Browse Items (16364 total)

Identifies the sexual and medical implications of several details in the GP description of the Monk, including his association with venery and food, his baldness, and his being fat "in good point" (1.200).

Comments on details of the Monk's description in GP, explaining how they characterize him as "both an epicure and a sexual connoisseur."

Explores the "complex dialectic between the author and his reader" as the defining feature of the novel as a literary form, offering case studies in a range of works, medieval to modern. Includes a discussion of TC (pp. 44-73) which focuses on…

A biography of Chaucer, illustrated with numerous b&w photographs of objects from late-medieval life. Includes discussion of Chaucer's major poetry, linking his works with events and attitudes of his age, and exploring how Chaucer responded to such…

Rejects attempts to read PardT as an example of psychological realism and reads it instead as a "rapidly progressing discourse" that results from "special use of rhetorical devices for the impression of speed." The Tale conveys to its audience a…

Resists readings of the CYT that regard the narrator as stupid or unwitting in his self-revelation, contending instead that he is a "newly reformed alchemist" who is, generally, "rational, down-to-earth, and persuasive in his description and…

Identifies the referent of the Host's oath (MkP 7.1892) as the Greek martyr St. Adrian, explaining his history and legends, familiarity to Chaucer's audience, and appropriateness to the context of the Host's complaint that his wife Goodelief had not…

Argues that "for the sophisticated reader" KnT satirizes the "hallowed institutions of the chivalric tradition and their literary and supposed societal foundations." While "literal-minded" readers may justifiably find that the Tale "idealizes the…

Twenty-one essays in German or English by various authors, covering a range of topics in Middle English literature. For ten essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Chaucer und Seine Zeit under Alternative Title.

Characterizes Chaucer as "typically" English, commenting on his name, his sense of humor, his "love of nature," and his concern with fate, fortune, and "wyrd." Suggests several English books that Chaucer "must have read."

Describes the English royal interest in the political and military maneuvers in Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and France that involved Pedro the Cruel, Pedro the Bold, Henry of Trastamara, Bernard du Guesclin, the Free Companies, and England's Black…

Scans the verse in the first 100 lines of BD, with commentary on emendations and unusual features; then offers a catalog of scansion (with analysis and extensive notes) of the entire poem, concluding that the "basis of Chaucer's metrics" in BD (and…

Assesses Chaucer's characterization of Criseyde in light of Boccaccio's Criseide in "Filostrato," arguing that Chaucer makes her more of a courtly ideal and therefore more reprehensible in her infidelity and a figure of all false, worldly love.

Examines Chaucer's stanzaic and metrical dexterity in TC, discussing how and with what effects he bridges stanza breaks and how he creates emphasis through repetitions, rhyme pairs, caesuras, enjambment, narratorial disavowals, and shifting of climax…

Describes the neo-Platonic, Chartrian tradition in which astral influence (or determinism) includes Saturn as a figure of wisdom as well as cold, temporal destiny, suggesting that the depiction of the god/planet in "De Universitate Mundi" by Bernard…

Describes the sources of SqT and explores its relations with KnT and Anel, focusing on the narrator's clumsy concerns with the "knotte" or major point of the Tale and arguing that this and other shortcomings indicate ironically the Squire's naïve,…

Illustrates the riches of Chaucer's narratorial techniques by considering the presence of the narrator in GP (focusing on the descriptions of the Prioress, Monk, and Friar), the assignment to him of Tho, the ironies of PardP and WBP, and the ways…

Assesses Gower's artistry in several tales of the "Confessio Amantis," including analysis of Gower's tale of Constance in comparison with Trevet's version and Chaucer's MLT. Argues that Gower's tale is more unified than Chaucer's and more purely…

Contends that "there is no clear, indisputable evidence" of a personal relationship between Chaucer and Thomas Hoccleve in the latter's "Regement of Princes." His praise of Chaucer in that poem is evocative but generally conventional, and there is…

Argues that the GP description of "Chaucer's perfect Knight . . . seems carefully constructed to accord with the aims" of a "unified crusade" that was articulated by Philip de Mézières in his proposal to organize an Order of the Passion of Jesus…

Reads the widow of FrT as a figural "type of the Church" that contributes to the "comic irony" of the Tale and deepens the guilt of the summoner by "playing off" of the biblical story of Rebecca.

Argues that Chaucer combines earthly and spiritual love in TC "into one general view of love, one in which the two notions are not mutually exclusive," reading Troilus's ascent through the spheres as a kind of reward or salvation for loving well.

An anthology of readings from medieval sources--literary, political, religious, etc.-- translated into modern English. Includes GP (translated by Frank E. Hill), titled "Chaucer's Picture of Medieval Society," with a brief descriptive introduction.

Observes legal implications in the Clerk's reference to the Wife of Bath's "secte" (oath-helpers or compurgators), and suggests that the reference "functions to interanimate" the Wife's, Clerk's, and Merchant's shared views of female mastery.

Considers the courtly conventions that are used in Mars, and argues that they are deployed ironically and comically to "show the moral deficiencies" of the courtly "system" and lead the reader to judge it accordingly. Considers the allusive…