Browse Items (16459 total)

Describes the office of canon and the science of alchemy as background to the Canon, who chooses not to join the Canterbury pilgrimage. The history of corruption and reform among canons is a "touchstone" for understanding the character Chaucer…

Characterizes the Canon's Yeoman as a "personal servant of a religious officer," although details of CYP indicate that he might more accurately be described as an alchemist's fire-tender or "puffer." The essay examines the importance of fire and…

As a character "capable of saying one thing but meaning quite another," the Manciple ridicules the "wisdom of the mother" at the end of ManT. The crow suffers for the "feminine behavior" of talking too much, and the Manciple talks "as if a woman" to…

The GP sketch of the Manciple is interesting insofar as it reflects Chaucer's possible associations with the Inns of Court. The profession was a rare one in Chaucer's day, although there are similarities between reeves and manciples. The antagonism…

Irony and allegory displace meaning in opposite directions, and in ManP they conspire to simultaneous affirmation and negation. Like Christ's parable of the wicked servant (Luke 16:1-9), the Manciple's verbal assault on the Cook indicates the way to…

The overt hermeneutic directives of many animal books are evident in HF, WBP, and, especially, the silencing of the crow in ManT. The latter combines with the Parson's "antiliterary prologue" to undercut the whole of CT.

Reads ManT as a "story both of a wife who cuckolds her jealous husband and of a sexually aware trickster [the crow] who uses his knowledge, voice, and wit to gain freedom from his gilded cage." Both the wife and the crow seek freedom, but unlike the…

Comments on ecclesiastical reform of the late Middle Ages as background to the Parson's sketch in GP and presents ParsT as a confessional manual.

Explores why the Parson is neither a rector nor a parish priest, examining historical contexts and speculating about Chaucer's intentions, especially as they relate to backgrounds to the "Summa de poenitentia."

The allegory of ParsPT assumes that literature can somehow represent truth, while the theology of ParsPT emphasizes the impossibility of humanity's comprehending such truth. Ret espouses a mediating negative allegory that indicates divine…

Argues that BD satisfies the principal features of the consolatio, while recognizing the poem's dream-vision characteristics. Examines dialogue, the frame, the role of narrator-dreamer as narrator-therapist who leads the Black Knight to Blanche--a…

The discourse of "fin amor" places the male subject in a feminine position; in BD, the absence of White problematizes this feminization of the male, producing melancholia that endangers the Black Knight's psychic stability and the dominant fiction of…

Chaucer's knowledge of medieval mathematical imagery is evident in several ways, beginning with his reference to "Argus, the noble countour," who is Algus, the great Arab mathematician Al-Khwarizmi. By refiguring the beginnings and endings of…

HF recalls "Piers Plowman" in its vocabulary, its apocalyptic pursuit of truth and authority, its dream-vision genre, its signature passages, and its unfinished state. Both poems manipulate conventions and challenge readers' presuppositions in ways…

Considers three rhetorical features of HF (introductory features, "occupatio" and the inexpressibility "topos," and repeated rhyme) to refute John Matthews Manly's view (1926) that Chaucer's early writing lacked originality and that his use of…

When an angry God of Love accuses the narrator of a breach of faith, Alceste rebukes the god for believing false counselors. This action reflects the political situation of Chaucer's time. The Lord's Appellant had attacked Richard II's corrupt…

Surveys the depictions of Medea in medieval literature and its backgrounds, focusing on how, in the Middle Ages, the character reflects issues of dynastic rivalry, legitimacy, and presumptions about the passions of females. Comments on how Chaucer's…

Argues that "the character paradigm that Chaucer creates...specifically for the lower birds in PF originates from his understanding of the rising social importance of urban culture in England, even though these birds themselves do not come from…

In TC, Chaucer creates a persona who embodies two conflicting modes of response, thus leaving it up to the reader to find a reconciliation.

Chaucer's Troilus derives from three reflections of the "Iliad": classical, the Christian-allegorical, and the romance. Sarpedon's feast is central to TC, with classical, Scholastic, and finally Dantesque treatment of free will, fate, and…

Critiques approaches to TC that separate the narrator of the poem from Chaucer, briefly tracing modern ideas of character and irony from Kittredge to Donaldson and Muscatine, and on to deconstruction and feminism. New Critics and their descendants…

In the flux that overturned feudal patriarchal society, the position of the widow was destabilized; the social station of Chaucer's Criseyde contrasts with that of Shakespeare's Cressida, as well as that of widows in other Renaissance works.

The English word "digression" is first recorded in TC 1.143, where the narrator comments on the fall of Troy. This digression anticipates ideas and images that occur later in the poem and reflects the narrator's difficulty in coming to a conclusion.

Comparison of the protagonist of "William of Palerne" with Chaucer's Troilus makes William seem "a paragon of decision," while Alisaundrine is like Pandarus in bringing lovers together.

Examines an exchange between Troilus and Pandarus to explore the theme of public versus private life in TC. Explores the relation between friendship and the public-private dialectic.