament of Cresseid" works as a "double prosthesis" in which Henryson seeks to…

Considers the "post-Chaucer continuations and additions" to CT, particularly so-called "spurious" links between tales, "Siege of Thebes," "Tale of Beryn," "Canterbury Interlude," "Ploughman's Tale," "Plowman's Tale," "Tale of Gamelyn," and…

Reads various adaptations of WBPT in light of the time in which each of the individual "iterations" of the Wife was produced, from scribal adjustments in manuscripts, to ballad versions, to John Gay's dramatic adaptation and William Blake's…

Japanese translation of Bo based on Larry Benson, gen ed., The Riverside Chaucer, with notes.

Examines Chaucer's use of descent and ascent, particularly in NPT, a successful comedy.

The text of Bo ("The Riverside Chaucer") retains inadequate punctuation marks from previous editions and leaves several passages quite difficult to understand, though the edition shows a number of lexical improvements. The article emends punctuation…

The rare construciton "go + walked" occurs only in BD 387 and SumT 3.1778. No other instances are recorded in the OED, the MED, or Visser. Discussion about this construction will contribute to a more accurate reading of Chaucer's text and to an…

Describes Chaucer's use of the present participle in progressive constructions, which occur most frequently in CT.

Following the precepts of Russian formalism, one perceives that along with other related words, "deeth" and "sleeth" give unity to PardT. The word-complex is also associated with the Pardoner's sterility.

Explores the notion of "comedy" in the Middle Ages, which is based on the idea of the goddess Fortuna, and argues that the comedy Chaucer refers to at the end of TC was realized in NPT.

"Wenen," defined as "think" or "imagine" when referring to an anterior or contemporaneous event and "expect" or "intend" when referring to a posterior event, is most commonly used when the subject holds an erroneous conception. The counterfactual…

On the use of "drem" and "sweven" (dreams and revelations) in PF, NPT, HF, TC, BD.

Distinctions made between "expression-oriented" and "content-oriented" texts serve as a framework for demonstrating the interrelated nature of language in RvT. Philological tracings of word associations set up lexical chains that illustrate semantic…

In Chaucer's prose, where usage is unaffected by metrical considerations, the presence or absence of the "y-" prefix in past participles is not random. Chaucer uses "y-" for stylistic variations and to convert nouns to verbs, and it almost always…

A descriptive approach to Chaucer's language, including the syntax of his progressive and perfect verbal forms and the functions of his present and past participles. Also includes lexical analysis of MilT (focus on "pryvetee"), RvT ("bigylen"), and…

The religious "confessio"-tradition includes three modes: "Confessio peccati," "confessio fidei," and "confessio laudis." "Confessio fidei," which implies a self-testimony, provides the dominant mode for the secular literary "confessio" tradition,…

By giving a voice to the shrewish Wife of Bath and to Katherine of Padua, Chaucer and Shakespeare demonstrate their grasp (if not their personal views) of the proper role of gender in the ancient debate. Treats "Othello," "King Lear," "Measure for…

The verse is heightened by consonant repetition and reversal; rhyme; and assonance.

Deals with narrative structure, choice, and the relationship of tale to narrator.