Browse Items (16456 total)

By dating HF's composition and first public reading in December, 1379, we can see the unfinished last lines as a joke purposely played on Cardinal Pileo's messenger, Nicolo,whose news that no marriage would take place between Richard II and Caterina…

As an ars poetica, LGWP shows that the poet is not a creator but a mediator, balancing vision with experience. This action serves to mediate between the extremes of "cupiditas" and "caritas," tempering the former with the latter.

Chaucer responds to the God of Love's charges against TC and the translation of Rom by avoiding confrontation. This response is not noncommittal but carries the message that one should be evenhanded, not extremist, when dealing with feminism.

To be part of the courtly love tradition, TC must exist outside the patriarchal feudal order and allow male and female equal power. However, the reality of a hierarchical social order creates ambivalence in the narrator toward his material.

Sted, which begins as a complaint, reveal the poet's "anxiety over the mutable condition of language."

TC explores the "breakdown of language as a vehicle for truth and...knowledge." According to Augustine, language can be redeemed in the Incarnation. Chaucer conveys the "idea of language as a mirror of the divine, and through language we…

Treats the "ambiguous relationship between 'aventure' and 'tydynges'" mentioned in HF, or one of Chaucer's most frequent themes: Fortune (or Providence) versus necessity, divine prescience, and free will, as seen in KnT and TC. Discusses the…

From preaching tradition Chaucer borrowed the "topos" of renaming the sins "to make them seem more attractive to sinners," a "topos" that took two major forms: "a narrative "exemplum" about the Devil's unmarriageable daughters," and a "non-narrative…

Studies MilT for its "intersecting strands of linguistic coding" and contrasts Robertsonian character typing with Bakhtin's "dialogic imagination," semantic open-endedness. The stock character type of the Miller is "quited" by his tale. Bakhtin's…

Treats the anxiety caused by the "instability and arbitrariness" of language as a "transcendental medium...between phenomena and ideas."

Dante, Boccaccio, Gower, Chaucer, and the Archpriest of Hita are aware that language is deceptive: signs are ambiguous and may be misunderstood, or they are deliberately deceptive. The author may serve as trickster and may demand reader "response…

Though well versed in French poetic traditions, Chaucer did not simply translate French into English. Rom uses a uniquely English idiom. Later works such as Th show a greater ability to discern connotations than do early works such as Rom and BD.

CT entails two levels of reader response: the fictional listeners on the road to Canterbury and the reader audience. The reactions of the pilgrims warn the reader not to misinterpret the tales by responding to them uncritically, as many of the…

Studies Chaucer's clever exploitation of the ambiguities between the laments of the lover and the mourner and his manipulation of traditional didactic patterns containing laments for the dead in Pity, BD, SqT, LGW (Thisbe), MLT, PhyT, ManT, TC, and…

Describes how in the first version of his "Chronicle" John Hardyng was influenced by Lydgate in his descriptions of royal power and social harmony--moments of "great joy and triumph"--while depending upon Chaucer and Walton for his concern with…

Fresco draws attention to the imitation of Chaucer's enchâssement (encasement, enshirement) in Christine's Enseignemens moraulx BnF fr. 1551.

A number of the most famous fourteenth-century poets used pilgrimage as a genre to promote the use of vernacular language. Morrison's essay considers pilgrimage, gender, and use of the vernacular, raising questions about intertextual anxiety and the…

Discusses female presence and company on pilgrimage routes, examining women's destinations and motivations compared to those of men.

Reprint of essay that first appeared in Florilegium 10 (1988-91): 83-92. See entry there.

The persistent and untrue story of a "quarrel" between Gower and Chaucer can be explained by the notion of rape. Gower's use of the Philomela legend in Confessio Amantis and Chaucer's use of it in TC suggest that in their "interaction with one…

Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of polyphony illuminates MLH, MLP, and MLT, in which Custance's religious voice contrasts with the Man of Law's many ambivalent voices, including his "rhetorical, epic, and legal registers." While Custance is a stock figure,…

The tradition of involucrum explains the Second Nun's preoccupation with the name Cecilie, associates the Prioress and the Monk with Abelard, associates the Wife of Bath with Bathsheba, and relates the Clerk's references to Petrarch and "Poo" to…

Chaucer's Criseyde in TC and Malory's Elaine and Guenivere in Morte d'Arthur are "modern" in their struggles. Each author illuminates his "diogesis" by narrative use(s) of the heroine(s); both authors "counter reductive views" by providing…

Early dissertations on Chaucer by women illustrate the limitations faced by early female academics. Critical neglect of Maria Koellreutter's 1908 dissertation on Chaucer suggests little recent social progress.

The walled-garden images in KnT, MerT, the GP sketch of the Prioress, WBT, FrT, and BD illustrate that walls not only provide safety but also exclude women from the knowledge needed to progress from virginity to motherhood and to "wise womanhood." …