Browse Items (16469 total)

At the literal level, Griselda is subservient, loving, obedient, and patient; at the spiritual level, she emulates Christ, while Walter is a servant of God.

MerT is an ethical narrative in which the aenigmalogue (puzzling narrative surface) is blended with the apologue (Augustinian "oversense"), thus revealing the Merchant as a Manichean and January as a parody of Jovinian. The apologue is signaled by…

The Merchant's comparison of May to "Queene Ester" (MerT 1744) indicates the terror, treachery, and hatred that lie beneath a demure exterior; the Prioress's response to trapped mice (PrT 144-45), which figure Christ ensnaring the devil, reveals a…

Rhetoric is the Pardoner's mode of existence, but, despite his success with rural audiences, evil intentions negate his moral persuasiveness in the eyes of the pilgrims and the modern reader.

Chaucer's ludic use of language reflects the contemporary attitude toward "translatio" (the transformation of meaning and content and the creation of ambiguity) and the emphasis in logic and grammar on the limitations and inadequacy of language and…

This anthology of drama, poetry, fiction, and essays that pertain to Medea ranges from Euripides to the late twentieth century, including a facing-page selection (pp. 114-23) from the story of Hypsipyle and Medea in LGW, presented in Middle English…

Exemplifies the variety of Chaucer's comedy in CT, particularly the GP, and comments on the compatibility of "Christianity and the comic vision."

Tallies instances where Mel shares lexical similarities with several of the exempla in Juan Manuel's "El Conde Lucanor," especially in proverbs.

Compares verbal and conceptual parallels among sententiae in Juan Manuel's "El Conde Lucanor" and in Chaucer's Mel.

The Tale of Beryn shows that bargaining is essential in the mercantile world. It uses the "biter bit" pattern and--unusual in CT--reflects the moral growth of an individual. First shown misbehaving like the rioters in PardT, Beryn undergoes a true…

Imaginative re-creation of the Wife of Bath's life and times from childhood onward, expanding on hints in WBP.

ManT, Mel, and ParsT are hardly tales at all, but rather a joke, an allegory, and a sermon. Yet they provide interesting comparisons between speakers and listeners, ways of speaking and ways of holding back. Reading between the lines is needed before…

Three concerns in LGW--space in "Thisbe," rhetoric in "Lucrece," and the exchange of women in "Hypsipyle and Medea"--demonstrate that the power of apparently passive women lies in their moral superiority over men.

Pasolini's Racconti di Canterbury uses ellipsis and expansion to produce cinematographic transformations of CT. Adjustments of narrative structure and original visual effects produce "tales told only for the pleasure of telling them."

Suggests that collected "vidas," or "lives," of the troubadours may have served as Chaucer's model for the "portraits" of the pilgrims in GP. Individual "vidas" open anthologies of troubadour verse in some fourteenth-century manuscripts, and Chaucer…

Examines the use of prologues and epilogues in several narratives of the Reynard tradition (13th-15th centuries). NPT indicates Chaucer's preference for the prologue and the ambiguity of his assertions.

In CT, Chaucer uses prologues to achieve great diversity, displacing himself with other narrators. He develops a counter movement in his epilogues, in which the conventions of religious epilogues communicate, however tenuously, a unified religious…

Distinguishes three major types of prologues in late-medieval English literature: organic; a dilation; and a displaced prologue, i.e., a prologue that does not correspond to the document. Examines CT, LGW, TC, and Astr.

In medieval beast fables, including NPT, the fox is a figure of vice. Neither his basic animalism nor his comic villainy qualifies him as an anti-hero, but his consistent distortion of truth does.

In the prose "Tristan" and Malory's "Morte d'Arthur," no single knight embodies all attributes of the courtly ideal. Similarly, Chaucer's complete depiction of the idealized knight is created through the description of GP Knight in combination with…

The suffering of Custance in MLT echoes Innocent III's description of human life in his "De miseria condicionis humane"; the tale's end, which indicates that Custance's humility will ultimately be rewarded, draws from the pseudosource of the…

Like Peter of Cyprus, celebrated in Machaut's "Prise," Chaucer's Knight is a hero, his lists of battles showing him to be a Crusader-knight virtuous in devotion to duty. Chaucer deemed the knightly ideal possible in his contemporary world.

Examines the diet of the poor widows in CT and the extravagant menus of the Franklin, the numerous recipes in "Le menagier de Paris," and "The Boke of Nurture" by John Russell.

Examines the allegorical purposes of LGWP, assessing the dream structure and the importance of the dreamer's awakening at the end of the G version.

The dissonant echoes within and between Chauntecleer's dream narrative and the subsequent disputatio prevent any clear idea of the veracity of the dream's apparently prophetic nature. In the confrontation between the cock and the fox, the dogmatism…