Browse Items (16364 total)

Compares MLP to its source in Innocent III's "De miseria condicionis humane" and to "Purse" to argue that MLP was originally written for Chaucer to read before a group of merchants to ask for payment.

Introducing small readers' theatre productions of scenes from Chaucer into the classroom reinforces the sounds of Middle English for students, allows them to get personally involved in the class, focuses their attention more closely on Chaucer's…

It is impossible to determine an exact modern value of the 100 francs in ShT, but internal, economic, and comparative literary evidence indicates that {dollar}5,000 is "a specific lower limit to the value of that amount in 1990's U.S. dollars." …

Compares ShT with "Decameron" 8.1 to assess the negative and positive characteristics of masculinity portrayed in the monk and merchant of the Tale. The wife is given traits identified with men in the Middle Ages, perhaps because of the Tale's…

Argues that Boccaccio's Decameron 8.1 was Chaucer's primary source for ShT, even though scholars have been reluctant to treat Decameron as a source for any of The Canterbury Tales. Posits definitions of source, hard analogue, and soft analogue.

In GP, the Wife's "foot-mantel" is not a "skirt," but a set of leggings or riding chaps, pulled up over the feet and legs from the bottom. "Large" refers not to the size of the Wife's hips, but to the loose drapery of the garment. The Wife may be…

Emerson's allusion in "The Poet" to the lecture on gentility in WBT attributes the sentiment to Chaucer (rather than to the Wife), concentrates on the fire's brightness, and suggests that the passage refers to "good blood in mean condition." Since…

In MilT, John is not jealous of Absolon's song to Alison because he hears in it a song to the Virgin, asking her for mercy.

Challenges R. E. Kaske's argument that Criseyde's aube is appropriate for a male speaker and suggests that her words indicate anxious weariness, perhaps even a death wish.

Repunctuates several passages from CT and comments on the implications, encouraging classroom attention to modern editorial punctuation.

Beidler proposes a refined taxonomy of terms to designate the relationships between a work and its sources (hard source, soft source, hard analogue, soft analogue, and lost source) and argues that--for lack of evidenc--criticism should dispense with…

Beidler compares and contrasts MilT with its likely source, the Middle Dutch "Hiele van Beersele." Of the two, MilT provokes greater laughter because it is more plausible, a result of more carefully deployed details.

When Chaucer used Boccaccio's "Decameron" 8.1 as his source for ShT, he was also influenced by French fabliaux, particularly a garden scene in the thirteenth-century "Aloul" and, more generally, the animal euphemisms typical of the genre in French…

Reading ShT in the context of fabliaux in which children witness their mothers' infidelity, Beidler recalls that the Tale was originally intended for the Wife of Bath. He argues that the placement of a prepubescent girl on the scene of another wife's…

Commenting on how Baba Brinkman's rap version of MilT "recast and reset" Chaucer's original, Beidler raises questions about the pedagogical and cultural value of the live performance, the audio recording, and the printed version. Includes (pp.…

Reprints twenty of Beidler's previously published essays on MilT, WBT, ShT, MerT, and PardT, with an explanatory Preface by Beidler (vii-ix) and a Foreword by Holly A. Crocker (x-xvi) that gauges Beidler's notion of originality and comedy. Includes…

Argues that Boccaccio's "Decameron" influenced MerT deeply, even though it may not be the primary source of the plot. The characterizations of MerT (especially the "mental blindness" of January) are more like those in "Decameron" 7.9 than those in…

Demonstration and performance, accepted aspects of classroom practice, can make academic conference presentations more memorable. Examples of performative practice include an enacted battle in KnT, created costumes illustrating the Wife of Bath's…

Argues that the Merchant's attitudes are reflected in the views of Justinus (not January) in MerT.

Argues that we do not know whether or not Damian completed the act of copulation in the pear tree of MerT, impregnating May, despite Emerson Brown's claims that he did neither. More important are the facts that January has been cuckolded and that he…

Summarizes the plot of French fabliau "Bérenger au long cul" and suggests that it helps to "explain the background upon which Chaucer was drawing when he decided to make January a knight of Lombardy" in MerT.

Compares the plots and characters of FranT and PhyT, arguing that they share parallels that are "significant" and "quite possibly intentional." Focuses on Dorigen and Virginia.

Argues that the subject matter, irony, depiction of love, and touches of humor in KnT are "in no way inappropriate" to the characterization of the Knight evident elsewhere in CT

Describes how Chaucer adapted his source, Heile of Beersele, increasing the "theatricality" of plot and details in making MilT, concentrating on the architectural setting (house and window), dramatic details, and additional "scenes." Surveys and…

Notes that H. Rider Haggard mentions Chaucer in "King Solomon's Mines."