Browse Items (16459 total)

Reads Boccaccio's, Petrarch's and Chaucer's versions of the tale of Griselda, observing particular emphases, similarities, and differences, especially those that pertain to Griselda in relation to the ideal of the "mulier fortis" of Proverbs 31.10 in…

Traces from Jerome to Frère Lorens's "Somme le Roi" the legacy of commentary on Isaiah 40 which links spiritual ascent and contempt for the world, discussing Lorens's "Somme" as the source for the rise of Arcite in Boccaccio's "Teseida" and as a…

Argues that Daniel 13.20 is a source of or influence on details of MerT 5.2138-48, and suggests that pictorial representations of Susannah and the Elders and details from the alliterative poem "Susannah" reveal ironic dimensions in Chaucer's scene of…

Describes the backgrounds to Chaucer's reference to St. Valentine in PF (line 309) and explores its contemporaneous contexts in the poetry of Oton de Grandson and Charles d'Orléans. Rooted in Roman Lupercalia seasonal rites of purification and…

Discusses Chaucer's three references to May 3 as an ambivalent "destinal date," arging that the date is affiliated with tragic fortune in TC, with humanistic outlook in KnT, and with comic reversal in NPT. This sequence comprises a "kind of limited…

We do not understand how the Franklin views the concept of "gentilesse" that informs his moral vision. Kellogg compares the Franklin's use of key chivalric terminology to its uses in Middle English romance, thereby illuminating the Franklin, FranT,…

Assesses Boccaccio's and Chaucer's attitudes toward their sources by examining the relations of their narrators with Cressida in "Filostrato" and TC. Cressida's legendary status as dishonest and inconstant had been established before Boccaccio and…

The narrators of Filostrato and TC, both selfishly motivated, create irony through their misconceptions of Cressida's traditional image. Although Boccaccio's narrator distorts Boethius and Dante, Chaucer's narrator represents Criseyde's flaw as…

Defends the "depth of thought and the diversity of expression that characterized the Middle Ages" through an examination of "philosophical treatises, memoirs, letters, tales, romances, and epics that drove the medieval search for wisdom." The chapter…

Examines adaptations of conventional depictions of change in literary characters--in works by Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, and Benoît de Sainte-Maure. Contrasts the change in Benoît's Briseida with that in Chaucer's Criseyde, focusing…

Reads the tone and details of PrT as consistent with the characterization of the Prioress established in GP. A "ful" large woman fixated on immaturity and smallness, the Prioress admires motherhood and empathizes with the innocence of the clergeon,…

Assesses the Helen-Deiphebus sub-plot in TC for the ways that it reinforces the poem's theme of inconstancy and anticipates Criseyde's relationship with Diomedes.

Explicates the phrase "withouten coppe" (FranT 5.492) as meaning "outside of the cup," conveying that Aurelius drank his penance to the fullest extent.

Provides historical evidence that if Pandarus was guilty of incest with Criseyde, he was also guilty of cuckolding Troilus. Similarly, if Gaunt had cuckolded Chaucer, he would not have been able to able to marry Chaucer's wife's sister, Katherine…

Chaucer discovered tragedy as a narrative genre not from Boccaccio but from Boethius and from the glossator of his own copy of "De consolatione," who may have been Ralph Strode. Chaucer's concept of tragedy included the fall of the innocent as well…

Reviews scholarship and corrects mistaken assumptions about medieval tragedy. The first vernacular writer in Europe to consider himself a tragedian, Chaucer was anticipated by several Latin writers but drew mainly from Boethius. The tragic falls in…

By studying pre-Chaucerian and fourteenth-century traditions of Saint Valentine, springtime, hagiography, heortology, etc., Kelly tests the hypothesis that Chaucer invented the patron saint of matchmakers.

In the Middle Ages the term "art" meant the liberal arts or almost any serious endeavor (other than the visual arts), also involving Gregory the Great's dictum that "the art of arts is the rule of souls." Chaucer was less influenced by the visual…

Argues that Chaucer's St. Valentine is a Genoese Saint Valentine whose feast was May 2, and not the Valentine of February 14. Thus the appropriateness of spring imagery.

Chaucer had a rare sense of genre for a medieval writer. Not only was he "one of a small number of generic innovators," but he also reinterpreted and practiced genres and had a "following of practitioners." Kelly surveys Chaucer's use of genre…

Contemporary documents concerning aspects of liturgical life indicate that the people of Chaucer's time were a "fervent laity served by a fervent clergy," notwithstanding the adulterous monk of ShT and Chaucer's corrupt Pardoner, Summoner, and Friar.

Identifies classical and medieval uses and understandings of "tragedy." For Aristotle, tragedy was a serious story, although one that might end happily. The notion of "irretrievable misfortune" came to dominate the late-classical use of the term.

Based on medieval religious rules and regulations, particularly those related to orders of nuns, the medieval norm of nuns is revealed in Chaucer's depiction of the Prioress, a depiction that is not negative.

Chaucer was the first to consider Boccaccio's stories tragedies. But unlike Boccaccio, who served a cautionary moralism and wished to stress retributive justice, Chaucer aimed primarily at sympathy and empathy, developing a generic theory that…

Examinies civil and criminal documentary evidence of the meanings of the term "rape," reconsidering their applicability to Cecily Champain's 1380 claim against Chaucer. The "inherent ambiguity" of the term and its "very wide range" of legal and…