Browse Items (16364 total)

Two factors have prevented BD from being recognized as a Boethian Apocalypse: its elegiac nature and its debt to French love vision. Chaucer reshapes the "Boethian structure" in various features: the troubled first-person narrator, the dialogue,…

A novel about a modern-day transcriptionist who works for a New York newspaper. Obsessed by a recent suicide, her distrust of truth and language grows. Includes recurrent references to Chaucer and his works, most extensively in Chapter 6, "Chaucer's…

Demonstrates Chaucer's extensive dependence upon French love poetry, tracing the development of "dits amoreux" from Guillaume de Lorris's portion of the "Roman de la Rose" to Chaucer's contemporaries and identifying where in BD Chaucer was influenced…

Includes (pp. 8-28) impressionistic appreciation of CT for its fusions of realism and idealism in poetic narrative, discussing it as a prelude to assessment of the Boccaccian tradition of novella writing. Treats PrT and NPT as the two best of the…

Despite the tenets of "dramatic theory" from Kittredge to modern times, the links between the pilgrims and their tales are not reliable bases on which to build valid literary criticism. Not the psyches of the pilgrims but the different styles of the…

Familiar with the "visual and verbal labyrinth traditions" and their metaphorical significances, Chaucer incorporates in HF a controlling labyrinthine uncertainty, chaos, and obscurity in its "disoriented turnings back and forth, its paradoxical…

Examines the social psychology and structure of male power--aggression in gazing, rape imagery and fantasy, objectification of women, competitive assertiveness among males--as aspects of "love" and the social expectations for masculine identity in…

Two subsections of chapter 5 examine political and philosophical attitudes toward work in the Middle Ages and later eras, specifically the relationships among the revolution in agricultural technology, "the Protestant work ethic," and "modern…

Psychoanalyzes Walter of ClT as one who tests Griselda's submissiveness to assure his own freedom and to vindicate his choice of her as a wife. Griselda seeks personal glory in her subservience. They are "two sick people in a pathological…

Dahlberg suggests that "Chaucer's use of first person reflects in its stylistic variations the ambiguities of love" and that "the serious third-person poet of the Boethian short poems is essentially the same as the...first-person narrator or persona…

Parodies Cole Porter's lyrics in "Brush Up Your Shakespeare," using Chaucerian topics and emphases; purportedly composed for a conference of the New Chaucer Society.

Introduces Chaucer's life and works, emphasizing the "scope and diversity" of his poetry. Describes each of his major works, and anatomizes CT as "one of the earliest collections of short stories of almost every conceivable type," describing the…

In contrast to the prevailing critical view that Chaucer eschewed the use of Arthurian romance material, two Arthurian themes--the quest and amorous fatality--become transposed as pilgrimage and marriage in CT. The Tale of Arveragus, told by the…

A short story that alludes to the opening of GP in its title, and includes a character who recites Chaucer and is interested in Chaucerian apocrypha.

Argues that it "seems altogether likely" that when creating his GP description of the Physician Chaucer "at least had in mind" the doctor of the Brunellus the ass episode in Nigellus Wireker's "Speculum Stultorum"; both doctors are avaricious.

Yatzeck reads Godwin's "Life of Chaucer" as an extension of Godwin's social philosophy, which combines necessity and human perfectibility. Godwin reconstructs Chaucer's life and makes generalizations about medieval life to encourage readers to…

Discusses Chaucer's borrowings from Ovid in HF, BD, WBT, and ManT. Although to the fourteenth century the "Metamorphoses" was a chief among works demystified or allegorized to produce Christian doctrine, Chaucer rejects this tradition and emphasizes…

Introduces new scholarship developments based on Derek Brewer's contributions to Chaucerian studies. Connects Brewer's Chaucerian studies to his personal poetry, and provides insight into Brewer's pioneering work as a medievalist.

Discusses medieval views of feminine beauty as related to Troilus's desire and the "ordinariness of Criseyde."

Primarily discusses medieval humor in Gower, yet addresses how Gower's and Chaucer's humorous characters are female. Looks at Criseyde in TC, Alison in WBT, the merchant's wife in ShT, and Alisoun in MilT.

Reflects on the significance of Brewer's early writings on Chaucer and his importance as a "critic and literary and cultural historian." Discussion of Brewer's exploration of the "Gothic" in connection with CT.

Addresses the importance of storytelling, and the "sheer power of narrative" in CT. In particular, argues that CT is "not an allegory," and that Chaucer plays with time by putting ParsT and Ret at the end, which reinforces the fact that "there is…

Reviews Derek Brewer's editorial work on Malory and Chaucer. Mentions Brewer's unpublished projects, including the "Nelson Chaucer," that affected the "textual authority" of Middle English scholarship.

Analyzes the history of the OED's medieval portion, and emphasizes how Chaucer's "linguistic innovativeness" is shaped by the "substance of OED and MED quotations and definitions." Includes extensive appendix of OED's record of vocabulary in BD.

Explores the history and iconography of Venus and focuses on the theme of Venus in KnT, PF, and TC. Also maintains that "medieval Venus" stories greatly impacted Derek Brewer's writing and scholarly interests.