Browse Items (16360 total)

Although the heroine speaks bravely in TC of being her "owene womman," Chaucer's "would-be feminist" is continually victimized by the male-dominated society largely responsible for her limited views about sexual roles.

A feminist analysis of the "Marriage Group" reveals that Chaucer draws his characterization of women largely from medieval stereotypes. He is unable to go beyond a Griselda (Virgin Mary) or a Dame Alisoun (Eve) to create a female "both virtuous and…

Lindeboom discusses how Zenobia in MkT helps to characterize the Monk and his spiritual condition. In Dutch.

Compares Chaucer's PrT with Alfonso X's "Cantigas de Santa Maria" (no. 6),analyzing them in detail (from plot to prosody), and providing parallel editions of the two texts. In Spanish.

Compares the dream of Chauntecleer in NPT with the dreams of the roosters in "Roman de Renart" and "Reinart Fuchs." In Spanish.

Based on Nietzsche's epistemology, the essay discusses Chaucer's use of multiple perspective in PF, TC, and NPT as the poet's instrument for encouraging his readers to reflect on the multiplicity of their experiences.

Several hundred entries cover a wide range of historical and conceptual topics, individual words, important landmarks in the history of swearing, etc. Very few entries are given over to individual writers, although the entry on Chaucer is lengthy…

Examines Chaucer's stanzaic and metrical dexterity in TC, discussing how and with what effects he bridges stanza breaks and how he creates emphasis through repetitions, rhyme pairs, caesuras, enjambment, narratorial disavowals, and shifting of climax…

Describes the neo-Platonic, Chartrian tradition in which astral influence (or determinism) includes Saturn as a figure of wisdom as well as cold, temporal destiny, suggesting that the depiction of the god/planet in "De Universitate Mundi" by Bernard…

Describes the sources of SqT and explores its relations with KnT and Anel, focusing on the narrator's clumsy concerns with the "knotte" or major point of the Tale and arguing that this and other shortcomings indicate ironically the Squire's naïve,…

Illustrates the riches of Chaucer's narratorial techniques by considering the presence of the narrator in GP (focusing on the descriptions of the Prioress, Monk, and Friar), the assignment to him of Tho, the ironies of PardP and WBP, and the ways…

Assesses Gower's artistry in several tales of the "Confessio Amantis," including analysis of Gower's tale of Constance in comparison with Trevet's version and Chaucer's MLT. Argues that Gower's tale is more unified than Chaucer's and more purely…

Contends that "there is no clear, indisputable evidence" of a personal relationship between Chaucer and Thomas Hoccleve in the latter's "Regement of Princes." His praise of Chaucer in that poem is evocative but generally conventional, and there is…

Characterizes Chaucer as "typically" English, commenting on his name, his sense of humor, his "love of nature," and his concern with fate, fortune, and "wyrd." Suggests several English books that Chaucer "must have read."

Describes the English royal interest in the political and military maneuvers in Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and France that involved Pedro the Cruel, Pedro the Bold, Henry of Trastamara, Bernard du Guesclin, the Free Companies, and England's Black…

Scans the verse in the first 100 lines of BD, with commentary on emendations and unusual features; then offers a catalog of scansion (with analysis and extensive notes) of the entire poem, concluding that the "basis of Chaucer's metrics" in BD (and…

Assesses Chaucer's characterization of Criseyde in light of Boccaccio's Criseide in "Filostrato," arguing that Chaucer makes her more of a courtly ideal and therefore more reprehensible in her infidelity and a figure of all false, worldly love.

Examines William Blake's painting of the Canterbury pilgrims for its artistic value and its place in the history of taste. Blake's "Descriptive Catalog," which accompanied the first exhibition of the painting, and his "Prospectus" for a subsequent…

Treats the connections between "mind, body and affect" in BD, KnT, TC, MLT, LGW, and elsewhere, describing classical and medieval theories of breathing, sighing, and swooning as physiological movements of vital spirits. Playing a key role in…

An examination of three analogues--"The Marriage of Sir Gawaine," "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell," and Gower's "Tale of Florent"--illuminates Chaucer's handling of Arthurian motifs such as the lady's transformation and the issue of…

Assesses the rape in WBT in light of rape as an "episodic unit" in medieval romance and in light of medieval law.

Reviews scholarship that discusses analogues of WBT and hypothesizes the nature and date of the archetype of these tales, focusing on the relative chronology of major motifs, shared and unshared. A hypothetical summary of the archetype--presented as…

Argues that the "interpretive reading" underlying T. H. White's uses of William Twiti's "The Art of Hunting" as a source in "The Once and Future King" is similar to medieval rhetorical techniques of amplification. Exemplifies similar kinds of…

Compares and contrasts attitudes toward age and aging in WBT, Gower's tale of Florent, and "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle," considering these attitudes in light of late medieval social perspectives on age and marriage that were affected…

Argues that Malory downplayed his uses of the Stanzaic "Morte Arthur" and the Alliterative "Morte Arthure" in his "Le Morte Darthur" because the cultural prestige of native English romances was low--an attitude popularized by Chaucer in Th and…