Browse Items (16360 total)

Suggests that the French "Somme le Roi" may be the ultimate source of the reference to "Placebo" in SumT 3.2075 and that "Roman de Fauvel" is a "more likely immediate source."

Traces the development of characterization in representative works of English literature from the Middle Ages to Joyce and Lawrence, emphasizing the change from universalized figures to individual psychology. Includes a chapter entitled "Women by…

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this lecture was recorded on February 18, 1965, and includes comments on "flaws" in Chaucer's poems, as well as ones by Milton, Longfellow, Keats, Poe, and more.

Argues that Dorigen and Arveragus's agreement at the beginning of FranT "to marry and remain courtly lovers" reflects the Franklin's illusory "double standard" that falsely assumes compatibility between marital and courtly love, symbolically undercut…

Anthologizes animal fables from worldwide cultures and various historical periods, classical to modern, including a modernized prose adaptation of NPT, here titled "The Tale of Chanticleer" (pp. 158-64), accompanied by five pen-and-watercolor…

Argues for a "plain and straightforward" (i.e., non-ironical) reading of a portion of Canacee's falcon's complaint in SqT, disagreeing with a previous discussion of the passage by Robert S. Haller.

Argues that the two canons of CYPT are functionally identical, that the canon is a consistent character, and that Pars Prima and Secunda of CYT parallel the two parts of medieval alchemical treatises and comprise an "ironic image of the sacrilegious…

Argues that SqT is a "rhetorical satire" of the Squire; attributes the excesses of the Tale to the teller's youthful "defective knowledge" of rhetorical arts and argues that it is Chaucer's means of critiquing the "pseudo-genre of romance" and…

Parodies patristic criticism by reading Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" as an indictment of concupiscent love, drawing recurrent comparisons between the structure and imagery of Twain's novel and BD.

Explores the moral and intellectual "failings" of the priest in CYT, arguing that his greed, his gullibility, and his status as an "annueleer" make him a target of the Tale's satire by way of dramatic irony.

Argues that the phrase "been lyk a cokewold" (MilT 1.3226) means that John fears he is a cuckold, not that he will be a cuckold, observing misconstruals in editions and translations of the Tale.

Attributes the reference to Taurus in NPT 7.3194-95 to the medico-astrological tradition of associating Taurus with necks and throats, part of a pattern of imagery in the Tale that may reflect the influence of Bartholomeus Anglicanus's "De…

Reinforces previous arguments that the immediate source of Chaucer's description of "Mercury the slayer of Argus" in KnT is Ovid's "Metamorphoses" 1.671-72, adding that, like Argus, Arcite finds death by listening to the "persuasive and deceitful…

Identifies Ovid as the ultimate source of Chaucer's references to the friendship of Theseus and Piritheus in KnT, perhaps mediated by the "Roman de la Rose 8148-54 or moralizations of Ovid's works.

Identifies Ovid's "Amores" 3.4.41-42 as a possible source for the "incompatibility of beauty and marital fidelity" that underlies the choice offered by the loathly lady to the knight in WBT 3.1219-27.

Suggests that although Chaucer generally follows Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" in his account of the labors of Hercules, one discrepancy may have been influenced by a scholists' gloss to Ovid's "Ibis" 401-2.

Argues that Chaucer's allusions to Argus in WBP, MerT, and TC derive ultimately from Ovid's "Ars Amatoria" and "Amores" and capitalize on the "conventional moral significations" of the moralized commentary tradition, lending resonances to the…

Offers a psychotherapeutic approach to literature, including discussion of Chaucer's "Marriage Group" (pp. 91-120). Praises WBP for its feminine acceptance of the realities of love and the simultaneous pursuit of the desire to transcend them. The…

Item not seen; no further information available.

Traces Chaucer's attention to his own authorial fame, putting it in the context of medieval anonymity, book production, and the "idea of authorship." Compares and contrasts the narrators and attendant "fictive illusion" in his works, especially HF.…

Argues that changes Chaucer made to his source, Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," in TC 4.957-1078 "emphasize Troilus' eagerness to shun responsibility by denying the very possibility of human freedom," saving "him from the need to act."…

Presents CYPT in Middle English (following Robinson's 1957 edition) with end-of-text notes and glossary and a one-page appendix of the spurious link between CYT and PhyT. The Introduction (pp. 1-22) considers the "surprise" of the presence of CY…

Presents NPPT and NPE in Middle English (following Robinson's 1957 edition) with end-of-text notes and glossary. The Introduction (pp. 1-44) considers the tale-teller relations of NPPT, the "digressions" (dreams, sermons, and rhetoric) of NPT, and…

Designed as a "not too bulky" introduction to Chaucer and his life for the Cambridge University Press series "Selected Tales of Chaucer," providing fundamental information about Chaucer's life, language, social contexts, and intellectual background,…

Explores the strategies and effects of Chaucer's self-aware affirmations in CT of the work's "status as fiction," commenting on the first-person narrator's functions (in contrast with those in Dante) and tracing the ironies generated by tensions…