Browse Items (16470 total)

Trinity College, Cambridge MS R.14.52 contains a late-fifteenth-century fragment of Astr. Its contents help illuminate previous copies of Astr and show Chaucer as a "compiler," creating a treatise out of which "other such treatises could be put…

Juxtaposes the various rhetorical styles of BD and its central dialogue to highlight the resolution of the two in the final couplet. Assesses the narrator by comparing his text and its rhetoric and by examining borrowings from Ovid, the figure of the…

Medieval memory is inherently social and constructive, playing a central role in the process of composition and thus BD is best understood in the context not of psychology but of rhetoric, as an "act of public mourning, of public remembering."

Argues that lack of historical evidence prevents us from learning much about the composition of BD. An examination of its topoi, however, reveals that the poem begins as a lament, turns into a consolation, and finally becomes an encomium designed to…

Examines the historical situation of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Castile, challenging the traditional interpretation that The Book of the Duchess is an elegy for Blanche.

Assesses the process of consolation in BD in light of modern theories of grief and reminiscence therapy, arguing that the numerology of the poem provides closure.

Compares and contrasts BD with French sources and analogues and emphasizes the degree to which BD "foreshadows" elements in Chaucer's later works, especially in its reliance on implicit meanings and narrative distance.

Examines the backgrounds and language of BD to uncover John of Gaunt's romantic entanglements and their ramifications for the poem. The article serves as an introduction to a larger forthcoming study.

Reads BD as a psychoanalytic exploration of the nature of signification in which the dreamer achieves "his own talking cure." Surveys medieval and modern theories of signification, including those of Aristotle, Anselm, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Buridan,…

Argues that lines 81-120 of HF are Chaucer's adaptation of the topos of the "book curse," tracing the "speech act origin" of the curse and exploring Chaucer's use of the device to "tease his audience and manipulate its expectations."

Discusses the "images" of several scenes in HF, following V. A. Kolve's article "Chaucer and the Visual Arts" (1975).

Examines the relationships between (mis)reading and (mis)writing, exegesis, and the unconscious in HF.

Chaucer's sources for HF included not only books but also a visit to Catalonia. Serrano Reyes observes parallels between Chaucer's Lady Fame and the text of a Catalan virelay, which was sung by pilgrims to the Virgin of Montserrat.

Assesses Chaucer's sense of poetic tradition in HF, arguing that while following Dante's use of the vernacular, Chaucer eschewed Italian emulation of classical models because he distrusted "classical pretensions to artistic or moral superiority."

There is little or no archival or topographical evidence to suggest that the Prioress's convent of St. Leonard's Priory in Stratford-at-Bow profited from houses of prostitution in Southwark. Bordellos existed along the Thames (and were duly taxed and…

Assesses vernacular religious resources available to women in the late Middle Ages, focusing on English piety at the edge of Latin literary culture.

J. A. Burrow has demonstrated that Th falls into three fits of 18, 9, and 4.5 stanzas, but does not identify the complementary pattern in the number of lines.

Argues that Chaucer produced Mel to demonstrate his allegiance to Richard II and to challenge the Appellants. Mel deconstructs the advice of Prudence, whose "advisory coup" echoes the Appellants' takeover.

Chaucer possibly intended for Mel to be a take-it-or-leave-it kind of work. Its storyline was extremely familiar in the fourteenth century, and its very presence within CT made a statement. Mel is a tale to be known rather than read, both by…

In MLT, Gower's tale of Constance, and Émaré, the role of daughter--the woman cast adrift--is ambiguous, entailing both helplessness and independence, subversion and female power. Such tales reflect the notion of the daughter moving from…

Triggered by reference to Edward (line 7.1970) as a reminder of the deposition and death of Edward II, MkT is a warning to Richard II.

Critical response to essays on MkT by Ann W. Astell, Terry Jones, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Stephen Knight, and Richard Neuse.

Critical response to essays on MkT by Ann W. Astell, Terry Jones, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Stephen Knight, and Richard Neuse.

The narratives of MkT, especially the modern instances, critique the despotism that underlies KnT, provoking the Knight's interruption.

Chaucer invented the "De casibus" tragedy and assigned his tragedies to the Monk only after he had abandoned his "original serious attitude" toward them. Kelly comments on the place of MkT in Chaucer's sequence of composition.