Wurtele, Douglas (J.)
Neophilologus 60 (1976): 577-93.
Chaucer uses the art of "proprietas" or decorum when he makes the language and substance of MLT conform to his personality and vocation. The narrator subscribes to Quintillian and Ciceronian theories of rhetoric and employs the techniques of…
A St. Valentine's Day entertainment, PF emphasizes the inevitable, though unembraced, participation in "kynde" of its audience. The narrator's use and misuse of his authorities frustrate the expectations of his readers, thereby forcing them to…
"The Plowman's Tale," first appearing in Chaucer's "Works" in 1542, and the "Pilgrim's Tale," printed not earlier than 1536, both clearly based on earlier material, could be clever forgeries or retouched, but substantially genuine, medieval poems. …
Comparison of the philosophical items translated by Alfred and Chaucer from the Latin "Boethius" shows that it can in no way be maintained that all the new loan words used after the Norman Conquest were needed to fill linguistic or cultural gaps in…
Diekstra, F. N. M.
Neophilologus 67 (1983): 131-48.
Chaucer has adapted "ironic hints" from the analogue in Machaut's "Voir dit" to a bourgeois persona that demolishes "finer sensibilities," thus ironically reversing the tenor of the older material.
Beeck, Frans Jozef van.
Neophilologus 69 (1985): 276-83.
An examination of thirteen passages in TC and CT indicates that "ther," sometimes an impersonal introductory form word in Middle English as in Modern English, has been given too much adverbial weight by editors.
A review of the allusions to rhetoric in London poets of Chaucer's time fails to reveal a single firsthand reference to an original text. Rhetorical concepts contributed indirectly to their conceptions of poetry and gave the poets an air of literary…
"Grene" in many contexts in Middle English poetry including Chaucer implies fertility and sexual desire. Hence, the line "In hope that I som grene gete may" may mean "In hope that I may get some sex."
Pertelote's quotation from Cato ("Ne do no fors of dremes"--NPT 2941) is from distich 2.31, which specifically denies the significance of a type of dream that is different from Chauntecler's dream. The cock's attack on the "auctorite" of Cato thus…
In the allusions to infernal sufferers in medieval poems, the lover and the miser are often linked: both have lost their rational capacity, and the sins of both proceed from cupidity. Hence, such reference in BD and TC show that the Black Knight…
Heffernan, Carol F.
Neophilologus 74 (1990): 294-309.
Considers the medieval medical views on "amor hereos" and Chaucer's descriptions of it, first in KnT and BD, then in TC. In TC 1, Chaucer shows Troilus as suffering from the lover's disease, to which the consummation of his love in bk. 3 is, from a…
Ireland, Colin A.
Neophilologus 75 (1991): 150-59.
Chaucer's awareness of analogues to WBT and its theme of sovereignty may be indicated by his use of the word "calle," 'head-dress' (WBT 1018), an early borrowing of the Irish "caille," 'veil,' a derivation of which came to mean "old woman" as well as…
Deliberately drawn links between Alisoun of MilT and the Wife of Bath enable Chaucer to carry forward the moral and spiritual implications of the scriptural allusions in MilT, using them to inform and reinforce the audience's response to WBP.
Sklar, Elizabeth S.
Neophilologus 76 (1992): 616-28
Chaucer's tale of Hypsipyle and Medea (LGW 4) shares verbal features with the "Gest Historyale of the Destruction of Troy" and the "Laud Troy Book." Not derived from one another, they may go back to an earlier Middle English translation.
Howard's "Complaint of a diyng louer refused vpon his ladies iniust mistaking of his writyng," a poem of eighty-two lines first published in "Tottel's Miscellany" (1557) and here reprinted, is a "refreshingly renewed" late example of a courtly love…
Argues that Chaucer drew on Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and the "Ovide moralise" rather than on Geoffrey of Monmouth for his description of Pyramus's death in LGW.
As found in "The Golden Legend" ("Legende Aurea") and the "South English Legendary," the life of St. Kenelm offers striking parallels with both PrT and NPT, in which Chaucer refers to it (7.3110-21). Kenelm was murdered at age seven, perhaps the…
FranT is about people's vulnerability to themselves, about the intimate connection between their identities--or senses of self--and their bodies, about how this vulnerability compromises moral strength and capacity for spiritual fulfillment, and…
