Browse Items (16364 total)

Comments on how "early elaboration" of characters in MilT and MerT "renders plausible later climactic action," and argues that the "marriage passage" of FranT (5.744-805) works in similar fashion, helping to justify the thoughts and actions of…

Nine essays by various authors accompanied by a cultural timeline and a comprehensive index. For the individual essays, search for Chaucer and Chaucerians under Alternative Title.

Describes the conditions under which Chaucer developed his verse and prose styles, focusing on the former. Argues that English verse romances are the foundation of Chaucer's poetic style to which he "grafted" the continental traditions of "fin…

Addresses Chaucer's "narrative art" in BD, HF, PF, Anel, and Mars, exploring how a coterie audience may have responded to oral performance of the emphases, shifts, and turns in these poems. Also attends to prosodic features, and to the poet's…

Reads TC as a "romance in the tragic mode" that reflects the "mood of many Englishmen in the late fourteenth century." Focuses on the role of the narrator and the rhetorical strategies (with reference to the "Ad Herennium") that Chaucer uses to…

Describes and comments on Chaucer's characteristic style, explaining how "insouciance" and "naturalness" combine with forward narrative movement, mastery of meter, formal listings, etc. to demonstrate his "great technical range." Then explores how in…

Describes and comments on the range and subtleties of Chaucer's prose styles, with recurrent comments on his stylistic adaptation of sources. Treats the "plain" style of Astr, the "heightened" homiletic style of ParsT, the "eloquent" style of Mel,…

Describes the limitations of the label "Scottish Chaucerians," and assesses Chaucer's influence on the works of Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, and Gavin Douglas, maintaining that they are chronologically "central" to the Middle Scots poetry of the…

Surveys the achievements, excellences, and limitations of English fifteenth-century "secular non-popular poetry," concentrating on works by Thomas Hoccleve, Stephen Hawes, John Skelton, and, especially, John Lydgate, along with other love allegories…

Surveys the reception of Chaucer as a poet, century by century, commenting recurrently on the understanding and appreciation of his rhetoric and meter, humor and moral seriousness, linguistic obscurity, relations with sources, characterization, and…

Argues that the Host's oath by the "precious corpus Madrian" in CT (MkP 7.1892) refers to St. Hadrian or Adrian, adducing details from the "Golden Legend" and citing the Host's "untrained ear," as well as parallels with Melibee's wife, Prudence, and…

Argues that Chaucer's characterizations of the three main actors in TC produce an "Oedipal triangle" that helps to explain the power of the feelings in the consummation scene. Considers the changes Chaucer makes to Boccaccio's "Filostrato," focusing…

Adduces evidence from late-medieval maritime law and practice and from details in the GP description of the Merchant (compared with those of the Friar and the Clerk) to argue that the Merchant "has probably committed every money-crime in the books."

Documentary source book of 493 archival records that pertain to Chaucer's "career as a courtier, diplomat, and civil servant," arranged topically in thirty-one categories from Chaucer's ancestors to his death; includes a "Chronological Table" of the…

Explicates the thematic and characterizing recurrences of hands and hand imagery in WBP, focusing on the eleven variations of the phrase "bear on hand" as they evoke and sustain the Wife's concern with wifely control in marriage, convey a sense of…

Rejects the argument that Chaucer abandoned LGW out of weariness or boredom on the grounds that Chaucer had long been interested in classical love stories, that he took time to revise LGWP, that he employed abbreviation and "occupatio" effectively in…

Introduces the goals and intentions of the "Chaucer Review," describing the publishing aims of the newly established journal.

Attends closely to the syntax of three stanzas of PrT, describing their intricacies and "strong effects," by commenting on predication, modification, rhyme, grammar, and related prosodic concerns.

Argues that the concern with the "basic duality between material and spiritual values" in CYPT is based in Boethius's admonitions against pursuing false felicity in his "Consolation of Philosophy," manifested in the Canon's Yeoman's concern with…

Argues that aspects of the beginning of MerT (including January's ill health, the names Placebo and Justinus, etc.) may have been inspired by details and sentiments found in "Livre du Chevalier de la Tour-Landry."

Argues that a possible source for the references to "Sampsoun" in PardT 6.549-61 and for aspects of the account of Samson in MkT 7.2914-94 is "Livre du Chevalier de la Tour-Landry."

Explores the assumptions about stress that underlie prosodic scansion, and demonstrates that Chaucer's decasyllabic verse is built upon a contrastive rather than an absolute distinction between stressed and unstressed syllables. Considers elision,…

Explores the epic elements of KnT and its sources, arguing that in placing love at the thematic center of his poem (replacing traditional political concerns), Chaucer was "attempting to make something entirely new" out of his material. By emphasizing…

Contends that the "Joce"/"croce" rhyme in WBP 3.483-84 is not just a convenient rhyme but a set of sexual puns, dependent upon the association of St. Joce with a staff.

Argues that Chaucer was influenced by the now-lost Prologue to "Sir Orfeo" of the Auchinleck manuscript, evident in similarities in "concept, diction, and syntax" between the FranP and the extant versions of the "Orfeo" prologue and between the…