Browse Items (16364 total)

Contrasts the conventionalized courtly characterization of the knight in BD with the relatively individualized courtly characterization of Troilus in TC, and goes on to assess the Knight and Theseus of KnT as a new kind of figure found only "at the…

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this study guide includes "additional critical material by Charles A. Owen, Arthur W. Hoffman."

Item not seen. Information derived from WorldCat records.

Comments on the varieties of love in PF, describing how the initiating concern with heavenly love in the summary of Scipio's dream is recalled and reinforced through the structure and details of the poem, conveying the need for "caritas," "common…

Describes the major theme of CYPT as "the misuse of men's intelligence in the obsessive pursuit of false and meretricious goals," asserting Chaucer's success in creating an "allegorical superstructure" while maintain the "credibility of the specific…

Describes relations between structure and theme in TC, demonstrating how the poem's pattern of action and verbal parallels induce "classical symmetry" and function as a "metaphor of harmony and order, while an "underlying chaos" of "inverted…

Argues that the Franklin's gentility is a "watered-down version" of traditional gentility, aligning FranT with eighteenth-century bourgeois "sentimental comedy." Contrasts KnT and FranT, maintaining that "virtue releases man from the bonds of…

Explores how female sovereignty in WBPT results in "the subservience of the class function to the bourgeois ethic which the Wife represents," indicating parallels in FranT and Genesis. Alison controls the merchant class in her first three marriages;…

Challenges the putative "simple and even balance" of the Marriage Group in CT, discussing several factors that highlight Chaucer's "purposeful inconclusiveness" in the dramatic interplay among the Tales: 1) MerT and FranT are each an "attack" on the…

Describes medieval dream psychology, both medical and Macrobian, and summarizes the realism of dreams as narrative frame in Chaucer's dream visions (BD, HF, PF, and LGWP) and as device of characterization and dramatic irony when dreams are otherwise…

Aligns Chaucer's juxtaposition of owls and apes in NPT 7.3092 with the "moral obliquity" of the two animals in medieval art and sculpture, identifying origins in patristic commentary.

Investigates the "Great Mother" archetype in PardT 6.729-31, helping to explain the "primal force" of the Old Man in the Tale, his womb / tomb affiliations with the young tavern boy, and the "Tale's central image of the tree" as "ambivalent mother."

Shows that lexical and stylistic evidence supports reading "the May" in KnT 1.1037 as "hawthorn blossom," rendering Emelye lovelier than lily, rose or hawthorn in bloom.

Uses ParsT as a standard by which to assess the morality of CT, discussing the "ubiquity of sin in the Canterbury pilgrims," the "prominence of Pride" in especially the Wife of Bath and Pardoner materials, and the balancing virtues found elsewhere in…

Studies "Christian phraseology" in troubadour verse, the poetry of Chrétien, the "Roman de la Rose," and TC, focusing on uses by the narrator, Pandarus, and Troilus in Chaucer's poem.

Derives a composite "Chaucerian narrator" from the poet's various works, characterized by "naiveté or dull-mindedness," the traditional pose of a "slyly comic writer." Then explores how this nuances of this figure are used to effects in individual…

Examines the "nature and extent" of Ovid's influence on CT, identifying wide-ranging allusions to various Ovidian works and providing parallel passages, assessing Chaucer's emulation of Ovidian techniques and considering Chaucer's uses of…

Establishes the "intellectual background" to Chaucer's translation of Innocent's "De Miseria Humane Conditionis" as his "Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde," explores Chaucer's uses of the treatise in MLPT and PardT and their manuscripts glosses, and…

Investigates the uses and functions of allegory, dialogue, and symbolism in Boethius's "Consolation," Alan of Lille's "De Planctu Naturae," landscapes in twelfth-century literature, and PF, arguing that the latter is a "triumph of allegorical…

Interprets the Canon of CYP as "one of the men of Antichrist," and examines the sustained opposition of CYPT and SNPT, emphasizing their contrasting depictions of reason and revelation as ways of knowing.

Treats TC as an "exemplum of" Bo, focusing on the extent of Boethian influence, the character of Criseyde, the ironic narrator, and the "appropriateness of the epilogue."

Edits the early modern Welsh play, "Troelius a Chresyd," with commentary on its relations with TC, Robert Henryson's "Testament," and early modern drama, treating the Welsh drama as a "secular mystery play."

Maintains that the PhyT was "specifically adapted especially to the Physician as teller," arguing that the opening of the Tale and its rhetoric reflect the arts training common to late-medieval physicians, that various details reflect the teller's…

Examines the characters of Griselda and Walter in ClT, with particular attention to the diction associated with them: "bountee" and "sadnesse" for Griselda and "shapen" for Walter. Also examines the words the characters do and do not use.

Argues that Dante's siren of "Purgatorio" XIX is analogous to the Wife of Bath and the transformation of the loathly lady of WBT, helping to undercut the Wife's views on female sovereignty and ironically "reasserting the medieval Christian idea of…