Browse Items (16472 total)

Historical assessment of Chaucer's multi-word (or phrasal) verbs, assessing the syntax and semantics of such verbs, the drift to post-positioning of the particles in these verbs (e.g., "wente forth" rather than "forth wente"), and the effects of…

A pantomime adaptation of CT in two acts, with script, song list, properties list, and suggestions for costuming and staging. The characters are drawn from Chaucer's pilgrims, and the plot centers on the pursuit of a "magic story," with motifs,…

Describes the multiple puns on "prick" in Tho, denotative and connotative.

Compares the narrator of Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato" with the narrator of TC.

The narrator in TC ridicules and condemns courtly love. The difference between TC and "Il Filostrato" is that Chaucer's narrator is unmasked at the end and earthly love must be rejected in favor of love of Christ whereas in IF the young narrator…

Identifies "traces of the primitive folk tale" that underlie the Cupid and Psyche myth and WBT, and maintains Chaucer's familiarity with some version of the myth. Compares and contrasts aspects of the Tale with its English analogues, and argues that…

Facsimile reproduction of Caxton's edition of Bo, reproducing STC 3199.

A reading of the CT as "Chaucer's aesthetic and metaphysical pilgrimage" in which his religious orthodoxy eventually supersedes "alternatives and legitimate philosophical doubts." Follows the Ellesmere order of the tales (defending it on thematic…

Gauges the influence of Navarre on English literature at two crucial junctures: the Norman Conquest and during the march of Edward, the Black Prince, when both Chaucer and John Chandos were involved. Reproduces several archival documents and includes…

Corrects F. N. Robinson's claim that F. C. Riedel identified the man of great authority (HF 2158) as John of Gaunt; conjectures that the man may be a "Chaucerian counterpart" to Musaeus in Virgil's "Aeneid"; and observes parallels between HF 1520ff.…

Offers historical "bird-lore" as evidence of the poisonousness of the "wariangles" (shrikes, or butcher-birds), cited in the description of the summoner in FrT 3.1408).

Suggests that the physiological detail of her "kamuse nose" (RvT 1.3974) helps to characterize Malyne as "sexually attractive and promising."

Identifies an approximate quotation from Chaucer's Pity in Edward Du Bois's satirical novel, "Old Nick" (1801), and suggests that it is "in all probability the first quotation from Chaucer's works in prose fiction."

Suggests intertextual connections among Hyginus's "Poetica Astronomica," Boccaccio's "De Genealogia Deorum," and aspects of Chaucer's Mars.

Suggests possible versions of "sorowe" for "soor" in KnT 1.1454.

Describes records available in the "Black Prince's Register" that pertain to Walter Roet, a "member of the family into which Chaucer married" and, perhaps, a "brother of Chaucer's wife" Philippa.

Identifies and assesses two previously unnoticed Chaucer allusions in William Penn's "Treatise of Oaths" (1675).

Suggests that the expansive moralizing about silence at the end of ManT is "directed" by the Manciple "toward the inebriated Cook," effectively linking the GP description of the Manciple, ManP, and ManT.

Considers "Of Aristotle and his commentators and disciples" to be the "most worthy" of several possible meanings of "Aristotle and his philosophye" in the description of the Clerk's books in GP 1.295.

Lends authority to Gerard Legh's claims about Chaucer's status at the Inner Temple (and writing HF for a ceremony there) by adducing Legh's "standing as a heraldist."

Recognizes the influence of the Prioress's table manners (GP 1.128-35) in a description of the nuns of the Nonnester convent in the first part of Sigrid Undset's "Kristen Lavransdattir" trilogy and observes other quotations of and references to…

Compares and contrasts examples of diction in Dryden's translations of CT to explain why Dryden did not translate the low-style fabliaux and to show that Dryden's translations of Chaucer's humorous passages evince metaphysical wit rather than the…

Identifies a politically cautious reference to CT in the "opening lines" of the "Kingdomes Weekly Intelligence," no. 241, "covering the week of Dec. 28, 1647, to Jan. 4, 1648.

Responds to a query by Lisle C. John (Note and Queries 201 [1956]: 97-98), suggesting that "borrow" may mean borwe" (pledge) or "borough" (referring to Canterbury).

Objects to Robert L. Chapman's argument that the ShT was originally intended for the Shipman, not the Wife Bath, comparing Chaucer's tale with Boccaccio's "Decameron" 8.1 as examples of the "Lover's Gift Regained" motif, and showing that Chaucer's…