Browse Items (16471 total)

Parodied in MilT, exposed as "disordered and violent" in RvT, Theseus's "faire cheyne of love" (KnT 2991) is the first of several "images of mediation which cluster in interlocking fashion" throughout CT. Like other comedies of mediation, CT reveals…

Assesses the lifelong development of Ted Hughes's attitudes toward Chaucer in published and archival materials, including comments on Hughes's view of Chaucer as the "perfect model of a public poet" and as a "presiding presence" in his relationship…

Meecham-Jones contrasts LGWP with BD, showing how the former exhibits the poet's confidence in adapting sources. Discusses the depiction of Alceste as a parody of figures such as Boethius's Philosophy, Dante's Beatrice, and the Pearl-maiden -…

HF is a response to the "creative anxiety inherent in seeking to continue a literary inheritance believed to have already reached its highest peaks of achievement." In his presentation of a desert landscape, Chaucer partially resists Continental…

Ovid's "Metamorphoses" is crucial to the development of characterization in western European literature. Ovid complicates the conventional "divided consciousness" of earlier characterizations through relativism, rationalization, rhetoric…

Suggests Arabic texts not as sources for MerT, but as fellow exemplars of certain similar "universal" archetypes (tree, garden, billet-doux, key). Juxtaposes Arabic tales (some from "The Arabian Nights") with MerT, and organizes stories by tree type…

Contends that the Wife's defense against the charges of adultery (i.e., sex is a lantern that may be shared by many without depriving the owner) is a combination of a simile in the Roman de la Rose and a more exact parallel in Decameron 6.7, where…

Argues that "postmodern literary experiments tend to enact, and embody, an unwitting return to medieval modes of textuality," observing how PF, CT as a whole, individual tales, and the multiplicity of variant manuscripts "actively resist a sense of…

Argues that in "Life of Our Lady" and "Life of Saint Margaret" John Lydgate uses the "paradoxical image" of the virginal and fecund "sanctified female body" to distance himself "from the patriarchal Chaucerian poetic model" and assert that his…

Describes hay as a symbol of ephemerality, materiality, and avarice in FrT and argues that "the summoner's urging his companion (a fiend) to seize a cart of hay . . . draws him closer to the very substance that symbolizes his own sinful propensities…

Argues that Chaucer favors the popular idea that Brittonic literature and history are primarily oral. By doing so, Chaucer distances his contemporary England, with its reliance on Latin textual and cultural authority, from the political reality of…

Reads Th through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque as a dismantling of the religious and moral authority established by PrT in order to reassert the carnivalesque as the organizing principle of CT.

Admires the structural patterns of GP--seven groupings, significant juxtapositions, alterations of detail and generalization, etc.--suggesting that they produce "a poetic realization of plenitude and diversity," underpinned by a concern with "degree"…

Explores resonances between the characterization of Chaucer's Prioress in GP and the life and legend of St. Eligius, clarifying how the Prioress's swearing by "Seint Loy" (i.e., Eligius; GP 1.120) is both appropriate and highly ironic.

Explores the diction and imagery of MilT, focusing on oral and olfactory instances for the ways that they ironically anticipate details of the plot, particularly the misdirected kiss received by Absolon and colter-burn he directs at Nicholas.

Suggests that the number of participants in Chaucer's CT pilgrimage--"Wel nyne and twenty" (GP 1.24) plus the narrator--can be seen to signify the "active life," consisting "essentially of penitence and good works." Offers evidence that thirty…

Explores the background and implications of the reference to "seinte Note" (St. Neot) and the possibility of punning in "viritoot" in MilT 1.3770-71.

Adduces "popular lore" to show that Chaucer's references to a hare and a goat in the GP description of the Pardoner (1.684 and 688)--corroborated by other details from the actions and descriptions of the Pardoner--characterize him as a "testicular…

Attends closely to the syntax of three stanzas of PrT, describing their intricacies and "strong effects," by commenting on predication, modification, rhyme, grammar, and related prosodic concerns.

Describes the Franklin's grasping "imitation of noble ways" in FranPT and in his GP description. The genre and rhetoric of the Tale are outdated, absurd, and/or obtrusive, while its depictions of ideals of marriage, gentility, and patience are either…

Glosses "almoost a spanne broode" in the GP description of the Prioress (CT 1.155) as "almost four inches high," exploring its ironic implications.

Explains how the scene that involves Gerveys the smith (1.3772-89) is "structurally crucial" to MilT by creating an effective lull between "two bits of explosive comedy," helping to characterize Absolon, and gathering the threads of several important…

Suggests that the comparison between Chauntecleer's and mermaid's singing in NPT (7.3269-72) is an "ironic joke" as well as being an "ironic anticipation" of the rooster's fate, connected with the theme of predestination in the Tale.

Identifies analogues to the Wife of Bath's contrast between wheat and barley breads (WBP 3.143-44), arguing that she has herself baked "Priapic" barley loaves and that the description in its context exemplifies the combination of "exegetical and…

Demonstrates Chaucer's "skills as a miniaturist," discussing antecedents in rhetorical tradition to the phrase "places delitables" (i.e., "locus amoenus") in FranT (5.899) and the interdependence of "moral and physical gifts" in the description of…