Browse Items (16391 total)

Argues that the rhetorical interjections and repetitions in MLT, read in the context of Trevet's and Gower's versions of the Constance story as "an origin point of English identity," focus attention on questions of myth, literary belief, and…

Language itself is important in FranT, but so is the intention of the speaker. Moreover, authorial intention in CT as a whole affects how we use language for our own ends, because we learn from everything we read. Authors must consider consequences…

Just as in RvT Chaucer plays on his audience's awareness of dialect geography, in SumT he exploits strong contemporary awareness of linguistic class markers. If Chaucer was in some sense a philologist, he was also an efficient and deliberate…

By adjusting his source, Chaucer allows the Knight to construct a Theseus who appears noble and positively inclined toward women. Chaucer also reminds us, however, that Theseus is not always the champion of women and the exemplar of chivalry. A…

Compares the narrative strategy of MerT with the techniques of standup comedy. The narrator of MerT holds up for ridicule the socially sanctioned convention of marriage between young women and old men, while at the same time affirming conventional…

Offers a Freudian analysis of the antifeminist and political jokes in NPT. The opening frame concerning the widow and the allusion to the rebellion of 1381 suggest that the "repression of the class interests of the exploited" is "a symptom of the…

Chaucer's comedy is a "function of the inherent paradoxes of language, particularly as articulated by Freud," and the humor of CT depends on the audience's awareness of the slippage between truth and language. The paired opposition of PhyT and PardT…

The conversion of all to "mercantile exchange" underlies a comic displacement of roles in ShT. The merchant and the monk switch roles, and the wife paradoxically gains a sense of self-worth, a comic transformation of her economic and sexual…

Briefly surveys the carnivalesque folk tradition of charivari in medieval literature and assesses MerT in light of it, especially the description of the marriage between January and May, the musical imagery, and the inexpressibility topos.

Close reading of rhythm, rhyme, and syntax discloses the wry control of the opening of GP.

Hanning examines the allusions to demons and devils in CT and compares them with the devil figure in late-medieval English religious drama. In both contexts, the devil is a tricker of humans who is tricked by God; a "spirit of inversion" who seeks…

Pigg traces a pattern in the Ellesmere order of CT, beginning with how the narrators circumscribe the religious comedy of MLT and ClT by keeping their plots earthbound. PhyT is a "transitional ... refiguring" that leads to the more spiritual…

Like Ret, the farts in MiltT and SumT remake something for their recipients. On the highest level of abstraction, they combine to remake time from the "end" perspective of death.

Explores Chaucer's adaptation-translation of Jean de Meun's account of the fall of Nero. In MkT, Chaucer capitalizes on Boethian references to Nero and presents Nero as responsible for his fall in fortune.

Like many of his French predecessors, Chaucer relied heavily on ancient (and a few foreign) authorities, but his vernacular language lacked prestige. He gradually freed himself from such handicaps to claim new status as an English writer.

In discussing the standard alliterative line in medieval English poetry, notes Chaucer's attitude toward alliteration in ParsP and, focussing on TC, shows the diminishing role of alliteration in Chaucer. Alliterative patterns and phrases provide…

Discussion of the literary background of Douglas's poem takes account of Chaucer's references to music, especially in HF and PF.

Reading is more important to the meaning of the 'Kingis Quair' than it is to the meaning of Chaucer's dream poems. This point is demonstrated by an analysis of PF.

By means of vocabulary items, characteristics of Chaucerian English as found in the "Kingis Quair" are noted in passing.

Whereas Henryson's tale focuses on flattery and pride, and with the relationship of these sins to language, Chaucer's NPT--a likely source for Henryson--emphasizes the rhetoric of heroic poetry and the question of women's opinions. These different…

Dunbar's so-called autobiographical references are comparable to Chaucer's references to himself in his poetry. Also Dunbar's references employ conventions that may be found in Chaucer.

Establishes a link between the "preamble" in WBP and the sermon genre.

Discusses John Gower's "Vox Clamantis," with passing mention of Chaucer.

Examines "inner and outer landscapes in relation with the seasons" in three works of medieval literature, including articulation of the aesthetic pleasure evoked at the beginning of GP, effected through Chaucer's thematic range and use of "every…

Explores the "difficulties" Chaucer encountered in translating Latin and continental works into English poetry and various verse forms, surveying complete works such as Bo, Rom, ClT, Mel, Ven, etc., and passages from various sources in larger works…