Browse Items (16472 total)

Reads the "Tale of Beryn" and Lydgate's "Seige of Thebes" as acts of resistance to Chaucer's dissolution of his fiction in the meditation that is ParsT. These continuations of CT seek to keep alive the drama of CT through visualization, a form of…

Mentions MLT, PrT, and ClT in the larger context of gender and blood in medieval culture. McCracken argues that gendered cultural values are "mapped onto blood and that cultural values are inscribed into a natural order." Compares Chaucer's MLT with…

Contrasts the historical status of late-medieval plowmen with their literary status, considering Chaucer's Plowman in GP, Langland's "Piers Plowman," and the "other more minor plowmen poems" of late-medieval England.

Reading the loathly lady's discourse on gentilesse (WBT) against the Statutes of Kilkenny (imposed by the English crown on the Anglo-Irish in 1366) highlights the conflict of nobility as defined either by blood line or by behavior (sanguinity or…

Commenting on medieval literary renditions of the story of Troy, Gutiérrez Arranz identifies places where Chaucer refers or alludes to this material, focusing on Chaucer's references to specific characters.

Commentary on "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" that emphasizes partnership in marriage. Occasional references to WBT.

Analyzes the relationships of "interpretation, authority, and female sexuality" in works by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Sidney. TC and WBPT contrast a lady seduced by her reading with a woman empowered by hers.

Suggests Chaucer "was walking on dangerous ground" in choosing 1Timothy 6:10 ("Radix malorum . . .") as the theme of the Pardoner's sermon, adducing a Latin sermon by Oxfordian Robert Lychlade on the same theme that led to him being brought to trial…

Summarizes the scholastic idea of the book and applies the concept of the written word (book) as "essential epistemological instrument" to Wolfram's "Titurel" fragments (ca. 1220) and to TC. Chaucer presents Troilus as a misreader of texts who only…

Suggests that the textual layout of Th is authorial in the Ellesmere, Hengwrt, Cambridge MS Gg.II.27, and Dd.IV.24 copies of Th. Because other manuscripts do not adhere to this layout, they exemplify how scribes interpret texts rather than transmit…

Absolon's intentions in MilT are uglier and darker than realized by readers who recognize the non-Boethian nature of the tale. Absolon's plowshare, for all its sexual symbolism, is a murderous weapon intended for Alison.

Observes that Chaunticleer's mistaken reference to Macrobius as the author of the "Somnium Scipionis" (7.3124) may suggest that NPT predates PF (i.e., "no later than 1386"), where Macrobius is accurately identified as the author of the "Commentary"…

Chaucer's acquaintance with Dante and his return from the Italian journey in 1373 provide termini of 1372-74 for Mel. Later, Mel was included among the CT to be narrated by the Man of Law. Finally, it was moved to its place in fragment 7 or B2.

Speculates "about the real state of Chaucer's purse in late 1399," examining details of the poem "Purse" and the relative chronology of the poet's life records to conclude that he wrote "Purse" to Henry IV because of actual financial duress.…

Resolves the apparent inconsistencies of astronomical dates in GP and MLP by explaining that Chaucer knew of and calculated by means of the "precession of the equinoxes," as is evident in FranT.

Historical murder mystery set in 1400, in the months after Henry IV's usurpation of Richard II's throne. "Master" Chaucer and Adam are involved with copying Lollard treatises; Matilda, Chaucer's house-maid, is involved with friar-cum-sleuth Brother…

In Wallace's volume dedicated to examining various aspects of the importance of Rome and the Latin language--classical and Christian--in early British culture, this chapter focuses on their roles in theorizing and depicting relations between living…

Treats PardPT as parts of a structured sermon against gluttony, gambling, swearing, and "'superbia', pride in its most Satanic form." The revelers and the Pardoner himself are guilty of the latter.

BD should be given Chaucer's own title (LGW 418): "The Death of Blanche." Chaucer's title is more fitting for a poem of anti-consolation that emphasizes "death's power over the loveliest visions of youth and happiness."

Reads ManT as a "story both of a wife who cuckolds her jealous husband and of a sexually aware trickster [the crow] who uses his knowledge, voice, and wit to gain freedom from his gilded cage." Both the wife and the crow seek freedom, but unlike the…

Surveys critics who argue that the Wife of Bath murdered her fourth (and perhaps her fifth) husband, compares details of WBP with those of the trial of Alice Kytelar in 1324, and suggests that the Kytelar trial may have influenced Chaucer's creation…

Twelfth-century lyric employs a generalized, nonhistoric "I"; thirteenth-century composition represses this voice in favor of a specific and individualized narrator. BD, though it seems to endorse the latter, actually returns to the songlike,…

Ishino attempts to unravel enigmatic aspects of PhyT, especially the death of Virginia.

Refutes Benson's view (SAC 3 (1981), pp. 77-120) that Ellesmere represents Chaucer's final arrangement of CT. Like Manly and Rickert, Blake thinks there is no Chaucerian order and that after Chaucer's death scribes tried to achieve a satisfactory…

Assesses the "relevance and importance" of the Decameron to the study of CT, considering evidence of Chaucer's knowledge of Boccaccio's work and the ways the two works reflect similar and different "cultural agendas." Comparison of shared motifs and…