Browse Items (16471 total)

Compares the original (F) version with the revised (G) version of LGWP, commenting on stages of transmission of G--from its composition to the extant manuscript Cambridge University Library Gg 4.27. Hypothesizes that Chaucer revised LGWP as a…

During the nineteenth-century construction of the fabliau as a distinct genre, scholars grouped ShT with other "coarse" tales and theorized that Chaucer had reassigned it from the Wife of Bath to the Shipman, assuming that the fabliau form was not…

Henry of Lancaster is usually treated in the context of medieval English history; Chaucer, of medieval English literature. Better understanding of the Anglo-French language and culture familiar to both men helps us appreciate Anglo-French and assess…

Various legends, iconography, and etymology of Saint Veronica illuminate the "vernycle" emblem on the Pardoner's cap as a clue to his character and motives."

Women narrators--Wife of Bath, Prioress, and Second Nun--seek either earthly or spiritual authority over men in CT and establish female poetic tradition, invoking powerful females archetypes.

Using the three parts of the "virtue of Providence" as the basis for the three-book structure of HF, Chaucer implies that, although time moves forward through history, the past,present, and future exist all at once.

Characterizing the critics as essentialist, Gross traces views of the Pardoner's sexuality, beginning with Kittredge's and Curry's interests in secrecy and moral scapegoating.

Comments on the "theatricality" of MilT and explores how the comic characteristics of each of the main characters have darker sides, especially in the cases of Nicholas, Alisoun, and Absolon.

Contrasts the dispassionate modernist criticism of T. S. Eliot with the more emotional criticism of F. J. Furnivall, arguing that Furnivall is "passionately committed to libertarian tradition in English poetry, a tradition whose founts he locates in…

Focuses on HF, 584–92, clarifying the meaning and implications of "stellifye," arguing that the narrator's fear of stellification reflects Chaucer's concerns about social and poetic ascent, and describing how the allusion to Ganymede evokes a…

Contends that the poet's self-presentation in English, which bears a resemblance to Chaucer's self-deprecating persona, may have been intended to quell anxieties about his release from prison.

Placement of a semicolon at the end of GP 1.13, rather than at the end of 1.14 is syntactically correct. The meaning is that both "folk" and "palmeres" wish to go "to ferne halwes."

The exchanges of goods and services in ShT are often read following Bourdieu's theory that self-interest motivates all human actions. This essay claims that such analyses do not take into account other motivating factors clearly present in the tale,…

Argues that when read in the light of the moralized garden in Alan of Lille's "Plaint of Nature," the "locus amoenus" of PF is "an ethically charged terrain," in which the narrator successively exemplifies and then deviates from the virtues of…

Claims that Chaucer, Spenser, and Dryden may be understood as a collective devoted to the project of "reviving or supplementing destroyed, deferred, and unfulfilled stories." Demonstrates the recursive, rather than linear, relations among these…

Examines manuscript rubrics and glosses that engage ideas of authorship, specifically those that cite an "auctor" or "aucteur" in manuscripts of the "Roman de la Rose," Machaut's "Judgment of the King of Navarre," TC, and CT. Gauges the kinds and…

Clarifies the implications of the Prioress keeping dogs as pets and feeding them meat (GP 1.146ff.), explaining that such behavior bends or breaks at least four "Benedictine strictures"--ones that restrict pet owning (especially dogs) and eating…

Provides context for the references to a cope in the GP description of the Friar (1.259-63) and to Elijah and Elisha in SumT 3.2117-7, connecting both with Richard Maidstone's polemical responses to John Ashwardby's attacks on mendicant friars.

Explores how several of Chaucer's putative additions to or revisions of TC (posited by R. K. Root) strengthen the poem's structural and thematic symmetry.

Reviews J. A. W. Bennett's 1957 book "The Parlement of Foules: An Interpretation," exploring the weaknesses and strengths of his critical methodology and application.

Reviews medieval ideas of degrees or grades of perfection, particularly as related to virginity as the "highest form of chastity" and marriage, a compromise even when admirable as in FranT. PhyT and SNT, both of which may follow FranT in the order of…

Characterizes the Wife of Bath through a sustained, appreciative summary of and commentary on WBP and, more extensively, WBT, showing that "Comic exaggeration is her forte, but tempered by delicate play and a fatal aim, the more precise for being…

Claims that CYT "depends on the metaphor of alchemy for both characterization and structure," discussing the Canon's Yeoman as a "fearful, naive, but by no means static" character and exploring the use of vocabulary of literary romance in his…

Argues that SqT is a "rhetorical satire" of the Squire; attributes the excesses of the Tale to the teller's youthful "defective knowledge" of rhetorical arts and argues that it is Chaucer's means of critiquing the "pseudo-genre of romance" and…

Identifies an analogue to the pear-tree episode in MerT, a folktale entitled "Women Always Get Away With It," first published in Puerto Rico in 1915-16 but evidently part of oral tradition.