Browse Items (16472 total)

Comments on Chaucer's connections with Spain, focusing on 1366, when he was married and visited Spain, and on 1387, when many died of pestilence after accompanying John of Gaunt on his invasion of Spain in 1386.

Observes that the "ferses twelve" of BD 723, though impossible on a common chess board, was possible on some medieval boards (especially in Germany) of twelve squares by eight squares, with their twelve pawns. Then argues that the phrase has…

Defines "ballad tragedy" in comparison with late-medieval "De casibus" tragedies, using ballads collected by Francis James Child and, among other works, Chaucer's MkT and TC.

Shows "how the frequent conflation between anger and revenge has shaped the representations of what we might call anger management in early English literature," from representative Old English works to Shakespeare. Two chapters focusing on Mel, ClT,…

Uses selected Arthuriana to describe the development of chivalric romance and offer a descriptive definition of the genre. Emphasizes the non-centered, unstable nature of the romance, although contrasting it with postmodernist works. Notes Chrétien…

The squire in GP wears red and white apparel which critics generally associate with springtime and fashionable dress. Because soon-to-be knights wore these colors in the medieval knighting ritual, this chivalric association of the colors further…

Surveys the dilemmas experienced by Criseyde, Troilus, Chaucer, and the reader in TC, relating them all to the conflicts between classical beauty and Christian truth.

Twenty-six essays and thirteen appendices explore how Christianity underlies Western attitudes. The section "Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)" (pp. 67-75) reads Ret in light of ParsT and Mel as a mild account of misconduct in which Chaucer is guided more…

Assesses astrological imagery in works by Chaucer, Lydgate, Henryson, Lyly, Greene, and Spenser, including discussion of how the zodiacal signs of Aries, Taurus, and Gemini suggest "symbolic re-enactment of sin" and provide "ironic commentary" in…

Includes discussion of relations between "storm motifs" and "traditional attitudes towards love (conceived broadly as the relationship between man and the objects of his desire)" in various medieval texts, including BD, TC, MilT, MLT, and ABC.

Summaries of literary works, plus study questions designed for self-teaching, ranging from works of Bede and Caedmon to those of Philip Larkin and Edna O'Brien, with a summary of biblical plots, Christian history, hymns, and a glossary of terms. Two…

Chaucer's version of the Ceyx-Alcyone story differs from its predecessors in ways that emphasize how love can transcend death, helping to make the consolation of the poem particularly Christian.

Adds the Cardigan MS (University of Texas) and British Library Egerton MS 2864 to Matheson's list of manuscripts that include "peculiar versions" of Brut.

Lydgate's references to Chaucer's poetry help scholars date the writings of the later poet.

Assesses the utility of applying Bakhtinian analysis to Chaucer's works and examines the monologia of ClT in light of the "Tale's" intersections of "Ecclesiastes time" and figural time.

Describes key clerical figures in CT and exemplifies details of worship, parish social life, and the Church in daily life. Includes color illustrations and hypertext links to key terms and concepts.

Examination of tax records gives a picture of the distribution of clerical personnel in London around 1380.

Considers several features of MilT, including diction, arguing that MilT is a "Chaucerian fabliau."

In TC Chaucer employs a series of circular images--rings, city walls, seasonal cycles, Fortune's wheel, and super-lunar spheres--to reinforce his themes of sexual love, imprisonment, and ephemerality, and to accentuate the differences between earthly…

Examines the ways in which the Legend of Ariadne in LGW reflects Chaucer's concerns over the cyclical and repeating tragedies of history.

A Lacanian analysis of ShT questions "the position of the speaking subject within the network of symbolic exchange. The narrative imbrecates three symbolic systems: speech, money, and sexual division . . . synonymously, as metaphors of each other,…

Argues that Chaucer encourages his audience to "view the affair between Troilus and Criseyde as a clandestine marriage rather than as an illicit love affair," different from the analogous relationship in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and consistent with…

The obscure circumstances surrounding the three marriages of Joan of Kent are clarified by reference to the original documents. In 1340, at age 12, she secretly married Sir Thomas Holland. In 1341, while Holland was crusading in Prussia, she was…

Argues that TC, in its "integration of style, structure, and theme with meaning," is best regarded as "transitionally Renaissance in its entire import." Articulates differences between medieval and Renaissance cultures, and argues that TC better…

Aligns Chaucer's style, themes, and characterization in TC with Renaissance humanism more than with medieval conventions, genres, and rhetoric, arguing that the poem anticipates the "poetry of Shakespeare's century" in its fusing realism, epic, and…