Browse Items (16471 total)

To Chaucer's audience, the name "Eglentyne" suggested the lost clerk-knight debate "Hueline and Aiglantine." While Alice of Bath must have been the second lady of the debate, the other pilgrims stand for the qualities and defects of clerks and…

In their defense of women, Chaucer and the anonymous author of "The Owl and the Nightingale" seem to have drawn on the same description of the Adulterous Woman of Proverbs 7. Chaucer also uses the image of the Virtuous Woman and gives Alice knightly…

Mertens-Fonck returns to the clerk-knight debate tradition, especially to "Hueline et Aiglantine" and the "Concile de Remiremont," finding a source of the portrait of the Prioress.

In GP, the pilgrims seem to be arranged symmetrically in two groups of ten on both sides of the central group formed by the five guildsmen and their cook. Each group of ten falls into subgroups of two, three, or four, held together by a similarity…

Considers FranT in light of Epicurean philosophy, arguing that Dorigen's Epicurean efforts to seek perfect tranquility are thwarted by those who seek honor (Arveragus), impossible love (Aurelius), illusion (Aurelius's brother), and riches (the clerk…

The systematic inconsistencies between numbers in GP (number of pilgrims "announced" v. number found by reader, number of tales "promised" v. actual number, number of potential narrators v. number of tales told) seem to proceed from a poetic strategy…

Argues that the GP portrait of the Monk evokes Jean le Bel, chronicler of Edward III, and suggests that MkT is a poetic chronicle. With the Knight and the Prioress, the Monk is evidence that contemporary personalities and events lie behind CT.

Argues against finding Boethian certainty in TC and reads Lenvoy de Chaucer at the end of ClT as a negative response to the realism of the Tale.

CT reflects the medieval philosophical debate over universals, posing traditional literature in tension with more fully actualised characterization.

Two intertwined debates underlie CT: 1) a tension between traditional literature and individualizing contemporary details, and 2) the realist/nominalist debate over universals.

The structure of the Clerk-Knight debates, based on the rivalry between a clerk and a knight, underlies most Tales in CT and can be used to reveal unsuspected meanings.

The "structural features" of GP reflect "the medieval philosophical debate over universals" and the epistemology of the "via moderna." Chaucer's number and arrangement of pilgrims suggest the "inadequacy of categories," whereas the balanced…

Mertz describes documents and commentary that relate to the illustrations of the Canterbury pilgrims by William Blake and Thomas Stothard, the latter published by Robert Hartley Cromek. The materials belonged to antiquarian Francis Douce (1757-1834)…

Records a copy (the second known) of William Blake's 1809 Chaucer "Prospectus," pasted into the flyleaf of Francis Douce's copy of Tyrwhitt's edition of CT, now in the Bodleian Library. Pasted opposite is a prospectus for Robert Hartley Cromek's…

Anthologizes short stories, poetry, and drama, including Chaucer's Purse (p. 347) in the modernized version by E. T. Donaldson (1958).

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that the volume is intended for a juvenile audience and includes narrative accounts of the lives and works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, and Rudyard Kipling. The Chaucer…

English scholars played an important part in transmitting Arabic learning to Europe. The "matter of Araby" may be set alongside the matters of Troy and Britain as an impulse in medieval English literature. It appears in Chaucer's MLT, Th, and the…

Considers the question of how language may (or may not) preserve technological knowledge over time by commenting on the linguistic features of "Inland English," invented by Russell Hoban in his futuristic novel "Riddley Walker" (1980). Uses…

Many causes contributed to the change in climate, particularly Bolingbroke's seizure of the throne from Richard II in 1399 and the concomitant changes in relationships between princes and poets, between poets and audiences, and between audiences and…

Interrogates the "ghost of judgment" that haunts the study of Chaucerian manuscripts as well as formalist analysis of Chaucer's works, commenting on implications for editing and teaching.

The editorial break between MerE and SqH cannot be defended on the basis of manuscript evidence. The break has obscured an element of the "artistic design" of CT: a sequence of four tales whose tellers represent occupations held either by Chaucer or…

Documents how editors' presentation of CT as a sequence of fragments is misguided and encourages that the description be abandoned. The term misrepresents the evidence of the manuscripts, and is misleading because Chaucer's discontinuities are…

Focuses on Chaucer's position as lay controller of customs and argues that HF constitutes an attempt to change the field of literature to benefit--in socioeconomic and aesthetic senses--someone in his "liminal" professional position.

In an analysis of the question of literary value, argues for a pragmatic approach to understanding the value of literature, especially at present when that value is on the decline. References GP as general example of medieval literary valuing.

Highlights the three-volume edition of Chaucer's works published in 1879 by Arthur Gilman, emphasizing the achievements of Gilman as an editor and situating his scholarly activities in his then-contemporary context.