Browse Items (16470 total)

Recurrent concern with lordship in MkT and in the GP sketch of the Monk reveals the Monk's pretense to knightly status, a case of estate transgression.

As KnT is a reduction of the Teseida, MkT is a miniature imitation of Boccaccio's "De casibus virorum illustrium." The Monk, Boccaccio's ironic double, interrogates newly emergent forms of tragedy and contests with the other pilgrims within the…

The tragedies of MkT resist any overarching "metahistorical paradigm" and thus reflect Jean-Francois Lyotard's definition of postmodernism. The Monk is a "serious-minded humanist with a bent toward postmodernism."

Medieval commentaries on the "Commedia" (Divine Comedy) inform our understanding of how Chaucer read Dante. In the Hugolino episode of MkT, with its reference to Dante, Chaucer simultaneously authorizes "Inferno" 33 and destabilizes it, exemplifying…

Explores the double meanings of "outrider," "venerie," and "prikasour," focusing on the Monk in The General Prologue.

As found in "The Golden Legend" ("Legende Aurea") and the "South English Legendary," the life of St. Kenelm offers striking parallels with both PrT and NPT, in which Chaucer refers to it (7.3110-21). Kenelm was murdered at age seven, perhaps the…

Surveys the use of Latin beast fables in medieval schools and the legacy of this material in the works of late-medieval authors who were educated in the tradition and who wrote in English. Focuses on fables associated with the legendary Roman emperor…

Chaucer's many references to Rome in CT reflect an interest that originated in a visit there. In particular, classical associations and the decoration of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere illuminate the style and meaning of SNT. A visit to Rome may have…

Petrarch's "Letter to Colonna," twelfth-century handbooks for travelers and pilgrims, and SNT exhibit a characteristically medieval historiography that displaces a model of loss and recovery with one representing historical difference through spatial…

Following the medieval rhetorical analysis that sees irony as a form of allegory, Beall finds that both CYT and PardT deal with the "supreme alchemy" (material alchemy in CYT, rhetorical alchemy in PardT) by which the profane is transformed into the…

Discusses alchemy in Chaucer's CYT, Jonson's "The Alchemist," and Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

Christine de Pizan's version of the Griselda story emphasizes the gaze theme less than the versions by Chaucer and Petrarch do. Pizan's version is more clearly feminist than ClT, which presents a male viewpoint addressed to a community of male…

Compares depictions of Cupid and Psyche in Plato's Phaedrus, Apuleius's Metamorphoses, Origen's Commentary on the Song of Songs, and ClT (Walter and Griselda), noting their different constructions of gender and viewing them as reflections of…

Discussion of Anglo-Norman fabliaux and their Latin antecedents. Elements of Anglo-Norman fabliaux are found in MerT, while MilT, RvT, and ShT follow Continental French fabliaux. Assessments of Anglo-Norman fabliaux are needed.

Although modern readers read SqT as parody, such a reading would have seemed "preposterous" to pre-eighteenth-century readers, who were concerned with sententiae. Pairing tales, pouring over large sections of text, and engaging in self-reflections…

Establishes the authenticity of Shakespeare's "A Lover's Complaint" and suggests that the female falcon's complaint in SqT is a possible analogue. Both laments belong to the complaint tradition.

FranT is about people's vulnerability to themselves, about the intimate connection between their identities--or senses of self--and their bodies, about how this vulnerability compromises moral strength and capacity for spiritual fulfillment, and…

Both Boccaccio in Decameron and Chaucer in FranT rewrite the story of Menedon from Filocolo, and both investigate whether social worth is dependent on lineage or character. While Boccaccio emphasizes the new urban nontraditional man, Chaucer attempts…

Close feminist examination of Dorigen's complaint in FranT indicates that the Franklin may be ambivalent toward her.

Correlates the disappearance of the rocks in FranT to an extremely high tide that occurred on December 19, 1340, perhaps the year of Chaucer's birth. Calculates the date using the Toledan or Alfonsine Tables known to Chaucer. The clerk in FranT knows…

Magic enables discussion of contemporary political and social issues and timeless questions of faith, love, loyalty, fate, and destiny. The concluding chapter shows how magic in FranT enables discussion of free will and challenges the Franklin's…

PhyT is concerned with texts, whether "historical" or the "fable." Virginia is compared to a text--a "book"--and the concerns with governance and authority in the Tale pertain to interpretation.

Argues that critical interpretations of Chaucer's Physician as a quack have been based on the moral outrage and stock literary character of a later age.

Examines how narrative and sententiousness interact in The Physician's Tale and The Manciple's Tale as examples of Chaucer's explorations of the nature of this interaction. PhyT is a "story in search of a moral," while ManT is a "collection of…

Examines the almost ubiquitous assumption that hypocrisy is reflected in PardPT and suggests an alternative reading in which the Pardoner's words do not reveal his morality but parody WBPT.