Browse Items (16382 total)

The lack of popularity of PhyT may derive in part from the separate, seemingly modern, aesthetic it espouses--one designed not to "define virtue and suppress vice" but to illustrate a sense of "randomness and discontinuity" that anticipates a new…

Although often glossed erroneously as "hypocritical," the word "spiced," as applied to the Parson's conscience, indicates an individual whose soul is touched suddenly and profoundly by religion, "as spices might do the palate."

Considers Chaucer's two tales set in ancient Rome--PhyT and SNT--maintaining that each is "particularly concerned with political corruption"; "the depravity of those who wield the state's power has quite undermined it." Hirsh notes a possible…

Chaucer's many references to Rome in CT reflect an interest that originated in a visit there. In particular, classical associations and the decoration of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere illuminate the style and meaning of SNT. A visit to Rome may have…

Revised version of "The Second Nun's Tale," first published in C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990).

Introduces students to Chaucer's life (opening chapter), comments on critical approaches to Chaucer, and presents several groups of recurring topics in CT: gender, religion, race, and class; love, sex, and marriage; God and spirituality; adaptations…

Hirsh summarizes how religious concepts, contexts, and developments in the politico-religious situation in Ricardian and Lancastrian England bear on our understanding of CT. Discusses the Great Schism, pilgrimage, mysticism, and the shared themes of…

Attends to "evident Scotian implications" of MLT and ClT without arguing that Chaucer read or was directly influenced by the works of John Duns Scotus. Focuses on the nature of God and voluntarism in the tales, arguing that "where Custance had to…

A classroom anthology with notes, marginal glosses, introductions, bibliographical citations, and occasional illustrations. Fifty poems arranged by topic into ten categories, with three appendices of additional poems, including one appendix titled…

Chaucer stands firmly in the tradition of "Phaedrus" and "Timaeus" by virtue of the "imagistic" and figural view of reality he presents in CT. References to Boethius' "Consolation of Philosophy" further emphasize the Platonic approach to rhetoric. …

Observes points of similarity and difference between WBP and Martha Moulsworth's poetic autobiography, "Memorandum" (1632). The Wife serves as Moulsworth's "stylistic and rhetorical precursor."

Although the narrator of TC tries to separate pagan from Christian and body from spirit, the poem's allusions to 2 Corinthinians are an "indictment of (his) disastrous attempt to sunder the heavenly and the earthly."

The medieval--especially the Augustinian--concepts of human nature comprises both the prelapsarian and the fallen state. TC and "Confessio Amantis" use this concept as a structuring device.

Most scholarly treatments of Chaucer and alchemy deal with whether Chaucer believed in alchemy or whether he condemned it, but Chaucer's primary concern with alchemy was to use it as "symbolic language," especially in SNT and CYT. This salvific…

Describes how, as protagonist of NPT, Chauntecleer is the "mock-hero" of Chaucer's burlesque, engaging in three "battles" and failing because of his own vanity, the target of Chaucer's satire. His "avisioun" was no vision at all, a result of…

Translation of CT into Serbo-Croatian poetry and prose. Includes bottom-of-page notes.

Comments on differences and similarities among these characters: the Wife of Bath as depicted in WBP, La Vieille of "Roman de la Rose," and old women who take young lovers in two medieval Japanese narratives.

Hoad challenges critical discussions of specific words and syntactical emphases in Chaucer on the grounds that modern linguistic intuition is unreliable, comparison of medieval uses is often flawed, and medieval commentary can be misleading.…

BD contains analogies within analogies and poems within poems. The poem's subject is the mental movement from figure to embedded figure. The redemption offered in the poem is "the salvation that is opened within the mind as it recedes into…

Describes literary works included in "the curriculum in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English grammar schools," as background to understanding "the instruction of generations of schoolchildren" and "reading the Middle English literature created…

Although women and Jews were "equivalent others" in medieval orthodoxy, the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity enabled the Church to sever the "historical ties between Christianity and Judaism" and to "exalt itself as a fixed and timeless…

Chapter 1 (pp. 15-31) describes Chaucer's 1373 visit to Florence, a great industrial and financial center declining into political factionalism. Italian meters influenced Chaucer's rhyme royal. Boccaccio taught him the potential of romance; Dante…

Item not seen. WorldCat record notes that FranT is "Rendered into modern English prose by John Hobday."

Identifies a number of ways in which Chaucer is innovative in various works--metrical variety, interplay of tones, indebtedness to Continental sources and "ingenuity," combination of narrative attachment and detachment--and surveys the range of…

Explores general connections between literature and law, with specific reference to Purse. Claims that Chaucer's understanding of "classics, rhetoric, and law" sets up Purse as a "literary defense or vindication" and uses "love poetry" to create a…