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Spenser's account of Melibee in "The Faerie Queene" 6 reveals affinities with Chaucer's Mel, as well as significant differences from it.

The concept of prudence was well known in the Middle Ages and was often seen as a specifically feminine virtue in medieval French texts. Drawing from those texts, Chaucer also underscores the feminine, making Mel a story for "real women living…

While the iconography of the spinning woman is generally considered to represent domestic virtue, it can also demonstrate either a model of misaligned femininity, as exemplified by Cenobia in MkT (7.2373-74), or an instance of role reversal--a mark…

Chaucer's portrayal of the Monk and of the monk in ShT is complex and sympathetic. Contemporary expectations about monks are clear in the Host's reactions to the Monk. Daun John fits the stereotype but may be motivated by a desire to chastise…

The cock of NPT, through correct Latin quotations and their English mistranslations, provides three literal interpretations of scripture.

Compares the comic treatment of sententiousness in NPT with modern philosophical uses of aphorism. Both are "Menippean" in their contrasts of high and low discourse, and both ask us to perceive their points rather than to understand conceptually.

The "fruyt" and "chaf" passage of NPT places the reading of the "Tale" in an ethical context, complemented by Plato's "Gorgias," with "fruyt" and "chaf" representing true and false counsel.

By emphasizing the contrast between excessive sweat in CYT and its absence in SNT, Chaucer indicates the disjunction between carnal and spiritual.

SNT reflects a Marian-driven ideal of virginal power, mayde and martyr," while SNP stresses Mary as mediatrix, "Mayde and Mooder." The absent female-gendered body of the Second Nun, undescribed in GP, bears witness to the bodies of female spiritual…

Chaucer's translative and appropriative practice in SNP is characterized by "a limited personal perspective transcended by an authoritative source," plus a movement from abstraction (particularly in Dante) to concreteness.

Chaucer's mode of composition of SNT and CYT owes much to the structure of "Roman de la Rose," in which the theme of contradictions and contraries plays a major role.

The Second Nun's voice is undefined by Chaucer, yet it is intriguing since it probes the nature of "agency, voice, and reappropriation." The voice of the Nun becomes more clear as her character develops, and SNT "becomes a product of the voice."

Discusses a Thai analogue to ManT, similar in structure and moral.

Although the manuscript is a typical instance of "compilatio" and unification (e.g., punctuation of ParsT), the virtues portrayed to illustrate ParsT do not belong to a typical iconographic program. After identifying the three virtues with two…

Allusions to the Fall appear in at least half of the tales in CT, but a full tropological reading occurs only in ParsT (10.330), where the allegory explains that "the image of God in man guarantees our ability to rise after a fall."

ParsT critiques both the tales in CT and life, as well as concluding CT.

Examines the source of ParsT and concludes that the Tale was strongly influenced by Frere Laurent's "Summe le Roy" (1279).

BD should be given Chaucer's own title (LGW 418): "The Death of Blanche." Chaucer's title is more fitting for a poem of anti-consolation that emphasizes "death's power over the loveliest visions of youth and happiness."

Summarizes medieval and Renaissance attitudes toward melancholy as a medical disorder and examines literary uses of melancholy in BD, TC, and Shakespeare's "As You Like It" and "Hamlet."

Although securely grounded in medieval moral and theological conventions, Chaucer anticipates modernist concepts of literature, as is evident in his individualism and psychological realism, his ironic crossings of medieval narrative and philosophical…

Through the Eagle's arguments and Fame's arbitrary inferences and syllogisms, HF satirizes the logical analysis of language. This discrediting of late-medieval dialectic is a new use of the dream-vision genre, which traditionally celebrates reason…

Medieval English literature often incorporates Latin in any form, from close translation to radical reduction and including wordplay and allusion.

HF 2.935-49 contains references to the uprising of 1381, the attack on the Temple, and the burning of the Savoy.

Traces the evolution of Virgil's authority during the Middle Ages as stimulated by translations of his works and marginalia in his manuscripts.

Penitential fictions in Chaucer's LGW and Gower's "Confessio Amantis" critique the amorous code in courtly literature.