Browse Items (16471 total)

Examines in KnT the rhetorical and thematic concerns with order, choice, and the difficulties of achieving resolution. Reads Palamon and Arcite as a balanced pair, and Theseus as a figure of the limited human ability to avert fortune and determine…

Argues that in its concern with social pretension and its atmosphere of "game and contest," RvT is better regarded as a comic fabliau than as a tale of vengeance that reflects its teller. Compares and contrasts RvT with several fabliaux, including…

Foreshadowing submission to Troilus and Diomede, Criseyde's erotic dream of the eagle symbolizes her fear of man's aggressive nature and her belief in love's ennobling influence. Throughout the poem love modifies the worst in Troilus, the warrior,…

The workings of "auctoritee" in KnT are at odds with established--especially Boethian--norms. All authority in KnT is overthrown. Habitually in Chaucer's works, authority is subjected to uncongenial contexts and the presumption of irony. As a…

Just as TC is "distanced" from the reader by its setting during the Trojan War, so too does Pandarus blur the lines between reality and fiction. The "real" world is an illusion; the little world of the lovers is all that is real. Ironically,…

The deafness of the Wife of Bath is viewed as an iconographic reflection of her unbalanced intellectual and spiritual position. Hearing as she does with only one ear, the Wife's views are skewed to improper attention to the present--to the things of…

Cites evidence from medieval theology, sermon literature, etc., to show fourteenth-century religious tolerance of Jews and the belief that they could gain salvation. PrT is Chaucer's ironic comment on the Prioress, religious prejudice, and common…

Review article comparing John M. Ganim's discussion of Middle English narrative in TC and other Middle English works with Lynn Staley Johnson's treatment of the subject in the "Pearl" poems.

Probably written before Chaucer knew Boethius well, BD is a courtly poem offering the consolation of art, the solace that one can achieve through "makyng" or listening to poetry. The alleged Boethian aspects of BD reflect the French…

Alison shares features with that "popular exemplar of medieval comic shrewishness," Noah's wife of the mystery plays, and especially the Uxor Noe of the Towneley cycle: old husbands, outspokenness, direct address to the audience, fondness of…

In his tale, the Monk selectively edits the legend of Croesus from Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose" to "lessen the dreamer's responsibility for his fate" and thus to "fit Croesus into his gallery of tragic figures."

Analyzes HF as an antivision, a highly comic parody of "solemn medieval attempts to describe the otherworld." Rather than writing about human lives earthly or otherworldly, Chaucer restricts his theme to "the nature and destiny of human narratives,"…

Unlike its analogues, MerT develops themes and images associated with the myth of Proserpine's rape and Ceres's search for her daughter. As a result, both May and January are presented as culpable and victimized.

Surveys earlier responses to MerT and argues that the problems they identify cannot be solved; the "moral vacuum" of the tale leaves no criteria for moral evaluation. MerT is Chaucer's "bleakest" view of the relationship between poetry and morality.

Modern discussions of Chaucer and Spark deemphasize the clear religious strains in their fictions. The grotesque, the absurd, and the aberrant are present in both as worldly flaws requiring divine transcendence.

Describes the writers' approaches to their source in Chaucer: Lydgate as a "scholarly commentator" and Henryson as a poet who exploits "Chaucer's innovative literary devices" in an original way. …

Explores associations between the feminine and water imagery, and historical associations with Bath.

Using the linguistic theories of Charles Pierce, Wimsatt proposes that "the function of rhyme in Chaucer's poetry ... is to help organize the sounds to create a sign independent of a particular verbal sense" (18). Sound in poetry is carried in two…

Assesses Theseus of LGW as a "superlative of falseness," arguing that the figure, more so than the Theseus of KnT or its classical precedents, influenced Marlowe and Nash''s "Dido, Queen of Carthage" and, subsequently, Shakespeare's "A Midsummer…

If reading is a transformative act, then Griselda's unwavering "reading" of Walter as a loving husband ultimately transforms him so that Walter's will conforms with hers. Thus, her association with the Clerk (especially as aligned against the…

John Fowles's novel"A Maggot," set in eighteenth-century England, is similar to CT in several ways, from its opening premise to its general structure as a series of "tales" (reconstructions of mysterious events surrounding a death) told by various…

Not just a continuation of CT, the "Tale of Beryn" engages Chaucer's work critically. Assigned, in the anonymous Interlude, to the Merchant on the return journey, "Beryn" challenges the Clerk's notion of male adolescence as a stage of pre-identity…

Reads ClT as a disquisition on the "moral virtue of obedience" and the "triumph of patience," commenting on Griselda as a personification, Walter as a figure of fortune, and the sergeant as an example of false obedience. Examines each scene and…

Argues that Gower was "emulous and rivalrous," and eager to better the work of Ovid, Chaucer, and even his own early poetry. Compares Chaucer's use of the Ovidian tale of Ceyx and Alcyone, in BD and HF, with Gower's use of the same material in the…

Examines biblical images, allusions, themes, and narrative patterns in MilPT, exploring various ways that the Miller and Nicholas appropriate the Bible's "authority for personal rhetorical ends." Chaucer's providence-like control of his material is…