Browse Items (16472 total)

Describes birds mentioned by four English poets, one chapter apiece. An opening chapter surveys classical backgrounds for zoological and interpretive ornithology, along with the uses of birds in medieval encyclopedias. The Chaucer chapter addresses…

Tabulates the percentage of romance words in the works of Chaucer against the overall length of these works, suggesting that, in terms of its romance vocabulary, Equat "is to be regarded as a work by Chaucer." Establishes a logarithmic formula for…

Suggests that the insertion of "prolaciouns" in Bo 2.pr.1 was intended as a technical clarification of the preceding "moedes," potentially misleading to English readers who could read it as either "mood" or "mode." The insertion may evince the…

Seeks advice in understanding the phrase "Chaucer's borrow" which appears Sir Nicholas H. Nicholas's "Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton" (1847), where it is quoted from a letter to Hatton from William Dodington. Clarifies the…

Responds to a query by Lisle C. John (Note and Queries 201 [1956]: 97-98), suggesting that "borrow" may mean borwe" (pledge) or "borough" (referring to Canterbury).

Includes PardP, translated by Theodore Morrison, as an example of narrative poetry, with brief commentary and a biographical note.

Analyzes the grammar and usage of the "man" and related locutions that convey independent agency in late Middle English and Early Modern English, considering pronouns, modals, and passive verbal forms as well as "man" and other generalized nouns.…

Argues that TC is a psychological "novel" insofar as it explores how the lovers' uses of courtly language and conventions disguise their "urgent sensuality" ("drängende Sinnlichkeit"), even from themselves. Compares and contrasts Chaucer's and…

Argues that, modifying poems by Machaut to establish the narrator of BD as a comic, "doctrinaire" servant of love, Chaucer reveals how such a perspective is inadequate to "experience the experience . . . of perfection itself." The Dreamer learns of…

Adaptation of WBT in archaized modern English prose as a script for presentation as a radio drama, with seven characters (King, Queen, The Young Knight, Old Woman, 1st Woman, 2nd Woman, and Wife of Bath as voice-over narrator). Duration:…

Suggests that the "portraits" of Trojan war heroes and heroines in Benoit de Ste Maure's "Roman de Troie" are carefully individuated and arranged, and that Chaucer's "literary techniques" in the "sketches" of GP are similar to Benoit's in several…

Argues that a "shift to extreme piety" in ParsPT and Ret had "nothing to do with" Chaucer's "general plan" for CT, which the poet considered to be "a nearly complete work." Considers evidence of changes in Chaucer's plan and justifies them largely in…

Characterizes the dreamer of BD as consistently stupid, a "nonpareil of dullwittedness"-- technically, psychologically, and allegorically.

Identifies a ballade by Eustache Deschamps (number 880: "Que diriez vous du froit mois de Janvier") as an analogue, possibly a source, of several details in MerT.

Suggests that "charbocle" (carbuncle) in Th 7.871 may refer, not to part of the charge on Thopas' shield, but to his sword, with a jewel on its pommel.

Considers the two "observances" of May ritual in KnT (Emelye's at 1.1041-45 and Arcite's at 1491-1512), neither found in Boccaccio's "Teseide," identifying various French analogues that may have inspired Chaucer, while noting that he may also have…

Describes and assesses the CT, with chapters on social and intellectual backgrounds, Chaucer's life, his use of pilgrimage and frame tale conventions, GP, and each of the individual tales, following the Ellesmere order. Discussions of individual…

Records Chaucer's consistent and conventional usage of "ye" and "thou" in FrT, showing how it achieves "irony and humor." Attends to manuscript variants and opines that "that the English language lost something by the abandonment of the singular form…

Reinforces suggestions that the Black Knight's age at BD 455 should be emended to "nine and twenty yer" to coincide with the age of John of Gaunt at Blanche's death, justifiable because of evidence that twenty-nine years was considered to be young in…

Identifies personal opportunities Chaucer had "to learn the special fame" of St. Clare, and suggests that his allusion to her in HF (line 1066) evokes "a contrasting silence" in a "passage descriptive of strident clamor."

Explains the exegetical tradition of associating Noah with astrological prediction of the Flood and suggests that in MilT "Hende Nicolas has built his entire scheme" to dupe John "around the astrological tradition of the Flood," thereby lending comic…

Argues that the astronomical conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in TC 3.624-25 does not allude to a specific event in 1385 (by which the central book of the poem has been dated) but to a more "general tradition" of foreboding, thematically appropriate…

Observes similarities in imagery, diction, and impact of portions of ParsT (Chaucer's interpolation in "lachesse" as a subset of Sloth) and PhyT (digression on governesses), exploring possible sources (especially St. Augustine), possible occasions of…

Suggests that the "main source" of TC "may have been" Beauvau's "Le Roman de Troyle et de Criseida," a French prose translation of Boccaccio's "Filostrato." Compares 300+ brief quotations (in all three languages), commenting on verbal and structural…

Provides lexical and grammatical evidence to argue that the verbal form "last" in ClT 4.266 "more than likely" means "extend in space," a "loan-sense from the French" influenced by development of the similar meaning of "dure."