Browse Items (16472 total)

Suggests that the Miller's tuft of hairs in GP 1.555 may associate him with a folklore tradition about honesty and might be read "he was honest, as millers go."

Identifies ironic parallels between Troilus's viewings of Criseyde in TC and Cresseid's failure to recognize Troilus in Robert Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," exploring the latter as a narrative of "punishment and expiation through suffering."

Suggests that "wood" indicates lechery in FrT 3.1327, echoed punningly by "harlotrye" in the next line.

Quotes and translates an analogue to the window scene of bottom kissing in MilT, recorded by folklorist Juan B. Rael as "La mujer y los tres amantes," collected by oral transmission from Félix Pino in New Mexico in the 1930s.

Surveys historical comments on the odor of daisies and suggests that Chaucer's praise of its odor in LGWP may be due to botanical accuracy, unusual because he usually follows literary conventions.

Observes that Chauntecleer's description of laxatives as "venymous" [var. "venymes"] in NPT 7.3155 parallels a similar connection in Roger Bacon, and suggests that Chaucer's use carries "antifeminist irony."

Maintains that anachronistic details of Criseyde's address to night in TC 3.1429-42 deviate from traditional albas and indicate that she "challenges God" in favor of her own will, indicated by her unorthodox attitude toward Providence.

Suggests that the "greyn" placed on the clergeon's tongue in PrT 7.662 is, ironically, a "breath sweetener," one of several satiric details observed in the Tale.

Connects the reference to "bacon" in WBP 3.418 with the explicit reference to the "Dunmow" bacon of WBP 3.217-18.

Suggests that the description of Blanche's throat as a round ivory tower may "carry on the idea" of the Duchess being referred to as a "fers," a chess piece, found elsewhere in the poem.

Cites Roger Bacon's "Tractatus brevis . . . in libro Secreti Secretorum Aristotilis" as possible justification for emending "convers" to "convex" in the reference to the eighth sphere in TC 5.1910, despite the lack of textual support.

Observes differences between January's reference to proverbially "sotile clerkis" (MerT 4.1427) and the Wife of Bath's reference to proverbially "parfyt" ones (WBT 3.44c; perhaps cancelled). The first is anti-clerical; the latter pro-clerical, and…

Compares and contrasts the uses of northern dialectical words and forms in the Ellesmere and Hengwrt manuscript versions of RvT, assessing J. R. R. Tolkien's evaluations of them (1934), and extending the discussion beyond northern forms to…

Offers the image of unholy clerics as rusted gold in Robert Grosseteste's "Epistolae" as a possible source of the use of the image by Chaucer's Parson in GP 1.500.

Asserts that a portion of stanza 137 of "Kingis Quair" echoes the meaning and rhyme of ClT 4.1164-66.

Asserts that the source of the echoes from Chaucer in William Wordsworth's "Liberty" is ManT 9.163-74 rather than SqT 5.610-20 even though the Chaucerian passages are analogous.

Offers the "Pseudo-Augustinian treatise on penance 'De Vera et Falsa Poenitentia, Liber Una'," as the source of ParsT 10.1025 where Augustine is cited.

Maintains that the Wife of Bath's knowledge of the "remedies of love" and of the "art" of love's "olde daunce" (GP 1.475-76) refer to, respectively, Ovid's "Remedia Amoris" and "Ars Amatoria," familiar to her, perhaps ("per chaunce") because Jankyn…

Observes that William Dunbar ridicules sexual impotence by means of the image of a dog ineffectively lifting its leg and maintains that the image and its implications derive from the "striking (and probably original)" use in ParsT 10.858,

Argues that an analogue (perhaps source) of Chaucer's image of a coin-shaped ("farthing") spot of grease in his GP description of the Prioress (1.134) is "Clef d'amors," line 3236. The play in the French may derive from a punning echo of "speck" and…

Argues that Chaucer's references to a swallow in Alison's song (MilT 1. 3257-58) and to a dove in the Pardoner's claim about preaching (PardP 6.397) are suggestive, and may well derive from his familiarity with the two birds.

Maintains that the Summoner's fondness for "overheating foods" conveys lechery, adducing evidence from Reginald Pecock's fifteenth-century "The Reule of Crysten Religioun."

Conjectures that the source of a recurrent glosses to MilT at 1.3381-82 (variously 3383) attributed to Ovid by the glossators resulted from a misreading of Ovid's "Fasti" 2.193.

Locates echoes of TC 1.813-19 in George Wither's "Sonnet" 4 in "Faire-Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete" (1622).

Reinforces previous arguments that the immediate source of Chaucer's description of "Mercury the slayer of Argus" in KnT is Ovid's "Metamorphoses" 1.671-72, adding that, like Argus, Arcite finds death by listening to the "persuasive and deceitful…