Browse Items (16472 total)

Pandarus tells Troilus "don thyn hood," which usually has been intrepreted to mean "put on your hat," signifying that the prince should delay action. But "hood" had a secondary meaning of warrior's helmut, and the sense of "prepare yourself for…

Chaucer's translation of "Roman de la Rose" and his indirect references to Oiseuse (Idleness) in his own poetry illuminate her significance, normally explained by critics as having exegetical or courtly meaning. LGWP, KNT, SNT, and ParsT reinforce…

Defines TC as a novel because it partakes heavily of the linguistic qualities that Bakhtin associates with novelization, including contemporaneity, fusion of genres, and open-endedness. Most important, TC is dialogic in its adaptations of…

Describes the value of sociograms ("visual diagram[s] of a given social network") in teaching GP, summarizing underlying theory and presenting a practical application. College-level assignment and results included.

Describes a pedagogical experiment featuring a mock trial of Chaucer--asking students to prosecute and defend Chaucer on the charge of perpetrating medieval antifeminism through his characterization of women in CT and TC.

Explores how CT reflects Chaucer's "orientation toward life that celebrates 'bisynesse' [business/busyness] and abhors wasteful idleness." Focuses on the importance of the Host and Chaucer's "marking of the time" in CT.

Offers background to late-medieval English literary notion of "otium" (idleness) and explores tensions between leisure and productivity in works by Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the "Gawain" poet, particularly their representations of the morality of…

The storm imagery in TC reinforces the emotional turmoil revealed in the narrative.

Discusses the concerns with suffering and pity in BD as aspects of universal nature that binds together everything and thereby makes possible the consolation in the poem for the Black Knight (John of Gaunt), the Dreamer (Chaucer), and the audience.…

Posits that Philip Perry, an eighteenth-century priest and early practitioner of medievalism, was a pioneer in using original sources, among them Chaucer. Perry's unpublished notebooks contain detailed information on many medieval writers and their…

Includes twenty-six essays by various authors that entail "comprehensive discussions of recent and current scholarship" on Gower and his works, arranged in three broad categories: working theories, material culture, and polyvocality. Each essay…

Spanish prose translation of TC, with a biographical and critical introduction that emphasizes Chaucer's adaptation of source material.

Analyzes Chaucer's notion of tragedy in TC against the background of classical and medieval conceptualizations of the genre and Chaucer's own rewriting of sources.

Comments on previous criticism of the character of Criseyde, and explores the "infinite suggestiveness" of her more positive characteristics such as self-knowledge, charm, and desire to please others.

Discusses whether the dubious Eglentyne of GP is the right person to tell the pious tale. Chaucer's genius makes her succeed in putting deep human and feminine emotion into the tale.

A collection of new and previously published articles (1984-88), including five on the relationship between human beings and God. Reinterprets various images, spiritual and secular, in saints' lives, sermons, religious lyrics, and especially…

The Nun's Priest's pronouncement, "Taketh fruyt, and lat the chaf be stille," has been interpreted exegetically. Scriptural exegesis, however, is invalid for explicating NPT, which is Menippean--dialogic and polyphonic.

Looking at sources, Saito explores Chaucer's delicate use of "bisynesse," arguing that the Second Nun faithfully translates and tells the legend of Saint Cecilia according to her own "business."

Discusses use of exempla in vernacular preaching manuals in fourteenth-century England and the literary evolution of exempla, especially in Chaucer.

Examines balance of "ernest" and "game" in CT and medieval pilgrimage both as excursion and as penitential deed informed by ParsT.

Examines to what extent Chaucer's promise in GP to describe each pilgrim "so as it semed" to him is fulfilled. Character portrayals are not illustrative, like Langland's, but representative.

Compares the grain beneath the clergeon's tongue in PrT to parallel objects in analogous tales, arguing that the grain signifies martyrdom and that PrT combines aspects of tales of the Virgin with the theology of martyrdom.

The two references to kneeling in SumT help create irony. The friar's kneeling in the first half of the tale "forecasts" his "spiritual downfall" in the last scene.

Compares the old man and the three rioters in PardT, reading the old man as an Everyman figure with the problem of old age as he searches for permission from God to be penitent.

Explores the double meanings of "outrider," "venerie," and "prikasour," focusing on the Monk in The General Prologue.