Browse Items (16470 total)

Explores the implications of the name "Malle" that is given to the widow's sheep in NPT 7.2831: the sheep is a ewe and suggests the widow's "simplicity, her poverty, and one of the ways in which" she is a dairy woman.

Suggests that the referent for "the philosophre" in ParsT 10.535-37 is Aristotle, following a passage in his "De Anima."

Examines point of view, presentation, plot, and characterization in ShT, MilT, RvT, SumT, and FrT, comparing and contrasting these techniques with those found in Old French fabliaux, and arguing that Chaucer supersedes his predecessors in complexity,…

Item not seen. The WorldCat record indicates that this score is for four unaccompanied female voices, with duration of "about 4 min. 30 sec.", with "Text by Chaucer." and difficulty appropriate to "Advanced high school-college; difficult-moderately…

Argues that in adapting the conventions of French love-visions Chaucer improves on his predecessors and comes close to perfecting one of major literary genres of the Middle Ages. Discusses BD, HF, PF, and LGWP.

Comparative analysis shows that several changes and emphases Chaucer introduces into Boccaccio's "Filostrato" produce richer characterization in TC. All three major characters "think as well as feel" in Chaucer's poem: Troilus with his fatalism;…

Describes the aesthetic standards espoused by the pilgrims in CT and argues that the Nun's Priest "fits his tale to his audience even as he tries to alter the views of the audience" and tries to solve for himself the question of free will versus…

Discusses the "literary qualities" of Old French fabliaux, comparing and contrasting them with those of "higher genres" as a step toward gauging their influence on writers such as Chaucer.

Reads LGW as a comic "parody . . . partially directed at sentimental readings of the Ovidian complaint" found in "Heroides," focusing on the palinode, love vision, and characters of LGWP and the "humorous inconsistencies" of the legends.

Item not seen. The WorldCat record indicates that this is a series of songs, adapted from NPT, for "unison or 2-part children's choir accompanied by violin, recorders, percussion, piano, and guitar." Duration: approximately 20 minutes.

Comments on the fittingness and suggestiveness of a number of proper names in CT--Eglyntine, Absolon, Alisoun, Philostratus, January, May, Justinus, Placebo, and Cecilia--as part of a survey of the literary uses of names and naming in medieval Latin…

Argues that "there is an ironically complex relationship of the speaker to what he says" in CYPT, particularly in the way that the Yeoman's simplistic understanding of alchemy leads him to abandon the evils of alchemy while the Canon's intelligent…

Assesses the paucity of names given to the pilgrims in CT and comments on those that are given; Eglyntine, John (Nun's Priest), Piers (Monk), Harry Bailly (and his wife Goodelief), Huberd, Hodge, Robin, Oswald, Alisoun, and Chaucer himself, who is…

Exemplifies Chaucer's "homely vocabulary" and "naturalistic choice of words," identifying roots in both French and native English, and commenting on instances of idiomatic phrases, rogues' speech, "zesty vocabulary," "oaths and imprecations," sexual…

Describes the influence of Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum" on Chaucer, especially in FranT and WBP, and explains why the Pembrock MS 234, edited here, is "closer to Chaucer's source manuscript than any of the other" forty-two manuscripts considered…

Assesses the "artistic function" of Emily in KnT, focusing on her place in the theme of order. As the poem moves from chaos to order, she symbolizes "psychological and cosmic order" and serves as an "exemplar of Fortune." As "natural woman," she also…

Defines ClT as an example of "Ideal Fiction," generally unpalatable to modern taste, identifying the presence of a manipulator in the plot (Walter), the narrative "distance" achieved through its combination of "ordinariness" and fantasy, the…

Explores the differences between PardP and PardT--differences in genre, atmosphere, and temporal dimension--arguing that they are part of the Pardoner's efforts to manipulate his audience. Contrasts the self-interested, time-bound play of the…

Reads NPT as the teller's attack on the "anti-monastic" Monk (as well as the "indifferent" Prioress), contrasting the "sacerdotal demeanor" of the two clerics and arguing that the NPT is opposed to MkT in both theme and technique, focusing on their…

Edits "Jack Upland" (wrongly attributed to Chaucer from the 16th century to the 18th), along with "Friar Daw's Reply" and "Upland's Rejoinder," with full critical apparatus.

Identifies and analyzes the motifs and imagery of death in England in the fourteenth century to the sixteenth, including discussion of the relatively positive depictions of death in TC and CT.

Explores the combination of religion and secularity in ClT, discussing its fusion of ideals and practical realities as Chaucer's means to increase the ambivalences of his sources. The tension between the Clerk's moralization of the Tale and its…

Compares FranT with the tenth tale (Madassena and Her Rash Promise) of the "Vetalapachisi," identifying common motifs (rash promise, promise to return, and noble theft) and differences in frame, characterization, and setting. Observes relations with…

Illustrates how literary works "can be read existentially from the point of view of the reader's ontological concern with them," discussing James Joyce's "Clay," William Blake's "The Little Black Boy," and WBPT. Reads WBT as a "reflection of the…

Locates and assesses a prevailing irony in TC: the narrator and each of the major characters follows the "same pattern" of early knowledge of Fortune's instability, "followed by self-deception, and eventual submission to the facts." Love and truth…