Browse Items (16382 total)

Twelve essays by various authors on the reception of Boethius's Consolatione Philosophiae--its medieval glosses, commentaries, and translations. Four essays pertain to the Middle Dutch tradition. Passim references to Chaucer's Bo. For an essay that…

Assesses "incongruity in the sheer quality of style" in Pericles, especially the Gower passages, suggesting that Shakespeare was inspired by Thopas--Chaucer's experiment in incongruity produced from the "inferior art" of an earlier tradition.

Describes "the marked incongruity in the sheer quality of styles" in Tho and Mel, commenting on them as "burlesque," and using them to support an argument that Shakespeare intentionally employed mediocre, archaized poetry in the first two acts of…

Reads PardPT psychoanalytically and in light of Max Weber's theory of charisma, commenting on how words and details of the Pardoner's performance reflect his attraction to salvation and his fearful distortion of it. Institutionalized and…

German translation of CT, with notes and glosses,originally produced by Adolf von Düring as part of his three-volume "Geoffrey Chaucers Werke" (Strassburg, 1883-86). Hoevel's edition was reissued in 1974.

Although Caxton, Thynne, and Speght use comparable techniques to establish Chaucer's works by collating, restoring, and emending texts, their editions reveal various and individual methods.

Compares the depiction of social order in Aristotle's 'Politics' with that in PF. Chaucer's Natura is a figure of "communal order" who properly subordinates the drive for procreation to the need for social hierarchy.

Examines medieval notions of poetics and faculty psychology as approaches to BD, HF, PF, and LGWP.

Identifies parallels between TC and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," treating plot, theme, and characterization, and regarding the two works as tragedies of false gentilesse or gentility.

Defends Mel as a meaningful allegory, considering in turn Chaucer's use of the name "Sophia," his reference to wounded feet, and the "extended account" of Christ's passion which indicate framing attention to the Crucifixion. Then tabulates "three…

Chaucer's favorite Latin author was Ovid, followed by Virgil and Statius, as well as several prose writers. The central problem in evaluating the Latin influence on Chaucer is to determine what sorts of manuscripts he used--not just texts,but…

Suggests that a portion of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5.23-24) is a source for the Wife of Bath's comments on precedence at the offertory (GP 1.449-522).

Describes a copy of University of Pennsylvania MS Latin MS 231 which comprises three major works of Albertano of Brescia, including "Livre de Mellibee et Prudence," the source of Mel.

Analyzes Chaucer's use and adaptation of the allusion to Jephthah and his daughter in PhyT, arguing that it helps to explain why the Physician's study is "but litel on the Bible" (GP 438), why Chaucer placed PhyT after FranT in the order of the CT (a…

Interprets the allusion to Pygmalion in PhyT (6.7-18) as an indication of Apius's "concupiscence," drawing on depictions of Pygmalion in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose."

Explicates the allusion to Joshua 9.21 in KnT 1.1422, and hypothesizes that KnT 1.2415-17 may allude to Samson.

Argues that Ovid inspired the structure, narrative complexities, and thematic focus of CT--its tales-within-a-tale structure, its multiple narrators characterized by their tales, and its concern with two kinds of love, higher and lower--and shows…

Explains the sexual resonances latent in the reference to Priapus in MerT 4.2034-37, citing tales in Ovid, the commentary tradition, and PF. January's statue of Priapus "constitutes a kind of devotion to the obscene god who was the true patron saint…

Compares the Wife of Bath's version of the Midas exemplum with Ovid's original in "Metamorphoses," suggesting that the divergences exemplify the Wife's penchant for misquoting and/or misunderstanding authorities and align with her deafness, a…

Reinforces previous arguments that the immediate source of Chaucer's description of "Mercury the slayer of Argus" in KnT is Ovid's "Metamorphoses" 1.671-72, adding that, like Argus, Arcite finds death by listening to the "persuasive and deceitful…

Identifies Ovid as the ultimate source of Chaucer's references to the friendship of Theseus and Piritheus in KnT, perhaps mediated by the "Roman de la Rose 8148-54 or moralizations of Ovid's works.

Identifies Ovid's "Amores" 3.4.41-42 as a possible source for the "incompatibility of beauty and marital fidelity" that underlies the choice offered by the loathly lady to the knight in WBT 3.1219-27.

Suggests that although Chaucer generally follows Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" in his account of the labors of Hercules, one discrepancy may have been influenced by a scholists' gloss to Ovid's "Ibis" 401-2.

Argues that Chaucer's allusions to Argus in WBP, MerT, and TC derive ultimately from Ovid's "Ars Amatoria" and "Amores" and capitalize on the "conventional moral significations" of the moralized commentary tradition, lending resonances to the…

Conjectures that the source of a recurrent glosses to MilT at 1.3381-82 (variously 3383) attributed to Ovid by the glossators resulted from a misreading of Ovid's "Fasti" 2.193.