Browse Items (16382 total)

Explains the value of variant type faces in establishing the process and sequence of composition in Caxton's Westminster print house, focusing particularly on the two compositors of the first edition of CT and on evidence of their involvement in…

Justifies the need for a new edition of the "Tale of Gamelyn" on the grounds that previous editions rely on limited manuscript authority and reflect various editorial biases.

Claims that the "Pardoner's atypical sexuality is subversive of the medieval gender matrix and that his challenge to heteronormativity is ultimately encompassed and disarmed." The descriptions of the Pardoner in GP and PardPT disrupt "the medieval…

Zissos surveys the reception of Valerius Flaccus's "Argonautica," briefly discussing Chaucer's references to the author and the work in LGW, identified by E. F. Shannon in 1929. Chaucer was the first to refer to the poem after the postclassical…

Tallies possible evidence of "early probability calculus" in Middle English literature and its lexicon, including discussion of examples from John Gower, John Lydgate, and PardT. In the latter, line 6.653, chances in dicing are "events which had the…

ManT reflects Chaucer's awareness of the dangers of challenging authority, yet he repeatedly challenges Christian and Boethian orthodoxies concerning evil. KnT does not reconcile the existence of evil, and the orthodoxy of Christian Providence in MLT…

Though he probably knew nothing of the theatre, Chaucer displays the essence of dramatic technique--the ability to create the persons of his characters objectively in CT.

Explores the factors involved in assessing Chaucer's rank among literary greats, summarizing parts of CT, describing difficulties of teaching the poem, suggesting the use of Nevill Coghill's translation, and offering other pedagogical comments.

Despite belittling remarks by some of his characters about the matter of composing in English, there is no evidence that Chaucer himself is embarrassed to use English as his medium of composition.

Chaucer changed the order of the five steps to sin of Peraldus's "Summa de vitiis" and followed Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (10.343-44) instead. Glowka speculates on implications of change.

Explores nuances of Boethian Providence, fortune, destiny, and human perceptions of them in KnT, along with relations between death and love in their worldly and spiritual manifestations. Argues that in KnT Chaucer burlesques the "romantic…

That Diomed was indeed "of tonge large" is to be evinced from his conversations with Criseyde in Book V. His large tongue becomes a symbol of the eventuality of Criseyde's infidelity and of Troilus' tragic demise, as well as of the inevitability of…

By examining Chaucer's handling of his material and the verbal texture of MilT, we can determine the nature of the prior acquaintance of the Reeve and the Miller. The tale "is almost certainly based on a real episode...Robyn the Miller is Old John's…

Although only minor characters, Calkas, Helen, and Cassandra contribute significantly both to the double sorrow of Troilus and to the reader's knowledge of the origin, progress, and inevitable outcome of the conflict between the Greeks and the…

Hector, Antigone, and Deiphebus are all instrumental to the development of the poem, particularly to Troilus' initial elevation on the wheel of Fortune. Though their personal integrity remains unblemished, each is manipulated by Fortune into using…

Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, confesses certain details that parallel incidents in the Miller's story about young Alisoun. If the two Alisouns are one, then Old John is the Reeve, the Wife's fourth husband; and he suffers in embarrassed silence while…

The Clerk of Oxford is Jankyn, the Wife of Bath's fifth husband, travelling incognito.

The source of CYT 1431 is not, as Chaucer says, the "Rosarium" of Arnald of Villa Nova, but his lesser known "De secretis naturae." Chaucer cited the more famous "Rosarium" but quoted from "De secretis" because it contains appropriately mystifying…

Includes discussion of the reference to Boetes (the constellation Boötes) in Bo, IV, met. 5, explaining the astronomy underlying the "puzzle" found in Boethius's original reference and in Chaucer's translation.

Full-length studies of the women in Chaucer's poetry had to wait for the intense activity in feminist scholarship of the last two decades.

Includes the GP description of the Sergeant of the Law (ll. 309-30) in an anthology of 100 lyrics and poetic excerpts that pertain to lawyers and legal practice. Brief notes at the end of the work.

Asserts that the Nun's Priest "necessarily represents and embodies patriarchal Christianity" and, using Catherine Belsey's notion of an "interrogative text" (1980), argues that narrative and formal "inconsistencies" and "contradiction" in NPT cause…

Collection of essays that explores various literary aspects of Chaucer's oeuvre, with particular focus on the "international motif" and "transnational" themes found in many works. Essays address critical contexts and readings to help understand…

Uses KnT as a "comparand" in understanding the tension between "outrage and reason" in the tale of Rostam and Sohrab in Fardowsi's medieval Persian frame-tale narrative "Shahnameh" (Book of Kings). Like Fardowsi's, Chaucer's Tale struggles and…

Modernizes and adapts PardT for children as a drama in six scenes. The Pardoner as narrator speaks in prose and the characters, generally, speak in rhymed pentameter couplets. Features three "ruffians" (named Joker, Jack, and Ace), an Innkeeper, an…