Browse Items (16472 total)

The open-ended frame tale appears to have originated in Arabic literature. Arabic aesthetic can depend on the component unit.

Corpus Christi plays are "analogues for the construction of time and space" in CT. In the plays and in the poem, time and space are both physical and metaphysical, unifying characters and audience in the "single teleology" of movement toward…

Comments on Chaucer's, Pound's, and Eliot's indebtedness to Dante.

Appreciative criticism of Chaucer's "genius," particularly his innovative use of iambic pentameter in English.

Examines the word "sad" in ClT to show that meaning and nuance in Chaucer's poetry derive, not from patterns of similarity or metaphor, but from metonymic contiguity, which functions much as does the "creative contiguity" of Gothic juxtaposition.…

Comments on several themes that recur in Chaucer's poetry and surmises that they may reflect something of his mindset. Discusses cosmic journey and pilgrimage, prayer, experience and authority, and love tidings.

Bloomfield considers natural law, an interest in distant geography, and the similarities between magic and technology in SqT as evidence of the "new spirit of the Renaissance" in Chaucer's works.

A comparison of the medieval descriptions of idealized feminine beauty with depiction of women in medieval and modern Japanese literature points up characteristic Japanese aesthetics and philosophy of beauty.

By comparing Chaucer's TC with Boccaccio's "Filostrato" in sounds, grammar, word choice, similes and metaphors, ambiguities, and construction, the article investigates Chaucer's literary and linguistic imitation and humorous innovation.

Windeatt compares several of Chaucer's works and their sources to show that through variations in narrative pace and increased attention to pinpointing time, Chaucer makes something quite new. Considers PF, MLT, TC, KnT, and several of the tales in…

Arguing that "Chaucer changed the direction of the Middle English lyric," Robbins comments on Chaucer's lyrics, on fifteenth-century lyrics, and on the influence of TC on the latter.

Brewer surveys the presence (and absence) of music in Chaucer's work, suggesting that Chaucer knew its celestial, theoretical underpinnings and enjoyed its zesty, earthy pleasures.

Reads PrT as satiric, an exposé of the horrors of "institutional ignorance," both Christian and Jewish.

Argues that "a ful greet bryngere out of bisynesse" means "remover of worries."

Gillmeister explains "vitremite" as a combination of "uistre" (oyster) and "ermite" (hermit), a Chaucerian coinage for a kind of headwear the poet may have associated with monasteries.

Examines Chaucer's use of gerunds, observing that his usage is generally not unusual for his time except in two respects: he more frequently uses the construction "determiner+gerund+of-adjunct"; and seemingly "modern" gerunds with verbal properties…

In light of the mythological tradition of Janus and connections between January and Adam, January's self-deception in MerT is less bitter than funny. In general, the Tale "is one of the great literary celebrations of marriage, albeit a comic one."

Surveys parody and parodic devices in Middle English literature, arguing that, though there is much that is coarse in this literature, there is little actual parody outside of liturgical texts. Th is Chaucer's only true parody, although elsewhere…

MLT extends the concerns with wooing and governance that are developed in Part 1 of CT, especially when considered in light of the extended version of CkT found in Bodley MS 686, which is edited and appended to this essay.

Assesses the socio-political assumptions and implications of mid-nineteenth-century German study of Chaucer, especially pre-academic translations and commentary.

Takada complicates traditional notions of "courtly love" by adducing Continental examples of marital love and English examples of extramarital sex outside of nonfabliau settings, focusing on the two motifs of the brooch and the girdle. Argues that…

Surveys studies of Chaucer written in German from the middle of the nineteenth century until World War I.

Compares the knights in "Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" and Gower's "Tale of Florent" with the knight in WBT to show that the Wife of Bath is an antifeminist character.

Examines the lyrics embedded in BD, LGWP, PF, and TC, considering their functions in context and the extent to which textual and codicological evidence can clarify the process of their incorporation. Contrasts these lyrics with French models in…

Examines the textual tradition of ABC in its manuscripts and early editions, describing its popularity in manuscripts and its relatively late appearance in print in 1602.