Browse Items (16472 total)

WBT supplies the feminine gloss to the masculinist texts underlying WBP. It provides a marriage pedagogy in which the partners discover their own desires by attempting to learn each other's desires.

Echoes of Dante's "Commedia" in TC are not ironic. In each poem, love is religious, even theological, reflected in the characters' Christian references in TC. The poems are distinct not as Christian is distinct from pagan but as comedy is distinct…

The lack of a defined perspective from which to judge exposes a profound ambivalence in the Merchant, an ambivalence that manifests itself in a series of confusing and disconcerting shifts in narrative viewpoint, suggesting a narrator who is quite…

As KnT is a reduction of the Teseida, MkT is a miniature imitation of Boccaccio's "De casibus virorum illustrium." The Monk, Boccaccio's ironic double, interrogates newly emergent forms of tragedy and contests with the other pilgrims within the…

The tragedies of MkT resist any overarching "metahistorical paradigm" and thus reflect Jean-Francois Lyotard's definition of postmodernism. The Monk is a "serious-minded humanist with a bent toward postmodernism."

Explores comedy and irony in KnT, both extending from the Knight's perspective on Christian chivalric values in a pagan epic setting and his disclosure of the "absurdity of earthly action." Focuses on Theseus's political opportunism and his…

Chaucer's PardT "anticipates, and/or possibly draws on, the techniques and devices of the English moral play." CT is a "play" or game, and PardT is in effect "an early moral play." A "ful 'vicious' man," the Pardoner himself is a vice.

For Chaucer poetry and love are closely related: both are creative arts to which the verb "make" is applied. Chaucer uses writing and book imagery to symbolize a creative love act.

Comments in critics' "pun-hunting" in Chaucer's works and describes two kinds of bawdy puns in MilT (those that carry connotations of subtlety and secrecy and those that connote pleasure and entertainment), tracing their complex interrelations and…

Twenty-nine essyas, by various authors, on English historical and developmental linguistics; includes a list of publications by Rissanen. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for To Explain the Present under Alternative Title.

Addresses historical sociolinguistic trends between 1400 and 1800, tracing the disappearance of multiple negative (negative concord) usage to the latter half of the eighteenth century. However, data also suggest that Late Middle English initiated the…

Traces uses of various prepositions ('of,' 'for,' 'with,' and 'in') and participles in conjunction with the adjective 'weary,' identifying when and where the uses were most frequent in Old and Middle English. Draws examples from Chaucer.

Several examples from Chaucer illustrate late Middle English combinations of come with infinitives and with participles.

Identifies personal opportunities Chaucer had "to learn the special fame" of St. Clare, and suggests that his allusion to her in HF (line 1066) evokes "a contrasting silence" in a "passage descriptive of strident clamor."

Illustrated anthology of English literature and literary criticism from Old English into the twentieth century, with a section entitled "The Time of Chaucer" that includes NPT and PardT, along with "Interesting Sidelights," "The Royal Tree," and "The…

Argues that in the GP Chaucer offers an "analysis of social rank in terms of economic behavior," consistently evident in the descriptions where a "pilgrim's characteristic behavior is defined in every case in terms of the acquisition and use of…

Contends SqT and Thopas are not artistic failures but that their departures from the usual norms of the medieval romance genre in tone, form, and subject matter are evidence of Chaucer's search "for a new mode of romance writing." Further, their…

Argues that "completion is not essential to the meaning or value of romance in the Middle Ages" in discussing works by Chrétien as well as SqT, Th, and "the dynamic of opening and closing" of KnT.

Explores the "full sensory expression" in Chaucer's "construction of space," emphasizing the interconnectedness of the five senses in medieval understanding and their ethical dimensions that require proper training to engage volition correctly.…

Includes seventeen essays on Chaucer, "Piers Plowman," pastoral literature, scripture and homilies, and lyric poetry; a dedicatory introduction; and a list of Wenzel's publications. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Literature and…

Contends that the confrontation between the carpenter John and the clerk Nicholas in MilT provides dramatic context for the exploration of anti-intellectualism and intellectual curiosity. Claims that in MilT it is the "combination of humor and…

Assesses ParsT in its genre of vernacular penitential manual, demonstrating that in structure and detail it is closely affiliated with Heinrich von Langenstein's "Erchantnuzz der Sund." Similarities between these two contemporary works raise…

Whereas Henryson's tale focuses on flattery and pride, and with the relationship of these sins to language, Chaucer's NPT--a likely source for Henryson--emphasizes the rhetoric of heroic poetry and the question of women's opinions. These different…

Explores the Ovidian "erotodidactic" combination of "ars amandi" and "ars dictandi" in TC, describing the similar "rhetorical view of love" in the "Rota Veneris" of Boncompagno de Signa. Focuses on Pandarus, letter-writing, and the manipulative…

A novel with recurrent allusions to TC, including a five-book structure, epigraphs derived from Nevill Coghill's translation of TC, and overt references to the poem.