Browse Items (16538 total)

Argues that the GP portrait of the Monk evokes Jean le Bel, chronicler of Edward III, and suggests that MkT is a poetic chronicle. With the Knight and the Prioress, the Monk is evidence that contemporary personalities and events lie behind CT.

Discusses the function of groups of twelve lines in the NPT.

A summary of the text published in Limoges.

Clarifies the bilingualism through Chaucer's use of French loanwords in CT.

Argues that rhyme in English was rare only by reference to French lyrical poetry. Chaucer felt suspicious of craftsmanship for its own sake. Sophistication in rhyming is better left to those who "make in Fraunce."

Mertens-Fonck returns to the clerk-knight debate tradition, especially to "Hueline et Aiglantine" and the "Concile de Remiremont," finding a source of the portrait of the Prioress.

Briefly describes the books and materials exhibited at the January 11, 1991, Sorbonne conference on Chaucer-French relations.

Compares the functions of the narrators in CT and "Don Juan," especially in relation to the themes of guilt and regeneration.

Examines the rhetoric of pathos and irony in CT, drawing attention to how they clash and overlap in PrT and the GP description of the Prioress.

Investigates the burlesque effects of the -"aille" rhymes in the envoy to ClT. Like Eustache Deschamps, Chaucer plays with the plaintive effect of the sound, but he inverts the tone through male exhortation of a feminist position and through the…

Bakhtinian approach to the sketch of the Clerk: there is an intricate dialogue between the latter and the narrator. The facts behind the story and the way it is told reveal much about Chaucer's complex personality.

Explores wordplay involving French and Anglo-Norman "bords" that may have authorized the use of the borders of medieval illuminated manuscripts for visual jesting, contestation, and derision. Considers the verbal "borders" of CT in relation to this…

The liturgy is omnipresent in the texts of medieval writers, including lay writers, although its influence is often indirect.

Challenges assumptions underlying traditional studies of sources and relative chronology, suggesting that similarities between Deschamps's work and Chaucer's are evidence of late-fourteenth-century literary style and common "mentalites". Compares…

Friar Hubert practices false-seeming by faking a Francophone lisp, replacing dentals with sibilants in order to increase his social prestige and his seductiveness. Kendrick also explores why Parision French was considered "sweet".

Explores the metaphoric and symbolic value of walls and gaps in the Thisbe account in LGW.

Assesses similarities and differences between the two Prologues to LGW and the portrayal of Cupid in the Dido account, examining the power relations between Cupid and Alceste and, beyond this microstructure, the masculine-feminine relations of the…

Chaucer and Malory haunted the imagination of Burne-Jones, who illustrated the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer's Works (1896). Burne-Jones ignored the licentious tales, but he expressed the classical/medieval spirit of TC. He was attracted by the scene…

Examines medieval English widows. While Old English literature shows a general lack of interest in marriage and widowhood, Middle English literature is rich in various forms of testimonies. None of the widows surveyed shows true sorrow after the…

Surveys overt and covert links and references to Spain in CT.

Kendrick explores the transgressive use of the balade for non-courtly discourse on sex and women in the period just before Chaucer and Deschamps.

By representing the narrator of CT first as a disembodied authority and then as a storyteller in the pilgrimage game, Chaucer explores the parameters of voice, gender, and authority. The perception of gender in speech is shown to be a social…

Assesses Brian Helgeland's movie "A Knight's Tale" (2001), including its allusions to KnT and its inclusion of Chaucer as a character.

Examines the origins of the "nouvelle: in "news" and Chaucer's interest in tydynges.

Examines the evolution of "also" from a marker of comparison in Old English to a marker of addition in Middle English.