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Examines structural and thematic roles of the Ceyx and Alcyone episode in BD, the Dido episode in HF, and the Dream of Scipio in PF.

Collates dream interpretations from twenty-three manuscripts in Latin, Old English, Middle English, Old French, German. Sourcebook for medieval imagery, literature, and psychology.

Chaucer's figurative language is mostly traditional, but its effect usually transcends the merely visual: it is emotional and intellectual--aiming at more than concrete realism. Often, however, the nature of this imagery eludes us because Chaucer's…

The French strain in Chaucer's poetry (though obviously strongest in his earlier career) pervades his "ouvre." So far as is known, however, Chaucer himself never worte an original line in that tongue.

Chaucer's favorite Latin author was Ovid, followed by Virgil and Statius, as well as several prose writers. The central problem in evaluating the Latin influence on Chaucer is to determine what sorts of manuscripts he used--not just texts,but…

Since Kittredge, we have come to see a dramatic structure at the heart of CT, with interaction not only among the tellers but also among the tales themselves. Many points, however, are still in dispute: the order of the tales, the question of…

GP not only is a brilliant poem in itself but also sets the tone for the entire work to follow. It skillfully blends the real with the ideal world--all seen through the device of a narrative persona. Chaucer uses several devices for description,…

The advance of the fabliaux in critical estimation is perhaps the major development of twentieth-century Chaucer studies. The fabliau--an "upper"-class genre ridiculing the buffoneries of the "lower" classes and clergy--flourished in…

The much-disputed allegorical criticism of CT is a fairly recent phenomenon. Chaucer's allegories maybe either "formal" (e.g., ClT) or "informal" (e.g., KnT)--both styles deriving from "a reservoir of established menaings shared by the poet and his…

Irony--"the Chaucerian pose"--is of five basic types in CT: verbal, structural, dramatic, and philosophic irony, as well as irony of manner.

Chaucer's lyrics, usually written in imitation of the current French forms of ballades and rondels, were, in fact, his most influential legacy to the fifteenth-century Chaucerians. Chaucer may have written his early poetry (now lost or unattributed)…

Earlier critics, led by Kittredge, read the poem as a consolation for John of Gaunt, embodied as the Black Knight;the dreamer is naive and childish. Recently, however, Robertson has denied the view of "courtly love" some see in the work. Instead,…

HF is a poem about the art of poetry, for to be one of "Love's folk" was, in the medieval view, to be a poet also.

Scholars of the early twentieth century such as Naunin and Manly denied any significant influence of medieval rhetoric upon Chaucer. In more recent days, however, this attitude has been reversed, so that Payne ("The Key of Remembrance") could claim…

Substantive criticism of PF really begins in 1935 with Bronson, who stated that the poem is a study of contrasts between man's views of love. Later critics have elaborated this view, noting the polarities of the work: the "Somnium" and the garden,…

Comprehensive readings of TC fall into two basic categories: sympathetic/dualistic, and ironic. In the first, the essentially admirable courtly love of Troilus and Criseyde is seen to contrast (in varying degrees) with the orthodox Christian world…

In this century discussions of LGW have centered on two points: the historical occasion of the poem and its significance as a stage in Chaucer's artistic development. Not until the last decade has criticism concerned itself with the artistry of the…

Chaucer's meters are of mixed Romance and native origin, but the details of scansion--whether the verse is accentual or syllabic and the pronunciation of final "e"--are still in dispute.

Emphasis has shifted from the study of Chaucer as a realist and proto-novelist to the examination of his mode of presentation and his esthetics: principles of rhetoric, uses of style, and poetic theory.

Chaucer's many references to astrology have often been discussed, but only recently (as in Wood's "Chaucer and the Country of the Stars") have there been any book-length studies of the subject and of its function in his poetry.

Despite several still unresolved problems, Chaucer's life is well documented in the nearly 500 citations of the Crow and Olsen "Chaucer Life Records," based on the previous researches of Manly, Rickert, and Redstone.

References to popular Christianity pervade Chaucer's work, especially CT and the shorter poems, but these usually concern the lower clergy and routine matters. His canon does not include ponderous didactic allegory or theological treatises.

Shows that the use of verbs as rhyme words is ubiquitous in medieval (and later) poetry, and therefore not particularly Chaucerian as has been suggested. Suggests that rhyming with infinitives is especially prevalent because the form is…

Prosodic analysis of the Middle English lyric "Alysoun" that identiies several commonplace parallels with the description of Alisoun in MilT.

Surveys Chaucer's seven clerks (Nicholas and Absolon of MilT, John and Aleyn of RvT, the clerk of FranT, Jankyn of WBP, and the Clerk), describing the extent to which the characterizations accord with or echo what is known of "fourteenth-century…