Browse Items (16472 total)

After an introduction, "The Discourse of Man 'By Nature a Political Animal,'" follow three parts: "Dante's 'Commedia' and the Promise of Reference," dealing with Narcissus--damned ("Inferno" 30), purged ("Purgatorio" 30), and redeemed ("Paradiso"…

BD is revisionary art which de-mystifies the language of conventionalized desire and revises the Boethian consolation dialogue. The narrator suffers the same "tristitia" as the knight and must be cured. A confession entails the knight's Augustinian…

Neo-Platonism is the root of medieval depictions of wilderness as a metaphoric landscape of psychological transition and spiritual conversion.

Examines RvT, considering such matters as its construction and function as a Tale, its moral, and its sources.

Produced in Leicester, Harley 7333 supplies information about how Chaucer was known in the "provinces" outside of London. Shonk disagrees with several of Manly and Rickert's (1940) ideas about the manuscript and challenges their suggestion that it is…

Argues that Cicero's "Somnium Scipionis" "had a much greater impact" on BD, PF, and especially HF than is usually acknowledged, showing that Cicero's themes and imagery permeate Chaucer's works and dominate his literary imagination for "some ten…

HF is a poem about the art of poetry, for to be one of "Love's folk" was, in the medieval view, to be a poet also.

Chaucer uses his naïve narrator to achieve an effective balance among the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos in CT. Also, this narrator's view of the Prioress overwhelms her appeal to ethos in PrPT and her heavy emphasis on pathos also…

Argues that the primary concern of MerT is January's foolish lechery, that the tone of the Tale is not mordant, and that its various parts cohere as a harmonious whole. Challenges the idea that the Tale is essentially a contribution to the Marriage…

Treats TC as an "exemplum of" Bo, focusing on the extent of Boethian influence, the character of Criseyde, the ironic narrator, and the "appropriateness of the epilogue."

Examines the use of Abelardian "sic et non" analysis in Mel as a demonstration of the "futility of arguing from Authority." In Mel, the sense of futility may be inadvertent, but in WBP it results from conscious parody of authoritarian argument.…

Addresses how Chaucer's bawdiness is perceived in the United States. Includes issues of censorship related to CT, with focus on curricula changes over the past few decades.

As part of larger argument that miscellanies were an "essential material condition of vernacular literature before the introduction of printing," Shuffelton considers CT as a booklet miscellany.

Assesses Hyapatia Lee's "Ribald Tales of Canterbury" as "quasi-medieval erotica" and a conventional example of pornography from the "golden age" of porn films (1970s and early 1980s). Then discusses evidence from the film and from an autobiography…

Explains errors in the biography of Chaucer that is included in John Urry's edition of 1721, particularly those associated with the poet's spurious flight to the Continent in 1384 in the face of an accusation of treason. Attributes these errors to…

Contrasts the "star system" of contemporary critics (e.g., Derrida) with the previous paradigm of dominant but nonstellar scholars in Chaucer studies. George Lyman Kittredge, John M. Manly, and John Livingston Lowes serve as examples.

Argues that the "use of ill bodies in storytelling acts as a virus" so that, when familiar narratives are retold, "the image of ailing bodies will spread to future versions," often mutating. Links lovesickness in TC to leprosy in Henryson's…

Item not seem; WorldCat records indicate that this is a translation of CT into Bulgarian.

Analyzes parallel sections of text from William Caxton's two editions of CT set by the same compositor--Mel and ParsT, NPT and ManT--comparing practices in prose tales and verse tales, and also comparing the practices of the compositor of Richard…

To Chaucer, Dante, Henryson, and Milton, the heavens were a celestial text, and movers of the spheres governed earthly affairs. Astral configurations allegorized to serve theological ends show the poets using accepted interpretations.

Chaucer modifies his sources for ClT in a way that emphasizes Griselda's virtue as specifically "feminine" and exclusively "wifely." The reflections of her wifely virtue in the pagan wives of LGW, who "view devotion to their husbands as their highest…

Discusses how LGW represents marital affection as contentious and unstable.

Discusses the wives of CT, and, in particular, Constance in MLT, suggesting that "unruly" wives are generally English and that virtuous ones are continental. Traces how Chaucer's use of these good wives offers space for him to rethink England, the…

Responds to two essays concerned with sexual consent in medieval literature, including Leah Schwebel, "Chaucer and the Fantasy of Retroactive Consent." SAC 44 (2022): 337–45. Suggests that we might read RvT "as an incel revenge fantasy."

In an argument that medieval writers gendered undesirable aspects of pagan beliefs as feminine, Shutters examines Griselda in ClT.