Browse Items (16472 total)

Reprints forty-eight examples of critical commentary on Chaucer and his poetry, from Deschamps, Gower, and Caxton to 1989, some excerpted and some complete essays, with an annotated list of suggestions for further reading. The Introduction (pp.…

Though the dating of NPT to thirty-two days "syn March bigan" is generally emended to bring the tale date to May 3, the unemended text makes literal sense if treated as a reference to "frame story time." The dating thus "should be read in two…

Suggests that "oon" in BD 47 follows a parallel reference in Jean Froissart's "L'Espinette Amoureuse."

Describes two medieval views of old age, based in the "seasonal model" of the four ages of life and the planetary model of seven ages. Comments on various poets' uses of the age of Jupiter and the age of Saturn, and identifies Chaucer's depictions of…

After briefly placing Chaucer's language in the history of the development of English, Peters describes Chaucer's vocabulary, phonology, morphology, and syntax. The study is presented as a "one-text description of Chaucer's language for the student…

Like Vice of morality drama, the Pardoner plays a part calculated to lure his audience toward sin by making them treat wickedness as a joke they can innocently enjoy, but the Host thwarts this gibe. Thus the Pardoner, again like Vice, becomes the…

Argues that SqT reflects its teller's unsophisticated "effort to dissociate himself and courtly love from the . . . crude caricature" evident in MerT, and contends that when the Franklin interrupts the Squire he is "'pretending' to think him…

Complete census of all known extant copies of the Kelmscott "Chaucer." Explores late nineteenth- and twentieth-century book history, and provides anecdotal and bibliographic details of the "Chaucer."

Includes discussion of PrT as one of several "possible intertexts" for Ezra Pound's "Usury Cantos." In PrT Chaucer presents usury as a defining characteristic of Jews, antithetical to Christian notions of virginity, and aligned with lust and the…

Refers to Chaucer in connection with rebellion and violence.

Offers a psychoanalytical reparative reading of PrT, focusing on PrP, the conclusion of the tale, and various intertexts (Psalm 8; the "Alma Redemptoris Mater"; and Dante's "Purgatorio," XXXIII), unpacking interplays between utterance and intention;…

Addresses the "rise of first-person fiction in the later Middle Ages," including discussion of CT, BD, and Chaucer's "other dream poems."

Examines the progressions of events in various French and English Breton Lays; includes commentary on repetition as a narrative technique that leads to closure in FranT.

Describes two fifteenth-century Czech "responses" to Petrarch's tale of Griselda, one in Latin and its translation into Czech: "Historia infidelis mulieris" and "O Bryzelde rec zla o zle" (An Evil Tale of Evil Briselda). Shows how "the Bohemian text…

Surveys the connections in classical and Christian literature between incubi and nightmares. Documents the intersections of these traditions in Middle English literature, where such night visitations are more frequent than in Continental literature.…

Petrina considers the citation of Gower and Chaucer at the end of "The Kingis Quair" and the poem's context in Bodley MS Arch. Selden. B.24, a manuscript with a high number of misattributions to Chaucer; also speculates about intellectual exchange at…

RvT differs from its sources and analogues by developing the relationship between sight, desire, and reason, ultimately questioning the function of vision, the most important of the senses.

Explores the tension between the Chaucerian legacy of French influence and the Lancastrian concern with English in the works of John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve. Opens with an explication of details of Eustache Deschamps' praise of Chaucer as "grand…

Introduces a special issue dedicated to Shakespeare's references to Padua, summarizing the collected essays and addressing references to Padua in the Towneley mystery play ("Magnus Herodes") and in ClP (27). Suggests that Chaucer's linking of Padua…

Links the rise of falconry in the Middle Ages to the use of falconers' discourses as lenses for understanding texts. Discusses falconry metaphors in TC.

Observes how the "tension between control and release" in premodern falconry is "salient for feminist approaches to representations of gender when birds stand in for women's sexual bodies," exploring the implications of associations between women and…

Assesses various medieval works to show that training instructions for medieval falconry "offer a means of understanding how poetic languageworks, and particularly how it works to represent women." One section describes how metaphors of mewed hawks…

Provides samples of handwriting, sections on alphabets, abbreviations, scripts.

Uses details of the Pardoner's description in the GP and his interactions with other pilgrims to support the hypothesis that Chaucer depicts him as a castrato and satirize an aspect of corruption in the medieval Church.

Chaucer's characters in CT can be seen to use principles of "speech act theory," especially "flouting" of rules in order to induce a different type of meaning from the discourse. Characters gain power or control by deflecting an attack with…