Browse Items (16472 total)

Critics have argued that Chaucer intended the reader to view Criseyde as a woman destined to be a whore, Diomede as an unscrupulous seducer, and Troilus as an ideal knight. But if a fourteenth-century view is adopted, Diomede can be viewed in a…

The Old Man's significance depends on audience reaction, not on learned traditions; readers and pilgrims might easily associate him with the Green Yeoman of the FrT, for he too "seems to be a devil wandering the earth in search of prey."

Notes broad similarities between the Wife of Bath and Moll Flanders and concludes that Moll is an 18th-century analogue of Alison.

Olsen argues that TC is an effort to "use poetry as a spiritual instrument," specifically in an attempt to link "celestial and earthly loves."

Aligns the five fingers of lechery (ParsT 10. 852-64) with the conventions of courtly love and those of mystical love, using them to assess several lovers of CT (Palamon and Arcite of KnT, Nicholas and Absalon of MilT, and Aurelius of FranT).

Describes the structure of the so-called marriage group, focusing on how the pairings of FrT and SumT and MerT and SqT contribute to the sense of dramatic climax fulfilled in FranT.

Includes discussion of FranT (pp. 282–93), tabulating historical astronomical data and arguing that Chaucer "used the configuration of the Sun and Moon in December 1340 as the inspiration for the time of year [late December] and for the central…

Includes discussion of MerT that explains Chaucer's precision in using astronomical data for poetic purposes. Suggests that Chaucer used Alfonsine tables, and aligns the astronomical details and imagery of MerT with celestial events that occurred in…

Includes discussion of the reference to Boetes (the constellation Boötes) in Bo, IV, met. 5, explaining the astronomy underlying the "puzzle" found in Boethius's original reference and in Chaucer's translation.

Correlates the disappearance of the rocks in FranT to an extremely high tide that occurred on December 19, 1340, perhaps the year of Chaucer's birth. Calculates the date using the Toledan or Alfonsine Tables known to Chaucer. The clerk in FranT knows…

The planetary conjunction in TC 3 is a description of an actual event that occurred in 1385.

Chaucer is assumed to have had a high level of astronomical knowledge, unusual for medieval times. Olson and Jasinski used an Apple IIe microcomputer to investigate certain celestial constellations and to prove that Chaucer was correct in his…

Argues that in its concern with social pretension and its atmosphere of "game and contest," RvT is better regarded as a comic fabliau than as a tale of vengeance that reflects its teller. Compares and contrasts RvT with several fabliaux, including…

Explores the classical and medieval poetic theories that underlie the genre of the fabliau, particularly its lack of concern with meaningfulness, commenting on several French fabliaux, and discussing the comedy and satire of MilT, RvT, ShT, and SumT.…

CT is a collection of narratives bound together in a frame with two central features: a pilgrimage and a game. The pilgrimage is the outer frame, while the game is a second, inner framing device--the organizing principle that brings the stories into…

Chaucer's statements in the "Thopas-Melibee" link, which critics have interpreted in at least three different ways, are significant only as a continuation of the Pilgrim Chaucer's pose of literary innocence. They serve to indicate a switch from…

The source of PhyT 30-120 and 238-50 is the thirteenth-century "Communiloquium" of John of Wales, not (as argued by Martha S. Waller in 1976) a fourteenth-century commentary by Castrojeriz.

The reference to Rochester just before MkT helps explain the choice of teller, the nature of the tale, and the narrator's refusal to "pleye" when he is interrupted. Rochester Cathedral included a monastic house; it contained a mural of Fortune's…

Like Boccaccio's "Decameron," CT reveals awareness of medieval principles of game and play articulated by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Albertano of Brescia.

Discusses lyric genres of Machaut, Froissart, Chaucer, and others to show that late-medieval society saw lyrics as "recreation, as conversation, as personal expression, as music." Treats TC, BD, GP, Buk, Purse, Truth, and Sted.

In WBP the Friar promises to tell a tale or two at the expense of summoners by journey's end; the Summoner, not to be outdone, brags that he will do the same at the expense of friars before the pilgrims reach Sittingbourne, i.e., "before" journey's…

Later medieval medical theories and ethical commentaries recognized the benefits of literary pleasure. Olson's aim is "to redress an imbalance in modern scholarship that fosters, intentionally or not, the notion that medieval literary thought had…

The fragment containing SNT and CYT is unique in the intrusion of new pilgrims undescribed in GP. Two seemingly unrelated stories are tightly unified: SNT in the "lastynge bisynesse" of Saint Cecilia; CYT in the fraudulent "bisynesse" of the Canon,…

Chaucer's distinction between "makere" and "poete" is found elsewhere in medieval writings. Serving both to separate classical from contemporary and to distinguish artistic quality from moral seriousness, the distinction suggests the relationship…

A ballade by Eustache Deschamps poses a "demande d'amour" similar to that of the Loathly Lady in WBT, wherein a courtier is required to render judgment on a question of love.