Browse Items (16364 total)

Collects twenty essays by Kellogg (five co-authored), several of them reprinted. Fourteen of the essays pertain to Chaucer, with four of them printed here for the first time. Includes a subject index. For the new essays that pertain to Chaucer,…

Examines the occasion, structure, and humor of BD, its possible reflections of Chaucer's marriage to Philippa, and the legacy of its heart imagery that derives from Platonic and Arabic thought (Averroes and Ibn Hazm) and the courtly love tradition. …

Describes the backgrounds to Chaucer's reference to St. Valentine in PF (line 309) and explores its contemporaneous contexts in the poetry of Oton de Grandson and Charles d'Orléans. Rooted in Roman Lupercalia seasonal rites of purification and…

Discusses Chaucer's three references to May 3 as an ambivalent "destinal date," arging that the date is affiliated with tragic fortune in TC, with humanistic outlook in KnT, and with comic reversal in NPT. This sequence comprises a "kind of limited…

Reads Boccaccio's, Petrarch's and Chaucer's versions of the tale of Griselda, observing particular emphases, similarities, and differences, especially those that pertain to Griselda in relation to the ideal of the "mulier fortis" of Proverbs 31.10 in…

Demonstrates Chaucer's "skills as a miniaturist," discussing antecedents in rhetorical tradition to the phrase "places delitables" (i.e., "locus amoenus") in FranT (5.899) and the interdependence of "moral and physical gifts" in the description of…

Identifies analogues to the Wife of Bath's contrast between wheat and barley breads (WBP 3.143-44), arguing that she has herself baked "Priapic" barley loaves and that the description in its context exemplifies the combination of "exegetical and…

Argues that parts 1-5 of CT represent a "wholesale revision that Chaucer was engaged in at the time of his death," while parts 6-10 "represent an earlier stage of composition." Suggests that Chaucer "introduced dramatic interplay between narrator,…

Treats various features of book 5 of TC (lack of proem, several amplifications, various sources) as "apparently gratuitous or insufficiently integrated matter," evidence that Chaucer intended to write his poem in four books but found that he needed a…

Outlines medieval number theory and its applications to literary composition and interpretation, describing the significances of seven and five. Then explores how and where numerological significance is evident in TC: in its five-part structure,…

Argues that Chaucer's Physician is idealized, "a splendid representative of both medieval physician and medieval surgeon." Uses evidence from medieval malpractice cases, and comments on various "transportable medicozodiacal instruments."

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…

Assesses modern "unease" with Chaucer's "pathetic" tales, focusing on the combination of the "superficially tragic and the slightly comic" aspects of MLT in which the subject matter invites audience sympathy or empathy while the style encourages…

Studies the "embodying [of] visual experience in poetic language," comparing Spenser's uses of various devices with those of other poets, Chaucer among them. Contrasts the "embellished and incrusted imagery" in Spenser's characterizations with…

A selection of excerpts from Chaucer's verse with facing-page translations, arranged topically in several categories: "Golden World"; Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory; Dreams; Portraiture; Students; Science; and Matrimony. The excerpts (many with passages…

An anthology of English and American literature arranged by mode (Romance, Tragedy, Comedy, and Irony, with various sub-categories), designed as a textbook for college-level study. Each section is introduced by discussion of constituent features of…

A large-format art-book version of the Nevill Coghill translation of the poetic portions of CT, with illustrations of the tales (rather than the pilgrims) by Frink and a brief introduction by Coghill that comments on the contemporary vitality of the…

A selection of poems by various authors from Virgil to the twentieth century. Includes a selection from SNP (8.36-56) and its source, i.e., a facing-page selection from Dante's "Paradiso." Illustrated by José Erasto. Selection slightly revised from…

Describes various features of Thomas Becket's shrine at Canterbury as recorded in Erasmus's satiric "Peregrinatio Religionis Ergo," focusing on its account of Becket's "hair breeches" and suggesting that this relic underlies the Host's…

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…

Considers the appropriateness of ParsT to its narrator, examining the Tale as an example of the sermon genre ("ars praedicandi"), particularly its structural features that reflect a rational aesthetic.

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…

Social history of late-medieval London produced to accompany an exhibition at the London Museum "concerned with life in London" during Chaucer's time. The text comments on Chaucer's life and on social, political, mercantile, and ecclesiastical…

Surveys the iconographical tradition of "Venus-of-the-Seashell" ("Aphrodite Anadyomene") as background to assessing why Chaucer depicts Venus carrying a citole in KnT (1.1959) and carrying a comb in HF (line 136). Explores the images in Chaucer's…

Describes the verbal and visual records of Parisian court entertainments which have parallels with Chaucer's description of visual spectacle putatively produced by magicians ("tregetours") in FranT 5.1139-51,