Browse Items (16382 total)

Dante and Chaucer use "buildings of the imagination" to organize lists of names, lists less informational than "inventional"--sets of associated plots or ideas that may reverberate in the work in which they appear. Examples from HF and BD as well as…

Surveys the connections in classical and Christian literature between incubi and nightmares. Documents the intersections of these traditions in Middle English literature, where such night visitations are more frequent than in Continental literature.…

A psychoanalytic reading of the Pardoner that views him as one who struggles to escape the influence of his father-figure (God) and simultaneously to escape literary models posed in the Bible. Freud and Harold Bloom enable us to see the struggle…

Fifty-seven essays on a variety of topics. For essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Image of Nature in Literature, the Media, and Society under Alternative Title.

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 the literary backgrounds of the birds in TC to argue that the birds "carry with them themes of treachery and unnatural and sorrowful love"; they help depict the "dubious nature of temporal love."

Gedalof and Moore discuss the Wife of Bath and WBPT in their social and literary contexts, especially as they reflect issues of male-female relations. Illustrations from historical manuscripts and paintings, and from contemporary visual…

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…

An ornithological guide to the birds mentioned in Chaucer's works, with black-and-white sketches of each bird. Discusses the contexts in which Chaucer cites various birds, arguing that the poet was aware of their iconic values and that he was a keen…

Reconsiders the 127 Irish analogues to RvT cited in Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson's "Types of Folktale" and reduces them to four. Comments on the transmission of the various motifs in the Tale, suggesting that Chaucer may have gotten the Tale from…

Contemplates the possible range of meanings of tragedy for Chaucer, observing how consistently he associates it with misunderstanding and how he alludes to or invokes Boethius to defer explanation or certainty. Christian notions of grace disallow…

Reads the confusions, contradictions, and ambiguities of ClT and its Envoy in light of feminist critical discourse.

Nakao assesses the use of "as she that" as it is applied to Criseyde, identifying the unusually high frequency of the phrase in TC, its various functions and semantic range, and the way that Chaucer exploits this variety "to hold in balance his…

Examines the syntactic fluidity that parallels Criseyde's shifting psychology.

Børch derives a poetics of reading Chaucer from Chaucer's own poetry, arguing that he frustrates "intertextual" approaches by being consistently evasive. Attention to style and content clarifies how the poetry shapes readers' responses. BD and HF…

Considers Shakespeare's Cressida to be a "delicate literary graft" of the ambiguous aloofness of Chaucer's Criseyde and the "frankness personified" of Henryson's Cresseid.

Argues that function shifts and the development of impersonal constructions reduced the nouns and verbs associated with dreaming in the development of English. Nohara focuses on the loss of forms of "sweven" and "meten" from Middle English, drawing…

Surveys Chaucer's Marian allusions and critical commentary on them. Suggests that Chaucer wrote his Marian poetry (ABC, PrT, SNT, and allusions elsewhere) for political and aesthetic reasons, not out of religious devotion.

Argues against over-ingenious readings of the dayraven in "Beowulf" and of the stone with which Alison threatens Absalon in MilT (3708, 3712), clarifying the commonplace nature of each.

Assesses how John Gay's play, "The Wife of Bath," sheds light on "what Gay and his contemportaries, most especially [Alexander] Pope, knew and thought about Chaucer," exploring Pope's influence on Gay's interest in Chaucer and the nature of Gay's…

Forum letter in which Braxton, disagreeing with Pamela Michaela Paasche, claims that closure is evident in Chaucer's works when his male point of view is recognized, and presents MerT as a "case in point."

Assesses "St. Erkenwald" as hagiography, exploring in particular its orthodoxy and the relation of the Saint and the Judge. Also compares the "rationalism" of the poem with that of KnT and its elegiac qualities with those of BD.

Comments generally on Chaucer's scientific knowledge, explains his use and understanding of "Aristotelian cosmology," and describes the astronomical and astrological systems that underlie the details and structures of many of his works. Assumes that…

Adaptation for the stage of WBT, ClT, SumT, MancT, FranT, and PardT, presented as a single play in which there is a tale-telling contest framed by the actions of two thieves (a Miller and a Plowman) who join a group of five pilgrims (Chaucer, the…

Explores the "tensions" between the narrator and "author-subject" of TC, assessing how (as in other medieval works) the author's "signature" is found within the narrative rather than in its paratext. Such embedded signatures are characteristic of…