Argues that "it may well be" that Chaucer's use of the verb "take" in Thopas 7.795 is parodic, meaning "inclination or attraction (towards)" rather than "attach oneself (to)" in a "binding relationship"--the latter sense evidently intended in "Sir…
Posits that Chaucer arranges matters in FranT to pose the possibility of a "dual response to the subject matter" of "trouthe," exploring reality and illusion and the competing requirements of conjugal and courtly loves. The Tale illustrates the…
Assesses Chaucer's Ret as an adaptation of rhetorical and literary conventions of prologue, epilogue, and literary confession, arguing that his uses of the conventions in both ParsP and Ret indicate that he is resisting traditional rejections of…
Presents new evidence, particularly the Wycliffite Bible, and disagrees with J. A. Burrow that Custance's speech in MLT when she reaches Northumbria is a debased kind of Latin. Argues the speech is not a mercantile "lingua franca" and claims that…
Crampton, Georgia R[onan].
Medium Aevum 43 (1974): 22-36.
Argues that TC "gains psychological interest and what may be called a novelistic effect" through adaptation of the "to do and to suffer" topos. Troilus is "a man of passion who suffers," Pandarus is "a man of action who contrives," and Criseyde…
Chaucer sees joy in Boethian terms as arising form what a man loves. Unlike the Man of Law and the Monk, the Nun's Priest affirms both worldly joy and heavenly bliss; he suggests that lost joy may be recovered if one, like Chauntecleer, actively…
In TC, Chaucer gave his Boccaccio material greater depth and emotional significances by borrowing from Machaut. His presentation of the psychological effects of Troilus' passion echoes "Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne." Pandarus' wisdom is often that…
While using the Italians' narrative structures in MkT, Chaucer twists the styles and themes of Dante and Boccaccio. The pathos and direct narrative of Chaucer's Hugelyn supplant the horror and ambiguities of Dante's Ugolino. Chaucer's Cenobia…
Rather than an incoherent outpouring of emotions, Dorigen's Complaint (FranT, 5.1355-456) is a coherent, moral response to the random world Aurelius presents her. Chaucer manipulates "exempla" from Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum" to compose a…
The Boethian neo-platonic truth (man is immortal) gives insight into love's complexities and purpose and thematic unity to the "Somnium" precis and the love-vision. Nature's "governaunce" over the birds, like the Boethian bond of love, parallels the…
Nimrod ("Nembrot") is the only biblical figure in "The Former Age." The detail that he designed the Tower of Babel is traditional, but Chaucer's reference in this poem seems to be derived directly from Walafrid Strabo's "Glossa Ordinaria."
Machaut provides the nearest precedents, the most probable chief sources, for all of Chaucer's independent love lyrics printed in Robinson except "The Complaint of Venus," wherein Chaucer follows Graunson, and "A Balade of Complaint," most probably…
Supports James Wimsatt's contention that the story of Ceyx and Alcyone in BD owes certain details to "Ovide moralise" rather than to the "Metamorphoses" by offering one piece of evidence, namely, that the narrator says that, to drive away the…
Examines GP 369-84 in light of the guild feud in London in the 1370s and 1380s, reviewing opinions of Kuhl and Fullerton, and Skeat. "In his attitudes toward the guildsmen...the pilgrim Chaucer shows himself as more petty-bourgeois than bourgeois."
Coleman, William E.
Medium AEvum 51 (1982): 92-101.
Chaucer's acquisition of a manuscript of "Teseida" in 1378 suggests that Chaucer omits reference to Boccaccio because he may have seen the imperfect Pavia MS 881, which lacked Boccaccio's commentary and attribution to Boccaccio.
Backgrounds and sources for PF, HF, BD, NPT. Argues that Macrobius was less influential in later Middle Ages than Chaucer's references to him suggests.
Discusses the "contrarious juxtaposition" in KnT design as a factor in determinacy. At work in KnT, the familiar medieval "topos" of "concordia discors" and marriage as a mediating device are examined in light of symbol, imagery, and wordplay with…
