Browse Items (16470 total)

Reads Scog as a playful, comic version of a "moral ballade" or "balade of bon conseyl" that shares similarities with French models, portions of TC, and several of Chaucer's other lyrics. Comments on the unity of the poem, its possible occasion or…

A modern English translation (with brief notes) of Constantinus Africanus's treatise "De Coitu," cited with scorn in MerT (4.1810-11).

More than merely consolation for John of Gaunt, BD conveys the "more universal theme" of "personal loss and its effects on man's physical and psychic condition." Traditionally associated in various sources with leading, with healing, and with…

Argues that friendship in TC "is an idea that matters very much," both as a "value" and an "element in the plot." Throughout the poem, Chaucer depicts various friendship relations (support, protection, counsel), strengthening those found in…

Demonstrates that Chaucer's works are a significant source of John Minsheu's multilingual dictionary, "Guide into the Tongues" ["Ductor in Linquas"] (1617).

Uses late-medieval and Renaissance herbals to show that the ingredients for a remedy that Pertelote recommends to Chanticleer in NPT are all "quite wrong for her patient" and his condition: some unavailable, some inappropriate, and some deadly. The…

Reads Gavin Douglas's poem as an examination of how poetry can lead to honor, focusing on the originality of the poem but noting its dependencies as well, including the influence of the eagle from HF.

Tallies books and articles pertaining to Chaucer--ones in progress, completed, and/or published in 1968.

Assesses the styles and rhetorical devices of FranT. Matching rhetoric to meaning, Chaucer's "modulation of style" in FranT helps to characterize the narrator and the major characters of the Tale and to guide readers' understanding of the variable…

Argues that the discussion of gentility by the Loathly Lady in WBP effects a change in the knight's moral vision, with no physical change in the Lady. Imagery and allusions to Baptism reinforce the point and run parallel to similar concerns in WBP,…

Studies the "theology of marital relations" in MilT, WBP, and MerT, using ParsT as a partial statement of orthodoxy, surveying views from Augustine to Wyclif of the roles of procreation and pleasure in sexual relations between married partners, and…

Observes that carpenter John's sense of worldly instability in MilT is established in 1.3423-30 and 1.3449-50, anticipating his ready acceptance of Nicholas's prediction of the Flood later in the Tale.

Shows that Chaucer's references to "planetary, solar, and lunar configurations, " though usually "veiled," add complex dimensions to his plots and may help us to establish dates for several of his works; discusses Mars, TC, PF, LGW (Hypermnestra),…

Treats the Host of CT as a psychological character whose recurrent levity disguises neither his pride nor the fact that he is "hen-pecked" by his wife, Goodelief. Essentially comic and naturalistic, Harry participates significantly in the marriage…

Describes similarities and differences "between fourteenth-century and modern biography" and argues that medieval writers of verse fiction were interested in characters "as individuals." A "sense of abundant life" is generated by the ironies and…

Reports on the activities and membership of the Chaucer Library Committee, with a statement of its goals and prospective publications.

Establishes Nikos Kazantzakis's familiarity with Chaucer, evident in his discussion in "England: A Travel Journal" (1941) of a passage from SumT; then suggests that the Tale may have influenced Kazantakis's depiction of a monk in his novel "The…

Observes that Chaunticleer's mistaken reference to Macrobius as the author of the "Somnium Scipionis" (7.3124) may suggest that NPT predates PF (i.e., "no later than 1386"), where Macrobius is accurately identified as the author of the "Commentary"…

Discusses references to five saints in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and comments briefly on Chaucer's uses of four of them (Peter, John, Julian, and Mary).

Associates the Wife of Bath with the antic "rogue figure of wife" from conventional "low comedy" or "pantomime," more lively and vivid than realistic. Derived from the "topsy-turvy" world of conventional comedy, the Wife gains readers' sympathy…

Identifies "structural similarities" among BD, PF, and HF, arguing that each poem is an "elaborate narrative orchestrating a moral theme from some work of antiquity . . . foreshadowed in [its] preamble." Each is reminiscent of Macrobius's "enigmatic…

Uses allegorical interpretations from Hugh of St. Cher to show how the exegetical equation of cock and preacher is consistently upended in the description and actions of Chauntecleer in NPT, offering a mock allegory where "fruit is chaff."

Characterizes Criseyde in TC as a good, even perfect, courtly heroine until she is unfaithful to Troilus, a result of the very human "weakness in the face of death." More than does Boccaccio in "Filostrato," Chaucer creates a sense of inevitability…

Suggests that in the drama of CT the Summoner's idea of friars residing in Satan's arse (SumP) was prompted by the demon's promise to the summoner in FrT that he would know the devil's "privetee" (3.1637), an echo of the Miller's claim about "Goddes…

Suggests that behind several legal maxims found in RvPT stands the broader principle of measuring one law by another: "the old by the new, the Continental by the English, the private by the public, the Mosaic by the Christian."