Browse Items (16391 total)

Contrasts the ending of PrT with Latin analogues to argue that the Tale is less concerned with miracles than with martyrdom--Jewish martyrdom as well as Christian--whereby Chaucer suggests the need for mourning human death.

Argues that "because Hoccleve's metre cannot persuasively be reconciled with any known metrical system, it must be allowed its own category." Details Chaucer's metrical "template" and shows how Hoccleve varies it to create his own, although…

Assesses the debate between psychoanalytic and historicist critics, arguing that psychoanalytic assumptions and interpretations are embedded in historicist analysis, despite historicist claims of rejecting psychoanalysis. Considers works by major…

Reprinted in Gayle Margherita. The Romance of Origins: Language and Sexual Difference in Middle English Literature (Philadelaphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 100-28.

Members of the aristocracy and the middle class engaged in wrestling. Thus, Chaucer's reference to the Miller as a wrestler cannot be dismissed as a reference to the lower class.

In a chapter entitled "Medieval and Early Modern Devils: Names and Images" (pp. 45–74), assesses the devil-dressed-in-green of FrT and its associations with the fairies in WBT; also comments on the characters in PardT and CYT "who are already…

Considers Nicholas Trevet's Anglo-Norman chronicle and discusses "the ways in which Trevet's larger vision of history is reflected in Chaucer's writing." Catalogues the various models for history available to and used by Chaucer, including Geoffrey…

Explores the functions and nuances of the historical present verb tense, focusing on epic scenes in CT (especially KnT and MLT), TC, LGW, and Anel, and assessing how Chaucer's uses of the tense help with vividness, immediacy, and "visualization" of…

The form of GP is descended from the genre of the rhetorical catalogue of types, represented in simpler form by the lists of trees and birds in PF. In PF, the garden represents the world of timeless values and the catalogs the earth-bound realities;…

Argues that "the discarded historical event" of the Peasants' Revolt "surfaces" in NPT "not to record the cracks and crevices in the dwindling feudal system, but to participate in the bestialization and grotesquing of the 1381 insurgents and the…

In TC, the layering of sources, authors, characters, and language produces a text that "seeks consciously to exist in the present each time it is read." The complex acts of memory among the characters suggest that time is chaotic, yet a "kind of…

Comprehensive survey of European literatures, writers, genres, motifs, and themes, from Homer to contemporary figures and trends. J. Smith, "Chaucer (c.1340-c.1400)," pp. 142-46, describes Chaucer and his works, discussing him as a humanist and a man…

Includes a chapter entitled "Mind and Soul in English from Chaucer to Shakespeare" (pp. 245-78) that surveys the denotations and connotations of the words "soul" and "mind," with examples drawn a range of authors, including Chaucer.

Includes selections from GP (lines 1-42, 285-308, and 545-66) in Middle English, with interlinear glosses.

A sweeping survey of puppets, puppeteering, puppet shows, and their cultural legacy in England. Surmises briefly (p. 52) that "popet" (Th 7.701) and "popelote" (MilT 1.3254) may evince knowledge of puppet performance in Chaucerian England, but also…

Together, Chaucer's two references to the Alexandrian crusade in CT, along with his portrait of the Knight and depictions of Custance and the Sultaness in MLT, expose similarities between missionary work and crusading. The Knight's participation in…

Written for "Lyte Lowys" (Chaucer's son), Astr is a concise, brilliant translation of Masha'allah's "De compositione et utilitate astrolabii." Chaucer best displays his comprehension in his definitions of the equinoctial. Although written for a…

Examines the "defense-of-women" section near the end of Hoccleve's "Regiment" (lines 5090-194) as a meditation on literary influence and the need for the poet to comment on political issues. The defense alludes to the Wife of Bath and to…

Hoccleve, a personal acquaintance of Chaucer, received personal instruction from Chaucer in the art of English poetry. Hoccleve remains firmly subordinated to his master poet of imaginary worlds, but his distinctive strength is his being "a poet of…

Assesses the "formal organising principle" of Hoccleve's "Series" in light of that of CT (and LGW). Argues that CT is "not just incomplete, but incompleteable" (citing the additivity entailed in CYP), explaining it as Chaucer's response to the…

Although Hoccleve's poetry is in many ways "at a further remove than Chaucer from French formal models," some features of his verse suggest a "closer affinity," especially the holograph manuscripts that can be seen as single-author "collected poems."

Compares the multilingual conditions of late-medieval England with modern conditions in Korea, Kenya, and Quebec. Then argues that Hoccleve's poetic career resulted from Lancastrian encouragement of a national English language imitating Chaucer's…

Explores Hoccleve's uses of and attitudes toward Christine de Pizan and Chaucer, focusing on Ovidian notions of female readership and how in his"Series" Hoccleve positions Pizan to "speak back to Chaucer" and "asks us to reflect on the Chaucerian…

Hoccleve's request for a portrait (supplied in the Harley 4866 MS of "The Regement of Princes") is something new: the author's likenesses had heretofore been stylized. Hoccleve's lines (4992-5012) place Chaucer in a holy or ecclesiastical setting. …

Compares Chaucer's and Hoccleve's manuscripts in terms of authorial control, contrasting the "muddle of disparate exemplars" of CT with Hoccleve's detailed attention to format. Specifically contrasts Hoccleve's "mid-stanza paraph" in his autograph…