Browse Items (16472 total)

Damyan is seen as a type of fourteenth-century Robin Hood, who presided over May revels and mated with the May queen, and who was prosecuted under vagrancy laws which Chaucer may have enforced.

In fourteenth-century England, the sale of indulgences was supported by orthodoxy and attacked by Wycliffites. Poetic fictions transcend this simple opposition, as seen in the artful deviousness of PardT and the revitalized idealism of "Piers…

Focuses on KnT, ClT, and MkT to demonstrate that Chaucer "models his treatment" of his source-authors--Boccaccio and Petrarch--"on their own strategies of intertextual play," arguing that "intertextual engagement goes beyond mere imitation, and can…

Chaucer's modification of Petrarch's Griselda material return ClT closer to Boccaccio's original version of the story. By working with multiple versions of the story, Chaucer places himself in the pantheon of Italian writers.

Argues that Chaucer's "occlusion" of Boccaccio as a source for TC and KnT is a complex affirmation of literary authority that asserts independence within a "genealogy of erasure." Statius, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer, and in turn Lydgate,…

Argues that Chaucer employs Livy's and Augustine's stories of Lucretia as a way to hold up feminine virtue, rather than repeating their negative attributes exhibited in the source material.

Questions the identity of the book that is being read to Criseyde in Book II of TC, arguing that the answer, the title itself, cannot be known. Examines the descriptions of the book, from both Criseyde and Pandarus, and argues that the unknowability…

Associates the genre of the "poetic triumph," found in examples from Ovid and Virgil, with an analysis of "Chaucer's 'Trophee'" in MkT.

Explores aspects of sexual consent and non-consent in RvT--particularly Malyne's romanticizing of Aleyn's assault--linking them with Augustine's comments on Lucretia in "De civitate Dei," modern notions of "retroactive consent," and the Chaucer life…

MilT and KnT use parallel portrayals of two young men, Absolon and Arcite, who suffer from the malady of false love. Although Arcite is not cured of his illness, Absolon is, through a traditional cure recorded by several medieval physicians.

Precise astrological material and medical details pertaining to the disease "amor hereos" support the theory that Saturn and the fury that startles Arcite's horse dramatize the consequences of human choice rather than fatalism. Chaucer uses…

Describes the commonplace "medieval notion of the hare's sexual peculiarities," locating it in several sources, and explicating its implications when applied to the Pardoner and his staring eyes in GP 1.684.

Though Chaucer has been scorned for creating humor, the bulk of CT is serious, and seriousness and humor should no longer be perceived as mutually antagonistic. Chaucer's humor develops as a structuring "glue" arising through literary methods that…

Discusses the meaning of some important words used in the hunting scene and corrects Emerson's interpretation in some points.

Critics generally gloss "embosen" as either "concealed in the woods" or "exhausted from the hunt." Examination of the word determines its precise meaning as a hunting term and also sheds light on Octovyen's hunt.

As used to describe the Monk in GP, the term pricking should not be understood in a sexual sense; review of sources, the OED, and the MED indicates that the term means "hard galloping."

Discusses the significance of Sir Thopas's lancegay as a weapon of choice, and why Chaucer chose this weapon.

Tallies Chaucer's depictions of hunting in BD, LGW, and FranT, and argues that these, in contrast with other works in Middle English, show a "marked lack of sympathy for animals as quarries."

Adduces KnT, 1362, as one example in suggesting a new sub-meaning for the MED definition of "dry"/"drye."

An annotated glossary of personal names, arranged alphabetically within sections. CT is treated separately from BD, HF, LGW, PF and TC. Each of these sections is followed by a list of animal and personal names, with the line references for their…

Explores enigmatic medieval attitudes toward poverty through the allegorical figures of three "loathly ladies"--Lady Poverty (Franciscan "Sacrum commercium"), Chaucer's Wife of Bath's hag, and Glad Poverty (Prologue to Book III of Lydgate's "Fall of…

Unlike Horn and Havelock, who mature into heroism in fulfilling their vows, Chaucer's characters in FranT make promises that govern personal relationships; their "gentilesse" transcends class and gender.

Much of the ambivalence of FranT comes from the various ways the characters perceive the world and the ways they act on these perceptions.

Scott addresses use of water imagery in medieval narratives. In MilT, flood imagery affects all classes of society and provides a common experience through which the satire of each individual class can occur.

Explores what Chaucer's romances "say about . . . individuality and identity," interpreting spaces, movements, and characters' perception of them in KnT for how they "delimit" behaviors even though these limitations are disrupted by individual…