Browse Items (16471 total)

Various "titles, epithets, and images" in TC reflect Chaucer's "covert engagement" with political and religious contention. Pandarus and the narrator adopt priestly roles, Troilus is like an anti-Lollard zealot, and forms of address such as "madame"…

Through the tree catalog and the "unassimilated voices of the lower birds" in PF, Chaucer records his awareness that distinctions between nature and culture and between human and nonhuman are "species-ist"--an awareness similar to modern…

Survey of love and art in PF.

Psychoanalytic reading of PF that identifies a reversal of the "logical sequence of origin, wish, and desire." This reversal "represses consciousness" and disguises the presence of the "Chaucerian ego" of the poem that is recognizable in the…

Woods hypothesizes how Chaucer and the male members of his audience may have been affected by their experiences in an "all-male medieval classroom" and how, in turn, their encounters with female literary characters and the rhetorical exercises of…

LGW illustrates the importance of fidelity to one's pledges. Chaucer shows that "act, speech, and writing, when captured by image, text, and imagination, preserve love beyond its transitory moment of existence" (50). The written experiences of the…

Alceste's request for a "legend" of good women and reference to Queen Anne combine to establish the audience of LGW, raising questions about the gender ideology of saints' legends and resisting the "misogynist antiphrasis" recurrent in antifeminist…

Not all manuscripts of Ret read LGW as "xxv" tales (other numbers are "xix" and "xx"). Edward of Norwich (ca. 1406) uses "xxv" and refers to the work as the "Goode Wymmen," not, as is more common, the book of "ladies." He may have read Ret, in which…

Boffey summarizes the various numbers of legends included in LGW and in references to the work and assesses concern with these numbers. She considers LGW in light of the tradition of nine female Worthies in literature and the visual arts and in light…

Although "mythographers allegorized Ovid's rape narratives as stories of cosmological creation or spiritual desire," Christine de Pizan presents Apollo's assault on Daphne (Épîstre d'Otha) as a disfigurement of the female body; in his tale of…

Chaucer's changes to the Ovidian version of Hypermnestra in LGW--exchanging the names of Danaus and Aegyptus and then reducing the number of daughters from fifty to one--were not an "error." Chaucer both indicates that men are not "stably positioned…

In HF, the description of Fame's hall raises questions about the status of classical authors. The poem as a whole reflects "Chaucer's struggle to find some place [. . .] for his individual talent in the mainstream of the Western and Mediterranean…

Chaucer's visit to Florence (December-May 1373) would have brought him into contact with Giotto's frescos. These, along with his exposure to Dante's works, led him to explore the implications and limitations of "individual perspective" in HF.

HF provokes reflection on the "historical processes of memorialization." Such concepts as the brass tablet, apostrophe to Thought, inscribed ice block, and House of Rumor are analogous to conceptualizations of personal and cultural memory (history)…

Argues that the pilgrimage of HF 116 was to the medieval hermitage of St. Leonard, two miles west of Windsor Castle; the associated weariness evokes the use of pilgrimages for amorous trysts.

Watson coins the phrase "Ciceronian Platonism," defined as the "emphasis on the poetics of 'sermo'," suggesting that the earliest evidence of Chaucer's interest in the notion appears in BD, a poem offering "a Socratic therapy as filtered through both…

Compares Chaucer's use of history in BD with that of Langland in "Piers Plowman," suggesting that focus on contemporary events is common to the poets and perhaps indicative of their common audience. Such commonalities and the habits of mind they…

Malaczkov assesses Chaucer's techniques of translation in Bo, focusing on his glosses and arguing that Chaucer chose to translate for meaning or content rather than for form.

Describes Chaucer's use of Arabic and Hebrew diction in Astr as "horizontal multilingualism," i.e., "not colonialist or Orientalist."

ParsPT and the GP description of the Parson reflect "concerns over the limits of late-medieval pastoral language." While the GP Parson suggests Wycliffite emphasis on Scripture, one finds a more orthodox view in ParsPT, with its focus on…

Decried by detractors such as Gower and Langland, legal discourse was a way of bridging the growing gap between legal tradition and contemporary reality. Although it satirizes legal pragmatism, The "Tale of Beryn" reflects appreciation of such…

"The Isle of Ladies" --first published as "Chaucer's Dreame" with the "Fairest of the Fair" as "Additions" in Speght's 1598 edition--has been confused by both scribes and early editors with BD and Lydgate's "Temple of Glass." This confused…

Forni traces the complex relationship between Chaucer's canon and the apocrypha, with particular focus on the "Folio" canon, from Thynne's 1532 "Workes" edition to editions of the eighteenth century. The first part examines the formation of the Folio…

Adam is a more complex work than generally thought, evoking Adam the "first father" and "the earthly instrument of chaos and capriciousness." The scribe's "long lokkes" link him to Chaucer's other prideful, foppish characters. The threatened…

Explores ABC as a prayer, especially in its relations with Psalm 118 and 119 and the rosary, and in light of the possibility that it was presented to Duchess Blanche for inclusion in her devotional primer. Quinn confronts several formal features and…