Browse Items (16472 total)

Charts use of "pite" in Chaucer's works and argues that, as applied to and by Criseyde in TC, it signals transitions in her affections and enables the audience to view her both critically and empathetically.

Compared with their Boccaccian originals, the prayers in Chaucer's KnT are more symmetrical and more concerned with promises to perform duty or to offer sacrifice.

Comments on the names of selected characters, including the names of Chaucer's CT pilgrims and some of the characters in the tales. Compared with Spenser's and Shakespeare's names, "Chaucer's fictional names are rather limited in kind and number,"…

Despite Chaucer's characteristic humility about his poetry and the absence of any references to poetry in his "Life-Records," critics are wrong to deemphasize the respect that subsequent writers accorded to his writing. Imitation of Chaucer's poetic…

Argues that Chaucer is "constitutionally sensitive" to intellectual realism, preferring sensory experientialism instead. In BD, as in HF and PF, inconclusiveness and tentativeness defer rather than console and encourage a "broader mundane…

Argues that in "Pericles" Shakespeare links Catholicism to English literary history "for the purposes of a complex investigation into the politics of literary history." Allusions to incest in the play, and allusions to Gower and to Chaucer's…

Brewer critiques Root's explanation of relationships among TC manuscripts, arguing that Root's explanation is inconsistent and commenting on the possibilities of discovering the process of Chaucer's revisions.

Comparison of manuscripts of CT enables inferential conclusions about their exemplar (which does not survive), but the complexity of these conclusions justifies reliance on the Hengwrt manuscript. Blake considers the likelihood that the manuscripts…

Edwards clarifies the indeterminacies of the "editorial process" by questioning several textual issues pertaining to the manuscripts of HF: uncertain authority of individual manuscript and manuscript groupings, and the implications of this…

Tabulates the "frequency and percentage" of the modal auxiliaries shall/will and should/would in CT, presenting in eight tables the statistical data in relation to grammar (types of sentences and clauses, person, etc.), mode (poetry and prose), and…

Hoad challenges critical discussions of specific words and syntactical emphases in Chaucer on the grounds that modern linguistic intuition is unreliable, comparison of medieval uses is often flawed, and medieval commentary can be misleading.…

Contemplates the possible range of meanings of tragedy for Chaucer, observing how consistently he associates it with misunderstanding and how he alludes to or invokes Boethius to defer explanation or certainty. Christian notions of grace disallow…

Compares Chaucer's characterization of Criseyde, Henryson's of Cresseid, and Shakespeare's of Cressida, assessing Shakespeare's "transformation" of the character as typical of "Jacobean sensibility."

Stanley comments on the inconclusive endings of several Chaucerian narratives and argues that CkT is complete as it is, developing the theme of herbergage (taking in lodgers) that runs throughout Part 1 of CT.

Similarities of orthography and copying habits indicate that the Hammond scribe copied the following manuscripts: BL Additional 34360, BL Harley 2251, Trinity College Cambridge R.14.52, and Royal College of Physicians 113 [Py]. This scribe's spelling…

Assesses Chaucer's response to ancient poetry, especially as Chaucer (like Dante) fuses the ancient with more recent models while pursuing the ancient concern with the tragic sorrows of love. Wetherbee comments on aspects of BD and HF, examines the…

Surveys attitudes toward patriotism among early English writers. According to Stanley, Criseyde's claim to Diomedes that she loves the city of Troy (TC 5. 953-57) is untrue.

Studies Wynken de Worde's use of copy texts for his edition of CT. Although de Worde used Caxton's second edition, he also turned to an undetermined manuscript or manuscripts to improve the ordinatio of the work. The changes do not, however, indicate…

Minnis surveys depictions of ambiguous pagan oracles in medieval literature, including Calchas's foreknowledge in TC and the temple scenes in KnT, arguing that Chaucer and other medieval poets held that pagans as well as Christians had the ability…

Considers SumP to be Chaucer's experiment in and assessment of the genre of the vision of the afterlife, with "possible echoes of the Visio Tnugdali" (Vision of Tundale).

Examines the depictions of Alexander, Caesar, and Peter of Cyprus in MkT in relation to their sources, arguing that the Monk attempts to impose inappropriate chivalric values on historical events; the Knight's interruption underscores the Monk's…

Chaucer's "doubleness" in critical tradition results from combinations of self-deprecation and extravagant claims to poetic authority in his works. In 1592, Robert Greene depicted Chaucer as short, whereas the frontispiece of Speght's 1598 edition…

Argues for the continuity of English literary tradition from Beowulf to the present by exploring several "great speeches" in Chaucer's works and in previous literature. No one disputes the continuity from Chaucer to the present, and the presence in…

Etymological and semantic exploration of "fear" and related words that indicates nuances lost in translation between early English and modern editions and adaptations; discusses two uses of "no fere" in TC (3.583 and 1144) and an emendation of "thys…

Discusses the role of Criseyde as a niece and an aunt and how Chaucer depicts her mature persona.