Browse Items (16470 total)

Contemplates social status and social mobility in Chaucer's works, considering them in light of contemporaneous attitudes. Focuses on Chaucer's uses of "degree" and the ladder of degree as a "symbol of social mobility," inflected by Chaucer's comic…

Asks why Chaucer uses a "Latin masculine name of the month to refer to his very feminine heroine" in MerT, answering that it contributes to the theme of healing in the Tale, much as does Damyan's association with St. Damian, patron saint of healing.

Considers the tone and attitude of the seventeen-stanza "Epilogue" of TC (5.1751-1869), observing a shift between the first five stanzas and the last twelve and suggesting that the latter are addressed to a reading audience rather than the original,…

Suggests that the notion of making a "virtue of necessity" in TC and Theseus's "First Mover" speech reflect late-medieval nominalism and express concern with the precariousness of human life and its relation to "Ultimate Justice." Ending on a…

Treats the Old Man of PardT as the "total opposite" of the three revelers: he "embodies or manifests . . . in some manner Christian goodness." He first offers to the revelers a merciful "way to salvation," but when they "flatly reject" it, he justly…

Shows that Chaucer's depiction of Fame in HF has several parallels with the depiction of her in the French "Ovide moralisé": use of anaphora in amplification of Ovid's original, Fame's role of judge and her "aura of authority," and overt concern…

Describes three groups of equestrians among the Canterbury pilgrims: those who ride proud horses, those who "ride either poor or at least un-caparisoned horses," and "those whose characters seem compromised by their 'inefficiency' as horsemen."…

Critiques--pro and con--Robertsonian criticism, also known as exegetical, Augustinian, or historical criticism, describing its theoretical and practical strengths and limitations, and exploring its possibilities for further illuminating medieval…

Provides a full description of the Coventry manuscript (City Record Office, Coventry) that includes six of Chaucer's Short Poems (ABC, Buk, Gent, Purse, Sted, Truth), along with works by Hoccleve, Lydgate, Mandeville, and others). Edits the text of…

Surveys late medieval "attitudes toward alchemy" in order to establish their influence on CYPT. Although Chaucer's depiction is generally orthodox in its condemnation of alchemy, it derives language and details from treatises that promote the study,…

Explores the imagery of nature and death in TC, arguing that Criseyde is "representative of a principle of life" and "best understood in terms of her cyclical or seasonal progression through the poem." Pandarus is associated with mutability, and…

Argues that the subject matter, irony, depiction of love, and touches of humor in KnT are "in no way inappropriate" to the characterization of the Knight evident elsewhere in CT

Argues that the name Simond/Symkyn in RvT "involves a pun on the Latin word 'simia,' meaning 'ape'," exploring Symkyn's multiple associations with apes, along with those of Robin the Miller.

Explains Criseyde's comment about Troilus in TC 3.88 in light of the Feast of Fools, suggesting that it means she considers him neither a fool nor "too bold or irreverent."

Identifies five structural units in the narrative of the KnT and reads them as a unified, seriatim manifestation of a world that is "tyrannized by mutability," resistant to individual and corporate efforts to find or impose order, and sensible only…

Examines several bawdy puns, "incongruous situations," and other humorous ironies in KnT, suggesting that they are unintended by the Knight yet consistent with Chaucer's depiction of him as "a romantic, caught by reality but aspiring to the ideal"…

Assesses the gate in PF, exploring "remarkable parallels which the inscriptions on the gate and the further description of the garden" in PF "have to certain sections of the Fifth Dialogue" of Andreas Cappellanus's "Art of Courtly Love."

Surveys theories of why Chaucer altered LGWP from the F-version to the G-version, and seeks to explain "every single change" he made in creating anew a complete, "organic" poem. The revised version better accords with the poet's treatment of love in…

Reads the GP description of the Monk as strongly critical of the cleric's worldliness, particularly in light of "St. Benedicti Regula Monochorum."

Identifies the sexual and medical implications of several details in the GP description of the Monk, including his association with venery and food, his baldness, and his being fat "in good point" (1.200).

Comments on details of the Monk's description in GP, explaining how they characterize him as "both an epicure and a sexual connoisseur."

Explores the "complex dialectic between the author and his reader" as the defining feature of the novel as a literary form, offering case studies in a range of works, medieval to modern. Includes a discussion of TC (pp. 44-73) which focuses on…

A biography of Chaucer, illustrated with numerous b&w photographs of objects from late-medieval life. Includes discussion of Chaucer's major poetry, linking his works with events and attitudes of his age, and exploring how Chaucer responded to such…

Rejects attempts to read PardT as an example of psychological realism and reads it instead as a "rapidly progressing discourse" that results from "special use of rhetorical devices for the impression of speed." The Tale conveys to its audience a…

Resists readings of the CYT that regard the narrator as stupid or unwitting in his self-revelation, contending instead that he is a "newly reformed alchemist" who is, generally, "rational, down-to-earth, and persuasive in his description and…