Browse Items (16472 total)

Deterioration in the name Malkin, which came to mean "member of the lower classes, slut," can be paralleled by the Welsh "Mald."

Applies modern translation theories to Rom, identifying Chaucer's goal of testing the "capacity of English to attain higher spheres of expression." Far from being a servile translator, Chaucer composed a "metapoem" with a range of translational…

The puzzling character of the earthly love and life of human beings is what PF tries to explore and discover. Chaucer revealed an irrational aspect of humanity in this work.

CT Fragment VII illustrates and undercuts the Aristotelian causes of literature. Thus, ShT demonstrates the near efficient cause, the teller; PrT, the remote cause, God. Chaucer-the-Pilgrim, the final cause, separates delight and instruction in Th…

Carney considers the two-stanza envoy to TC "in the light of Plotinus' Neoplatonic scheme of 'exitus' and 'reditus'" (ending and return).

Although earlier Christian comment (especially Augustine's) blames Lucrece for being motivated by love of reputation, English chroniclers and the "classicizing" friars variously reworked her story. The views of Ridevall and Higden, reasserting…

Argues that missing quires, rather than Chaucer's abandonment of LGW, account for its incompleteness and that a redactor, not Chaucer, revised LGWP in MS Gg.4.27.

In LGW, Chaucer uses the narrative approaches of hagiography (brevity, narrative selection, and focus for commemorative and edificational purpose) to achieve variations in tone and perspective. The heroines, however, are exempla of human, not…

The wording of these lines closely resembles the phraseology found in an Italian translation of Ovid's "Heroides." The line "Youre anker which ye in oure haven leyde" (line 2501) may be a sexual pun. Treats Boccaccio's "De genealogia deorum" as…

In the Dido episode of LGW, Chaucer minimizes both Aeneas's destiny and his character, focusing on Dido's character and thus producing a (negative) feminist exemplum.

Sted, which begins as a complaint, reveal the poet's "anxiety over the mutable condition of language."

Describes Chaucer's various uses of the terms "kynde" and "nature" (and their derivatives), focusing particularly on their semantic range and potential as personifications

Addresses two questions: Is KnT a romance? and Whose story is it, Palamon's or Arcite's? More lines are devoted to these issues than to philosophic matter and Theseus. Arcite shows more nobility than any other character in KnT, and the story…

Unlike the knight of the chivalric theorists, who is ideally a force for justice and stability, the knight of the courtly romance is a solitary figure whose primary concern is self-fulfillment without regard to the community at large. As a courtly…

Analyzes characters, both divine and human, in KnT as "representatives of the "three ages of man: youth, maturity, and old age."

The fundamental distinction in KnT is not between Palamon and Arcite, but between them and Theseus. The Dionysian misrule of Thebes is symbolically contrasted to the Apollonian order or Athens. The mythic structure of the narrative prepares a…

Troilus's "kankedort" is an Anglo-Norman equivalent of the proverbial "chien qui dort" (sleeping dog); Troilus expects a rude rebuff, ending his love affair.

From the "Roman de la Rose," Chaucer inherited a view of "janglerye" that implicated himself as a court poet. Throughout his career, and especially in CT, he explores the dangers of "janglerye" as an appetite.

Traces Chaucer's uses of two rhetorical devices of compression throughout his poetic career, "praeterito" and "reticentia," arguing that he developed sophisticated uses of the devices for creating dramatic and emotional effects. The devices entail,…

HF expresses the "unreliability" of authority, as evident in the "style and structure" of the poem. Defines "fame" as the "body of traditional information that confronted the educated fourteenth-century reader" and shows how and where HF manifests…

The emendation of HF texts F and B, line 1709, to "for no fame nor (MSS "for") such renoun" may be preferable to Skeat's now-standard reading, "For fame ne for such renoun." Similarly, emendation of MSS "loo" (line 1909) to "looth" gives the line…

Reads HF as an example of science fiction, focusing on its presentation of acoustics and commenting on its recurrent use of "scientific or pseudo-scientific explanations."

Elements of the poem--dream vision, narrator's self-mockery, genre, satire, absence of authority--contribute to uncertainty of interpretation. That the "mechanics of uncertainty" inhere in all of these elements reinforces skepticism as the poem's…

Chaucer transforms Bede's commentary on the symbolism in Saint John's vision. Chaucer twists the beryl, the eagle, the four beasts, the seven stars, and numerology, giving a sense that Lady Fame is an unlawful ruler. HF is purposely unfinished.

The clash of realist Thomistic Christianity (Dante) and nominalism (Ockham) provides the basis of Chaucer's exuberant satire on philosophy, linguistics, classical tradition, the state of the Church, and other late-fourteenth-century issues. HF…