Browse Items (16472 total)

Dialectical analysis of "listeth" in Middle English indicates that in using the term to mean "listen" in Tho (particularly at 7.833) Chaucer alters his source and strikes for his London audience the "right jarring note" since that meaning was "no…

Suggests that the referent for "the philosophre" in ParsT 10.535-37 is Aristotle, following a passage in his "De Anima."

Attributes the sexual suggestiveness of the NPE (CT 7.3447-62) to the Host's familiarity with a commonplace association of a "man in a convent with a cock in a hen-run," citing parallels from French, Latin, and Italian sources, and exploring how the…

Suggests that there can be "little doubt" that Chaucer thought the term "vavasour" (GP 1.30, applied to the Franklin) signified "a man noted for hospitality," adducing evidence from Chrétien and other sources.

Shows that the legend of St. Nicholas may be a source of the detail about the marrying young women in Chaucer's description of the Friar in GP 1.212-13.

Identifies two echoes of PF 22-25 in John Hardyng's "English Chronicle in Metre," also mentioning the later use of the PF lines in Speght's 1598 edition of Chaucer's works.

Suggests that the "Ovide Moralisé" (14.827-30) is the "probable source" of the reference to Elysium in TC 4.789-90.

Argues that the "fabliau of the 'Sot chevalier' by Gautier le Leu" is a source for the branding scene of MilT and for the summary of action at the end of the Tale.

Identifies a French prose version (1882) of a West-African tale that is analogous to PardT and perhaps translated first from Arabic into Fula (Peuls) when Moslems entered the area.

Regards the detail of covering the child's eyes in MLT 2.840-41 as a "homely touch" of pathos, perhaps drawn from child-care advice found in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, "De Proprietatibus Rerum."

Shows that the characterization of Calchas in TC influenced the fifteenth-century "Sege of Troy."

Cites TC 2.752 as the source of Sir Thomas Wyatt's use of "lusty leese" in "Myne owne John Poyntz," line 83.

Explains that Chaucer's source for his account of Lot's incest, followed as it is by reference to Herod and the slaying of John (PardT 7.485-91), is likely to have been Peter Comestor's "Historia Libri Genesis" rather than the biblical account. Also…

Comments on Chaucer's interest in the physiognomic implications of Criseyde's joined eyebrows in relation to his sources.

Identifies connections between words and details of PF and Oton de Grandson's "Le Songe St. Valentin'."

Identifies three African folklore analogues to PardT previously "unnoticed" in Chaucer studies.

Argues that pronounced Chaucerian final -'e' is generally conservative and grammatical (rather than rhetorical or colloquial), identifying parallels in Old English usage and Middle English scribal practice, and commenting on the loss of final -'e'…

Connects John's separation from Alison in the tubs of the MilT with enjoinders to remain sexually separate in the Noah mystery plays and Mirk's "Festial."

Confronts the scribal and editorial difficulties of the variants "armee"/"arryue" in GP 1.60, preferring the latter because of parallel usage in a fifteenth-century manuscript of the "Gilte Legende."

Provides evidence that the locution "caples thre" (FrT 1554) means "three cart horses" and "preestes thre" (GP 1.164) means "three priests."

Suggests a link between the Gild of St. Nicholas, performance of mystery plays by parish clerks, and Nicholas of MilT.

Comments on the etymology of a modern and a medieval (PardT 6.406) instance of the figurative use of the phrase to go "a blackberrying."

Justifies dating the "Destruction of Troy" after TC (i.e., "about 1400") by exploring echoes of the former in the latter.

The word coppe may derive from L. "culpa," "guilt," rather than from "cuppa," "cup."

The progenitor of error may have been Lactantius Placidus' commentary on the "Thebaid".