Browse Items (16471 total)

Speculates "about the real state of Chaucer's purse in late 1399," examining details of the poem "Purse" and the relative chronology of the poet's life records to conclude that he wrote "Purse" to Henry IV because of actual financial duress.…

Shows that in the Wife of Bath's account of her three "goode" husbands Chaucer "adopted a means of amplification which he found described and illustrated in the 'Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi' . . . attributed to Geoffrey of…

Contrasts the consummation scene of TC with its source in Boccaccio's "Filostrato," arguing that the changes produce a "far greater emotional intensity," largely because the narrative puts the reader through the process of partial fulfillment…

Argues that the Monk was the original teller of the MerT, a response directed against the ShT as told originally by the Wife of Bath. Discusses puns and implications in the GP description of the Monk to characterize the Monk is an "amorous man," a…

Suggests that Chauntecleer is Chaucer's satiric target when he refers to Boethius in NPT 7.3294; the rooster apparently is not familiar with Boethian music theory found in both "De Musica" and the "Consolation of Philosophy."

Explores Chaucer's intensification of emotion through his uses of variations on loving "with good wille, body, hert, and all," echoes of a biblical injunction.

Identifies a tripartite pattern in several of the Canterbury narratives (introduction, confessional prologue, and tale), applying it to CYPT. Comparisons with WBPT, MerPT, and PardPT illuminate the structure of CYPT.

Explores Chaucer's uses of narrative terms, such as "storie," "tale," "fable," "tretys," "tragedye," "legend," etc.," focusing on their relative degrees of exposition, fictionality, and historicity and the faithfulness of the narratives to source…

Clarifies that the phrase "at chirche dore," used twice of the Wife of Bath's marriages indicates that she negotiated the financial arrangements of her dower before her marriage ceremonies, indicating shrewdness.

Reviews two books about Chaucer: "Language of Chaucer's Poetry: An Appraisal of Verse, Style and Structure" by Norman E. Eliason; and "Disembodied Laughter: 'Troilus' and the Apotheosis Tradition" by John M. Steadman.

Suggests that the influence of Mandeville's "Travels" on SqT and on alliterative poetry including "Pearl" may have been due to the circulation of the work at the Lancastrian court of John of Gaunt.

According to Virgil (Aeneid, VI) Deiphobus became the husband of Helen after Paris' death. Perhaps Pandarus reveals a covert knowledge of this burgeoning romance when, in TC II, he confidently sends Helen and Deiphobus into the garden for an hour,…

Many sources and analogues for Chaucer's poem, including the "Roman de la Rose," "Panthere d'amours," "La dance aux aveugles," and "Trionfo d'amore," as well as a reference in his own LGW (G, 403-05), suggest that the "man of great authority" is the…

Medieval English and Latin dictionaries such as the "Medulla gramatice" can often be of great value in textual criticism,offering solutions to several Chaucerian cruces: "stot" (CT III, 1630) "whore"; "nakers" (CT I, 2511) "horns"; "astromye" (CT I,…

Newly discovered Spanish document reports 400 gold "fortes" paid to Lewis Clifford, Chaucer's friend, on behalf of Carlos II of Navarre, thus connecting Clifford with the Black Prince's Spanish campaign, and explaining some of his other connections…

Chaucer's hedonist monk tells unexpectedly conservative tales. But his "accessus" and first four tales betray him as a "grammaticus" bent on "curiositas," evoked by hunting (Augustine) and "vagatio" (Peter Damian). The rest define "what is man" by…

Combining Bosio's edition of the "Passio S. Caeciliae" and the "Legenda Aurea" accounts for all but eight discountable details of SNT and,independently, for the English analogues. Chaucer adapts rather than translates.

These lines state the knight's code of honor and are closely adapted from the sixth book of the "Aeneid," lines 851-53.

Two sets of Chaucer illustrations altered the late eighteenth-century and early Romantic readers' perception of Chaucer: George Vertue's for Urry's edition (1721), and Thomas Stothard's for Bell (1782-83). Stothard's illustrations were later…

The three anonymous stanzas that Wynkyn printed at the end of his 1517 edition of the poem suggest that neither the sympathy for Criseyde felt by moderns nor the poet's view of TC as a religious work would have been found in an early reader. Wynkyn…

Challenges several claims made by Alice Miskimin in "The Illustrated Eighteenth-Century Chaucer," Modern Philology 77 (1979): 26-55.

Although there were only a few English fabliaux before the late fourteenth century, an English fabliau genre can be identified as distinct from the earlier French in dramatic aspects, i.e., the use of direct speech. "Dame Sirith," for example,…

A heretofore overlooked list of internal evidence for Chaucer's authorship of Wom Unc concerns the source of the mirror image--the latter used by Chaucer in his Bo. Since Chaucer's lady is described in terms that smack of Boethius's Fortune, the…

The reflexive "maken" ("to pretend") is studied in a discussion of the conscience of the Prioress, the Parson, the Pardoner, Griselda, Friar John, and the Wife of Bath. "Spiced conscience" means "tender feeling," or "hypocritical religiosity."

A review article.