Transcribes witnesses to three of Chaucer's short poems--"For," "Truth" (both from Leiden University Library Vossius 9), and Gent (from Cambridge University Library Gg 4 9.27.1b)--all previously unpublished and here supplied from, perhaps, "the final…
Contrasts Chaucer's familiarity with and uses of astronomy and astrology with those of other Middle English authors, particularly John Gower. Indicates that 1380 is a turning point in Chaucer's uses of astral sciences, suggesting that he accepted the…
Identifies the ways in which various genre terms are used in Middle English narratives about Troy, including TC where "tragedie" is consistently applied to the narrative. Comments on Latin and French usage and on terms applied to Chaucer's other…
Examines the dating, authorship, textual history, and medieval popularity of "De Maria Magdelena," attributed to Origen, as a basis for exploring Chaucer's use of it in his "Orygenes upon the Maudeleyne," cited in LGWP F427 (G418) and here regarded…
Pratt, Robert A.
Speculum 47 (1972): 422-44, 646-68.
Argues that several French works are clear sources of NPT: Chaucer's poem is based on Marie de France's fable "Del Cok e del Guple," but also has significant parallels with Pierre de St. Cloud's Branch II of the "Roman de Renart" and the anonymous…
Argues that Troilus "establishes the meaning of the events" in TC by "contemplating and exposing" their inner significance. His thoughts convey the "theme of bondage" through the imagery and language of constraint (prison and confinement, snares and…
Surveys the tradition of a "fantasy of ritual murder" of a Christian boy by Jews, focusing on its manifestations in accounts of the death of Hugh of Lincoln and various sources and analogues, both historical and literary, including PrT and later…
Describes the "literary attitudes" evident in Eustace Deschamps' "L'Art de Dictier," focusing on its concern with the "natural music" of lyric poetry, a concern also found among troubadour poets and in Chaucer's ballades and complaints, even though…
Chaucer used elements of the formal features and conventions of medieval sermons to explore character and inter-personal relationships, examining the dynamics of preachers' interactions with their congregations and often parodying the imitative…
Magoun, Francis P.,Jr., and Tauno F. Mustanoja.
Speculum 50 (1975): 48-54.
The portrait is more static and less chimerical than its sources in the "Aeneid" and the "Apocalypse." By focusing on one detail as others recede in a flexible irrational dream vision, Chaucer surrealistically blends elements of chimera and goddess…
Fray Juan's widely known fourteenth-century Spanish gloss on Aegidius Romanus' "De regimine principum" provides parallel passages for nearly all patristic components in Virginia's catalogue of virtues; it could also have suggested narrative…
Medieval and classical notions of space and time cause "pryvetee" to be related to "oiseuse" and "otium." Spatial relationships emphasize that major events, like the little fall which occurs in the carpenter's house in MilT, are arranged around a…
Gallacher, Patrick (J.)
Speculum 51 (1976): 49-68.
Many medieval sources describe food and purgation as having moral, theological, and metaphysical meanings. In NPT the interrelationships between food, humors, emotions, free will, and divine foreknowledge point to a model of continuous…
Chaucer defines characters through both natural and conventional theories of etymology. Argyve, related to Argus and foresight, succintly describes the wife of Calchas the visionary. Convention, not inherent association, connects Criseyde with…
Taylor, Davis.
Speculum 51 (1976): 69-90. Reprinted in Stephen Barney, ed. Chaucer's Troilus: Essays In Criticism (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1980), pp. 231-56.
Lyric conventions, syntax, and verb usage in Troilus's style show his role as traditional lyric hero. As a static but vigorous representative of conventional moral virtues, he characterizes values Chaucer tests, ironizes, and finally praises as…
The narrator of BD, who sees in the tale of Ceyx and Alcyone an exemplum of the loss of their "golden age" love, realizes that the love of the knight is an analogue of the happy fulfillment of the couple's love. Thus, the actual consolation of the…
A detailed examination of Chaucer's principal direct source on significative dreams, Robert Holcot's commentary on The Book of Wisdom, "Super Sapientiam Salomonis," and of Chaucer's method of constant mixture of various viewpoints (especially those…
In addition to etymologically undetermined words in Chaucer and to words whose ironic use obscures their true meaning, Chaucer's portrayal of characters (e.g., Reeve, Plowman, Yeoman, the widow of NPT, Griselda, and Symkyn in RvT) reveals that he was…
Chaucer had the opportunity, if not any singularly discernible motive, for actually raping Cecily Chaumpaigne, stepdaughter of Alice Perrers. Alice may have been the prototype of Alice of Bath and may even have been the mother of the illegitimate…
As a nominalist, Ockham is aware of the limitation of human perception and the weakness of language to convey ideas without distortion. In a different way, Chaucer, too, is concerned with these problems, though as a poet he tends to emphasize (not…
Defines and describes the social and rhetorical emphases that characterize the persona and poetic "common voice" of late-medieval English "public poetry," exemplified here most extensively in analyses of Langland's "Piers Plowman" and Gower's…
Patterson, Lee.
Speculum 54 (1979): 297-330. Reprinted as Chap. 4 in Lee Patterson. Negotiating the Past (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 115-53.
Literary meaning is not an "atemporal constant but a historical variable." The appropriate challenge to exegetical criticism comes through a history of reading. Examines TC in light of the medieval understandings of love articulated as the "seven…
The eldest version of the Cecilia story is the "Passio S. Caeciliae," extant mss of which date from the eighth century. Its central meaning involves an ideal of perfection close to Augustine's teachings. Chaucer translates the version of the story…
Although Charles d'Orleans first described an actual Valentine's Day lottery, it was apparently Chaucer who, in PF and Mars, first associated Saint Valentine's Day with love, both in its ornithological simplicity and in its human complexity. His…
Chaucer often treats of the discrepancy between intent and words, especially in GP 725-42, PardT, and ParsT. Philosophically, Chaucer's view of language is that of a Christian Platonist; he aspires toward a linguistic realism in which intent informs…
