Browse Items (16382 total)

Discusses TC, Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," and Dryden's "Troilus and Cressida or Truth Found Too Late," arguing that each treatment of Criseyde reflects how its author responds to literary tradition. In…

Reconstructs some features of the stylistic "architecture" of Chaucer's language and illustrates its exploitation in the GP description of the Prioress. The portrait may be more critical, less ambiguous, and less sympathetic than is usually assumed.

Describes medieval dream psychology, both medical and Macrobian, and summarizes the realism of dreams as narrative frame in Chaucer's dream visions (BD, HF, PF, and LGWP) and as device of characterization and dramatic irony when dreams are otherwise…

Though the authentic detail of Nero's golden fishnets passed unchanged into medieval tradition, the fiction of Julius Caesar's low birth is peculiar to English historians of the later Middle Ages. It apparently arose in "exempla" of Caesar's…

An anthology of sources and analogues of MilT, RvT, MerT, and ShT, with more limited analogous materials for SumT, ManT, and FrT, in all cases providing facing-page translations of non-English materials. Each section includes an introduction that…

Verse translation of CT with several tales abridged or excerpted (KnT, MLT, ClT, SqT, FranT, MkT) and several summarized (Mel, CYT, ManT, ParsT), based on the Riverside edition. Converts Chaucer's pentameter couplets into octosyllabic couplets to…

Translates TC into modern English rhyme royal stanzas, with footnotes and occasional marginal glosses. The introduction (by Christine Chism, pp. vi-xxx) addresses the social contexts of the poem; anachronisms; Chaucer's audience; the frontispiece…

Assesses the "relationship between reading, space and emotions" in TC, focusing on the two scenes of book reading in the poem. Criseyde's reading in the paved parlor links her with "hermeneutical openness," while Pandarus's feigned reading of an old…

The phrase "Nowelis Flood" near the end of MilT has commonly been taken as a malapropism, an instance of the carpenter's complacent ignorance. Whaley tests this assumption against the evidence of manuscript readings, meter, and literary contexts;…

"Wyn ape" in ManT (9.44) should be taken as "fool's wine." The Manciple had drugged the Cook in order to prevent him from betraying his (the Manciple's) chicanery, and in the Headlink, he serves him with an antidote.

The friendship-brotherhood motif plays a significant role in Chaucer's poetry. A survey of this theme suggests that friendship between men, whether genuine or simulated, has a negative and even destructive influence on the characters.

Surveys details of each of the GP descriptions of the pilgrims and each of the Ellesmere illustrations to show that the Ellesmere illustrator was a "close reader" of Chaucer. Refers to 22 figures; includes a summary in Turkish

Explores spaces, places, and gendered power relations in MilT and RvT, arguing that Alisoun, Malyne, and Symkyn's wife all use trickery to evade spatial oppression and achieve pleasure.

Argues that Chaucer reformulates "mythocultural memory" in LGW when he depicts traditional male heroes as "diminished men," neither valorous nor gentle. By deconstructing the "structurally adamant images of the Greco-Roman male," the poet escapes…

Uses Michel Foucault's notions of power, subversion, and discourse to argue that LGWP "illustrates the medieval writer's relationship to hegemonic power" and "presents the potential ways authors are involved in the production and subversion of…

Discussion of how the political functions of literature are framed by broader ethical and moral concerns, drawing examples from Virgil, Cervantes, Robert Frost, and CT, where the pilgrimage frame indicates that social order--the common good--is…

Cast as a dialogue between Chaucer and Nohara, the article reconsiders the discrepancy between "nyne and twenty" (GP 24) and the number of pilgrims in CT.

Analyzes Chaucer's use and adaptation of Petrarch's sonnet as the "canticus Troili" in TC, exploring prosodic and contextual features in light of R. A. Shoaf's description of translation as either rape or marriage.

Surveys Marxist scholarship concerning "class clowns" in American school rooms, classroom management of them, and their vocational potential. Then discusses Nicholas of MilT and John and Aleyn of RvT as students "who 'work the system' for the sake of…

Argues that in "The Ancestor's Tale: Richard Dawkins "uses Chaucer's poetics to address interpretative problems with evolution," particularly the "anthropocentric" notion that "humanity is the 'result' of evolution." Dawkins's uses of the frame…

Analyzes how Chaucer''s uses of sailing and door/gates imagery in TC resonate with similar imagery in Ovid's "Amores" and "Ars amatoria," reflecting a differing view of history and producing a different tone. In English, with an abstract in English…

Considers four frame-tale versions of the Philomela story--Margaret Atwood's "Nightingale" in "The Tent" (2006), George Pettie's in "A Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleasure" (1576), Chaucer's in LGW, and Gower's in "Confessio Amantis"--focusing on…

Compares CT with Farid al- Din Attar's "The Conference of the Birds," observing similarities in the shared motif of spiritual journey and techniques of narration and characterization. Differences between the religious backgrounds of the two poets,…

Selection from among variant readings should be based on both literary judgment and variant distribution. In the case of MilT, the richest readings are likely to be Chaucer's own. Analysis of them leads to greater appreciation of MilT, "of the…

Bordalejo compares variant readings of Caxton's first and second editions of CT, explores affiliations of these variants in the manuscript tradition of the poem, and argues that the readings in the second edition are useful for understanding the…