Browse Items (16443 total)

Chaucer's dream poems reflect the self-consciousness of "mise en abyme"--literally, "setting of the abyss"--used here to identify Chaucer's means of drawing attention to structural and thematic circularity and to poetics. …

Examines the "topos of the dream" in Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio and compares the dream vision in BD. Points to similarities with mystical and shamanic experiences toward ecstasy that go beyond the similarities and differences in the medieval…

Assesses A. Vahit Turhan's 1949 translation of CT into Turkish, using Skopos theory of translation to assess cultural differences in senses of humor that underlie Chaucer's text and the translation. In Turkish, with an abstract in English.

Suggests that the "Loathly Lady" is an anthropomorphic representation of the land, linking human vagaries with the uncertain product of working any given land and underscoring the impossibility of human attempts to control and regulate the natural…

Explores how John Arderne, Chaucer, and Thomas Hoccleve use the language of illness and healing in a wide range of texts, noting that the narrators present themselves as "flawed and sick" and that their narratives, like their bodies, are "not wholly…

Describes an approach to teaching CT involving the composition and recording of rap lyrics and the creation of illuminated manuscripts.

Examines illustrations of CT in several manuscripts, including the Hengwrt; Ellesmere; Bodley 686; and Tokyo, MS Takamiya 24 (formerly Devonshire); and portraits of Chaucer, exploring how manuscript illustrations "serve to shape the text and its…

Ebin shows that "instead of being inept imitators of Chaucer and his company," the fifteenth-century poets "departed from their supposed models.

Explores individuality in visual and verbal portraiture, arguing that facial expressions or movements in art--i.e., "the extent to which a given image evokes or represents movement"--are the basis of perceptions of individuality in portraits.…

The Franklin, not to be identified as Chaucer's spokesman regarding marriage, frequently intrudes into his story in order to present a favorable self image before his listeners. His intrusions also divert his audience from serious moral issues his…

Jungian psychological analysis of the character of January, arguing that he shows the characteristics of the introverted type--capacity for abstraction, extreme subjectivity, and a resultant poor grasp of the outside world. January has trouble…

Aurelius usurps and reinterprets Dorigen's speech. Through such devices, Chaucer subtly makes listeners and readers aware that what may appear to be real, whether concrete or ideological, may be illusion. The Franklin's intent is to assert his…

Describes and reproduces sample illustrations from four Danish translations of selections from CT: those by Flemming Bergsøe (1943), illustrated by Poul Christensen; by Lis Thorbjørnsen (1946), illustrated by Ib Spang Olsen; by Jørgen Sonne…

Discusses the "relationship of engravings to narrative" in Eric Gill's woodcuts for the Cockerel Press four-volume edition of CT (1929–31), focusing on its frontispieces and "late or climactic moments in the tales," with b&w illustrations. Comments…

Describes illustrations of CT from the second half of the nineteenth century through 1981, noting that instead of attempting to recapture the Middle Ages as it was, these works reflect the various times in which they were created.

Prints the text of ABC along with its source, i.e., lines 10,893-11,168 of Guillaume de Guilleville's "Pélèrinage de la Vie Humaine." Discusses ABC as a "direct paraphrase," considering how deviations from the source, particularly in imagery,…

Argues that "through his patterning of imagery Chaucer systematically expressed his doctrine on poetic creativity," i.e., that a poet may "achieve imaginative vision" by "withdrawal into a mental otherworld." In his early dream poems and especially…

Demonstrates "the extremely close dove-tailing of the three major sections" of BD "and the way in which they complement and illuminate one another" through parallel incidents and atmosphere. Then examines "the imagery patterns in the poem" to show…

Summarizes various problems in dealing with Chaucer's imagery, and examines the imagery in KnT and MilT. In both tales, images tend to "appear in clusters" and they are oftentimes linked in "iterative" patterns to reinforce theme. Considers animal…

LGW illustrates the importance of fidelity to one's pledges. Chaucer shows that "act, speech, and writing, when captured by image, text, and imagination, preserve love beyond its transitory moment of existence" (50). The written experiences of the…

The complex meanings of the pear tree are achieved by means of a pervasive ironic technique whereby material with favorable connotations is introduced only to be qualified and undercut at a later stage. Treats biblical and classical sources, lust,…

Studies images of youth and adolescence in eleven major authors, including Chaucer, showing that adolescence is portrayed as a time of "turbulence, excess, and passion." Chaucer's GP Squire fits the pattern.

Considers critical assessments of Chaucer's attitudes toward Arthurian literature in WBT and argues that Chaucer may have known only nontraditional Arthurian materials such as "Libeaus Desconus" and "Sir Perceval of Galles." This notion is…

Surveys the reception of Chaucer as a poet, century by century, commenting recurrently on the understanding and appreciation of his rhetoric and meter, humor and moral seriousness, linguistic obscurity, relations with sources, characterization, and…

The reasons for Chaucer's low reputation in the seventeenth century were as much aesthetic as linguistic. He was a pawn in the battle over enrichment of the language; his works violated the principles of decorum; the medieval genres he used had…