Browse Items (16470 total)

Although the Reeve claims a moral high ground by telling a story that deals out justice to its dishonest miller, this revenge does not accord with the moral virtue of justice nor with the amoral fabliau genre, undermining the Reeve's sanctimony and…

Relies on Douglas Robinson's understanding of "synecdochic translation" as a "dialogical interaction" between the translator and a single, representative part of the source text, arguing that HF 1 creates a "rhetorically dialogic relationship" with…

Elements of the poem--dream vision, narrator's self-mockery, genre, satire, absence of authority--contribute to uncertainty of interpretation. That the "mechanics of uncertainty" inhere in all of these elements reinforces skepticism as the poem's…

Bennett artues that the pilgrimage frame of CT was influenced by Gregory's "Liber," particularly in presenting "a range of human types" and in suiting pastoral care to individual exigencies. The "Liber" has particular applications to Chaucer's…

Similarities in the depiction of character, in the pilgrimage topos, and in the reworking of source material suggest Chaucer's influence on "The Waste Land." Evans explores Eliot's academic and scholarly familiarity with Chaucer.

Comments on Chaucer's and Langland's engagements with philosophical debates of their age, especially determinism and voluntarism. Includes discussion of the tensions between KnT and MilT as Chaucer's poetic expression of philosophical concerns.

Discusses historical reliability of witness lists as evidence of magnate activity and relationship to the crown. Provides tabular inventory of witnesses and percentage of charters witnessed by year.

Those compelled to abjure the court in 1388, while less well known than the companions of Richard II who faced charges of treason, can be studied collectively as typical members of Richard's court. They include an older group, friends of Richard's…

Examination of tax records gives a picture of the distribution of clerical personnel in London around 1380.

The academic prologue, which introduced commentaries on "auctores," developed an Aristotelian form in the thirteenth century. Chaucer did not employ any of the traditional prologue paradigms, but many of his literary attitudes seem to have been…

Parallels in diction, phrasing, portrayal, and plot suggest that the episode of the Pardoner and the tapster is shaped according to the model of the Chaucerian fabliau.

Argues that when Chauntecleer "purposely mistranslates" the proverb about women being man's "confusio" (NPT, 7.3163-65), he puns on "the two possible connotations of the word . . . and mischievously discard[s] the negative one."

Clarifies the biography of Oton de Grandson (here "Othon"), particularly his role as "one of the leading knight-poets of his time," exploring how his status inflected his influence on other writers, including Chaucer. Chaucer's lower social status…

Contrasts medieval Augustinian views of translation with those of modern translation theory and practice, applying the former to the adaptation/translation of CkT found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 686. Argues that the Bodley scribe…

Explores how vernacular translators of Jacobus de Voragine's "Legenda Aurea" lend theological authority to their works by appropriating or emulating the onomastic etymologies in Jacobus's work. Includes discussion of Chaucer's close following of…

Maintains that, despite the critical tradition of Chaucer's self-effacing persona, there are significant assertions of his own poetic authority in ThP and HF, and perhaps even challenges to Dante. Explores details of diction and imagery ("popet,"…

Explores issues of absence, death, exile, silence, orality, and musical performance in "Sir Orfeo" to find connections with FranT. Approaches "Sir Orfeo" as a reflection on how Chaucer depicts the professional art and artists and lay-makers in FranT.

Examines how Chaucer uses interactive body signs in CT to convey emotions and engage his readers in the process of understanding, focusing on his "style kinésique" and exemplifying its effects in examples drawn from SqT and MLP.

Studies how horse figures function in telling, traveling, and space definition in "Les quatre fils Aymon," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, GP, SqT, and TC.

Focuses on the forms and role of antitheses in MLT.

Includes brief comments (pp. 168-69) on Chaucer's use of the number 29 in GP and ParsP, and, in BD, on the use of 8 (Octovyen) and references to Argus (the "Arab mathematician Al-Kwārizm") and number symbolism.

Late twelfth-century English stories by Alexander Nequam and Berechiah haNakdan provide context for the caged bird episode in SqT, indicating that Chaucer may have intended to complete the episode with the falcon reuniting with her own kind. Also…

Draws on Scog to try to establish a picture of Scogan himself. Scogan is the subject of the article rather than Chaucer.

The pedagogic techniques in "Liber Catonianus," a standard textbook used by Chaucer, show the combination of grammar and morality, the study of the "artes" as a study of ethics,and the integration of the ethical in the "Septennium" of the liberal…

Fourteenth-century practice recognized at least three categories of tragic narrative: "de casibus" tragedy, the Ovidian tale of the deserted heroine, and the tale of ill-fated lovers. In TC, Chaucer combined the first and last of these in a new…