Browse Items (16476 total)

The use of "but" helps the reader determine the moral character of both the Parson and the Narrator.

MLT is a test case of Chaucer's use of Christian materials directed toward a "new human center." Christ and Christianity are uniquely transformed into a pervasive humanism, through Chaucer's tolerant ambivalence.

The fragment containing SNT and CYT is unique in the intrusion of new pilgrims undescribed in GP. Two seemingly unrelated stories are tightly unified: SNT in the "lastynge bisynesse" of Saint Cecilia; CYT in the fraudulent "bisynesse" of the Canon,…

Detailed lexical and literary comments, based on passages of identical or very similar wording in medieval religious writings, on the following passages in ParsT: 79-81 (the "way" of penance), 113-16 (the tree of penance), 157 ("groyn"), 319…

Only Chaucer places the story of the rioters' search for gold in plague time. The article examines the implications of the plague setting and the plague in literature to explain Chaucer's choice of plague setting.

Despite the textual authority of the half line (GP A 164) "and preestes thre," arguments from an analysis of Chaucer's practice in the portrayal of other pilgrims suggest that the words should be suppressed in a modern edition. There were probably…

Readers have been too ready to dismiss Th as a parody of popular romances. Chaucer's achievement is something much more subtle: he invents his own English, his own literary idiolect, and then goes on to parody not merely the romances but also the…

Following medieval rhetorical tradition, Chaucer has hidden his own name in the tale in anagrammatic fashion: "Ge" (for Geffrey, Chaucer's spelling of his own name) plus "Chau"ntl"c"l"er" results in "gentele Chaucer," employing the roman letters…

A review of current research, completed projects, publications, and desiderata.

"Zephirus" and "licour" are not merely stylistic adornment but referential as well. The words evoke alchemical change and purification, themes that run through many of the tales and conclude the collection in ParsT with spiritual rebirth.

In this last book Chaucer uses a number of devices inexorably to distance the reader from the personages in the poem. He suggests astral influence that brings about the inevitable movement of joy-to-sorrow in love.

Studies physiognomy as a mode of popular wisdom, rather than superficial characterization in the portraits of the Miller, Reeve, and Pardoner.

Readers frequently imagine the Pardoner to be a real person. He is, of course, Chaucer's fiction, and the poet shows his mastery of narrative by combining the "Prologue" and the "Tale," underscoring the unity of the two by iterative imagery,…

Allusions to serpent and sting intensify the irony of the Pardoner's posture as preacher. The imagery is further complicated and intensified by the natural association readers make with the Pauline passage on the sting of death.

Although earlier scholarship has recognized the importance of the Feast of the Holy Innocents in PrT, a reading of the entire mass as it occurs in the Sarum use suggests that the "greyn" is not a mere prop but a symbol with rich liturgical…

Chaucer introduces the new pilgrim so that his confession may form an imperfect paradigm of repentance, as prelude to the more successful portrayal of this concomitant of pilgrimage that we find in ParsT.

Speght's edition of Chaucer (1602) included an extensive glossary of "hard words." Later lexicographers, including the editors of the OED, have missed the fact that Jacobean dictionaries of "hard words" borrowed extensively from Speght--entries,…

A pendant is usually conjectured to be a "penner," a pencase, emblematic of the poet's profession. It is, however, more likely to be an ampulla, a lead vial supposedly containing blood from the martyr of Saint Thomas of Canterbury.

The description of the Friar, the tone of his remarks and his tale, and the response of the Summoner are couched in ambiguities. These are clarified if we are aware of the implicit context in which he operates: a social hierarchy, based on…

The complex relationships of Pardoner, audiences, and the Host reveal a character who simultaneously believes in the efficacy of pardon and in the foolishness of those who believe in it. The pilgrims laugh at him rather than being outraged, and he…

Harry Bailly acts as critic and leader as the reader moves through the tales of morality or entertainment.

Pandarus tells Troilus "don thyn hood," which usually has been intrepreted to mean "put on your hat," signifying that the prince should delay action. But "hood" had a secondary meaning of warrior's helmut, and the sense of "prepare yourself for…

It is commonly held that a large number of Old French loan words in Middle English were literary borrowings. However, a study of a restricted group (designating articles of dress and fabrics) shows that most such words were current before the…

A focus on book 1 of this dream poem shows the poet moving among several attitudes toward authority: they include meek acceptance and assertion of the author's own independence of it.

The owls and apes of Medieval-Renaissance tradition appear in the Chester "Deluge" and in Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." The latter may echo Chaucer.