Browse Items (16456 total)

Suggests that NPT "reflects . . . the controversy which took place in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries between the secular clergy and the friars." Adduces use of the name "Russell" and several other parallels with French moralized analogues…

Analyzes Chaucer's use of the auxiliary verb "ginnan"/"gan," a periphrastic preterit, in contrast with simple preterits, to produce "distinctions in tempo, intensity, and manner." Comments on examples such as "gan behold"/"beheld", "gan to turne"/…

Argues that minstrelsy is the major target of Chaucer's burlesque in Tho--a "penetrating criticism of oral literary art" that is consistent with Chaucer's "position as a man of letters." Maintains that Tho and its juxtaposition with Mel indicate…

Compares and contrasts the relative courtliness of a range of Valentine's Day poems by Graunson, Gower, Lydgate, and Charles of Orleans to make clear that the First Eagle's address to the formel eagle in PF is comically inappropriate and pompous,…

Questions Germaine Dempster's 1948 suggestions about the production of "manuscripts postulated as heads of genetic groups" and lines of descent for CT witnesses, offering several alternative explanations. Includes attention to the change of ink in…

Identifies predecessors in Old French fabliaux for courtly details, diction, locutions, and situations in MilT and RvT, helping to create comic irony by contrast between "elegance and 'harlotrye.'"

Comments on how "the medieval mirror and wisdom metaphor is utilized" in WBP and helps to characterize the Wife, ironically, as a figure of comic "worldly prudence" rather than true wisdom. Cites other examples from CT of ironic characterization…

Argues that themes of the "nature of literary art" and "the material with which the literary artist deals" unify the HF: the opening of the poem focuses on how "literary artist's imagination finds expression"; the eagle articulates an intellectual…

Identifies personal opportunities Chaucer had "to learn the special fame" of St. Clare, and suggests that his allusion to her in HF (line 1066) evokes "a contrasting silence" in a "passage descriptive of strident clamor."

Argues that the astronomical conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in TC 3.624-25 does not allude to a specific event in 1385 (by which the central book of the poem has been dated) but to a more "general tradition" of foreboding, thematically appropriate…

Reconsiders characterizations of the Dreamer of BD from George Lyman Kittredge (1915) forward, focusing on the Dreamer's reception of the Man in Black's song (475-86). Compares aspects of BD--especially the song--with sources and analogues from the…

Analyzes the "repeated allusions to the Scholastic concept of a divinely-ordained universal order" in ClT. Shows that such allusions are generally not in Chaucer's sources, and that they help to characterize the Clerk as a "serious scholar and devout…

Considers possible sources and analogues for three passages in FranT (5.721-25, 829-34, and 1113-15), explaining how diction, style, and rhetoric indicate the likely influence of Alanus de Insulis's "Anticlaudianus" (Alain de Lille's "Anticlaudian")…

Examines the syntax, rhetoric, and emphases of GP 1.280 in comparison with similar locutions elsewhere in Chaucer (especially ShT) to argue that it means, emphatically, " If he [the Merchant] was in debt, the spectator would certainly never know it!"

Suggests that "don thyn hood" in TC 3.954 may have the literal meaning of "put on your nightcap" or, more likely, the figurative meaning of "restrain yourself," the latter drawn from the practice of hooding a hawk.

Considers Mars "as an exercise in describing human action and emotion in terms of a supposed astronomical event," with the planet/pagan god representing John of Gaunt in his affair with Katharine Swynford (Venus), Mercury representing Chaucer…

Traces the unifying theme of joy after woe in KnT, "brought about both by the plot and by Boethian Destiny," focusing on Arcite's achievement of "welfare" and Palamon's "wele" after both start in sorrow. Theseus similarly replaces Egeus's saturnine…

Posits a "chronology of growth" for the CT, seeking "to follow the imagination of the poet and to recapture the dynamics of creation" evident in Chaucer's apparent changes in plan. Comments on earlier scholarly efforts to explain or understand…

Argues that Chaucer's personal experience of the 1386 Parliament influenced his depiction of parliamentary activity in TC (4.141ff.), detailing events of the historical parliament, Chaucer's likely feelings about it, and changes and additions Chaucer…

Analyzes the dialect forms and textual variants of the "Tale of Gamelyn" in four of the twenty-five CT manuscripts that contain it (Ha4 Cp La Pw), arguing that, in "Gamelyn," these manuscripts evince a textual tradition and editorial practice which…

Adduces an historical account from 1862 concerning a drinking game that involves turning over cups to suggest that "turne coppes" at RvT 1.3928 may indicate Symkyn caroused in similar fashion.

Acknowledging NPT to be "a rhetorical tour de force," assesses implications of its status as a "fable," surveying medieval commentaries on the genre, particularly its ability to teach and/or delight, and commenting on the morality the Nun's Priest…

Comments on previous scholarship that seeks to clarify the GP description of the Guildsmen (1.361-78) and describes the possible political, economic, and religious affiliations among individuals of such professions as Chaucer assigns to them. Shows…

Focuses on Chaucer's selection and arrangement of exempla drawn from Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum" to argue that Dorigen's complaint (4.1367-456) is a "carefully shaped and molded passage of rhetoric designed to illuminate the character of Dorigen,…

Considers the implications of treating the Canon (CYP and CYT, Part I) and the canon (CYT, Part II) as the same character, exploring the unity of the prologue and parts, and assessing the characterization of the canon(s), the Canon's Yeoman, and his…