Browse Items (16472 total)

In the fifteenth century, an anonymous "Chaucerian" translated the French romance "Partonope of Blois" into English. Chaucer's influence on the translator is seen in many close verbal echoes of Chaucer and in resemblances to Chaucer's technique and…

In giving the planetary gods a role in the narrative dynamics of "The Testament of Cresseid," Henryson is following in the steps of Chaucer in KnT, Mars, and TC. Mann examines "both the resemblances and the differences between the two poets in their…

The Wife of Bath is interpreted variously: She is a shrew; she is the voice of feminism; she represents Eve; she stands for joy and vitality. The Wife demands female sovereignty in marriage, but this sovereignty is put into doubt by the end of both…

In 1635, Sir Francis Kinaston published a translation into Latin verse of the first two books of Chaucer's TC under the title "Amorum Troili et Creseidae libri duo priores Anglico-Latini". This is best described as a parallel-text edition,for a…

The first English author to think of his writings as a whole and as having a posterity, Chaucer in the two "Prologues" to LGW, the introduction to MLT, and Ret lists his writings as an assembled corpus of individual works. "At the close of 'Troilus…

By looking at two surviving "Patient Grissel" plays, the prose chapbook, and the ballad on the same subject, Baldwin shows that the popularity of Chaucer's ClT extended into the sixteenth century. Greene loosely modeled his "Pandosto" on the story…

Dr. Johnson called Gower "Chaucer's master." But who is creditor and who is debtor? The two poets allude to each other's work and appear to be mutually indebted; also, they share a large body of common stories, themes, and forms in their works. …

Boitani studies the chain of literary works that stem from Chaucer's KnT, namely "The Two Noble Kinsmen" of Shakespeare and Fletcher and Dryden's "Palamon and Arcite." The story of Palamon and Arcite has features in common with that of Troilus and…

Hoccleve, a personal acquaintance of Chaucer, received personal instruction from Chaucer in the art of English poetry. Hoccleve remains firmly subordinated to his master poet of imaginary worlds, but his distinctive strength is his being "a poet of…

King James, Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas were influenced by Chaucer rhetorically and stylistically, as well as in their choices of genre; but Gray emphasizes the influence of Chaucer's ideas and themes--noting particularly how Chaucer's "powers" of…

Chaucer's canon evolved alongside a substantial body of virtually contemporary apocryphal texts attributed to him. But before the end of the last century, judgment concerning a text's authenticity was often indebted to extratextual biases: the…

Explores coherence of structure, theme, and character within the fragments of the CT. Balanced plots, oppositions of themes, and parallels of character unify the paired tales of Fragments IV, VI, VIII, and V. Rich in thematic and structural…

Basing her work on a study of 189 poems, Davidoff analyzes common features of "framing fictions." With attention to Chaucer's sources and literary tradition, she offers readings of BD, demonstrating relationship of meaning to structure; of HF,…

Investigates the performative nature of Deschamps's "relatively faithful French translation," "Geta et Amphitrion," and proposes an occasion when it might have been performed. Contrasts Deschamps's treatment of Plautus's Latin original with those of…

Gower's "Tale of Florent" was composed before its English analogues, including WBT, and is here anatomized as a series of folktale motifs. Peck also explores how the narrative is "put in a new dress" and made appropriate to its new functions by…

As an example of popular folk narrative, "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle" is flexibly open to multiple interpretations. Addressed to an elite audience, Gower's "Tale of Florent" and WBT lay claim to authority and function as exempla.

Wollstadt explores similarities between WBT and the ballad "The Knight and the Shepherd's Daughter," considering the rape motif, concern with "authority and victimization," the possibility that the ballad was transmitted by female oral singers, and…

Loathly lady tales "reveal the consequences" for women of "ungendered" transgressive behavior: the lady "enjoys more power" when she performs roles counter to her biological gender, and she loses the power when she subsides into feminine roles. When…

Female counsel is a consistent theme in Irish and English versions of the loathly lady story, in which women offer advice or prophesy to aristocrats. This theme reinforces connections among the analogous tales, paralleling the visual motif of female…

Rooted in Irish analogues, the sovereignty theme is anchored in the queen figure in WBT. The theme reflects "women's integral role in governance," a "wishful vision of a movement toward more egalitarian society," and Anne of Bohemia's role in the…

Because the loathly lady in WBT is not enchanted but is a shape-shifter under her own power, she likely is not virginal. Carter explores the implications of this likelihood, as well as parallel concerns in WBT and several analogues.

Although fools hardly appear in Chaucer, in his own self-caricature the poet often plays the clown, as in CT and TC. Italian influence on Chaucer's comic vision is greater than that of the French "fabliaux."

Explores the affinities and "common sympathies" between William Langland and Chaucer, including their "Englishness," their views of religion and virtue, their shared sense of human variety, and the possibility that Chaucer may have read "Piers…

Discusses the "impact on . . . consciousness" of late-medieval European economic expansion, focusing on evidence in French and English chronicles and on reflections of the rise of bourgeois power in fabliaux, in the "technical language of finance and…

Argues that Chaucer's use of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" in BD is closer to that of Guillaume de Machaut than that of Jean de Meun, and compares and contrasts Chaucer's version of the Ceyx and Alcyone story with those of Machaut and Ovid.