Brown, Emerson, Jr.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 74 (1973): 92-106.
Attends to the details and imagery of old age in MerT in order to clarify the "precision and complexity" of Chaucer's art, commenting on January's name, age (60 years), physical condition, sexual prowess, attitude toward counsel, etc., and exploring…
Brown, Emerson,Jr.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 37-54.
Chaucer's poetry is highly dependent on Latin, French, and Italian works and genres, and on medieval thought in general. In his day his various works represented stages in the development of different medieval literary traditions; he borrowed from…
Chaucer insists through the Merchant that we keep in mind the treachery as well as the virtue of the Old Testament heroines Rebecca, Judith, Abigail, and Esther. We are forced to maintain a multileveled viewpoint on them, on their function in the…
Manly's reordering of the final lines of ParsP in his 1928 edition is contested by manuscript evidence, Chaucer's general usage of pronouns, and the intelligibility and literary excellence of the original version.
Brown, Emerson,Jr.
Studies in Philology 72 (1975): 258-74.
Chaucer emphasizes the phallic deity Priapus as a figure of frustration in PF. He does not try to abolish or deify the sexual passion Priapus represents. Priapus and the noble suitors may represent unproductive extremes of a more balanced position…
Brown, Emerson,Jr.
David G. Allen and Robert A. White, eds. Traditions and Innovations: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), pp. 50-58.
CT, like the intellectual disputes of the fourteenth century, is characterized by extremes. Applying David Knowles's discussion of the period to fragment VII of CT, Brown notes that ShT, PrT, Th, Mel, and MkT show the "tendency to extremism…
A comma at the end of line 2639 suggests that Emetreus has treacherously struck Palamon. Editorial punctuation could be contrary to Chaucer's intention, which may have been to leave the sense ambiguous. We need an edition of Chaucer without modern…
Brown, Emerson,Jr.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 63-84.
The Merchant's comparison of May to "Queene Ester" (MerT 1744) indicates the terror, treachery, and hatred that lie beneath a demure exterior; the Prioress's response to trapped mice (PrT 144-45), which figure Christ ensnaring the devil, reveals a…
Analyzes the function of the proper names as playful, complex allusions, and associates with January--holder of the silver "clyket" to the garden--both Janus, god of passageways, and Saint Peter, who holds the keys to paradise.
Deals with relationship of PhyT to FranT and PardT and suitability of tale to teller, treating the sources in Titus Livius and Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose," as well as the theme of justice.
A variorum editor should record "fully and impartially, the history of what people have 'thought' that his author wrote and meant." And he "should not 'editorialize' at all."
Argues for a pun on nonce-word "ape-ese." The Cook has drunk "wyn ape." If appease (ad pacem) is merely ape-ease, then clearly wine is no real remedy for the pilgrims' dis-ease ("whan that they were seke").
In the Merchant and MerT Chaucer objectifies his own cultural bias against women and his own interest in financial profit. The Merchant is like January (Janus was the god of merchants), and Chaucer (born into a family of merchants) is like the…
The WBT and its analogues have in common the archetype of transformation from ugly age to beautiful and fertile youthfulness. The psychic transformation of unconsciousness to consciousness, a phenomenon central to human individual and collective…
In Jungian terms, the experiences of the knight in WBT express a psychic interaction with the mother archetype, leading to the ultimate goal of finding the anima.
Psychoanalytic analysis of WBT and ClT, reading the two as parallel transformation stories. The first "seems to commemorate the event of the separation of consciousness"; in the second, Griselda "achieved individuation by recognizing her animus."…
Brown, George H.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 285-300.
Medieval uses of the Bible include imitation, satire, and parody. Chaucer's biblical quotations and allusions, which number more than seven hundred, are used to prove a proposition, to reinforce a statement, to enhance some personage, to criticize a…
Brown, James Neil.
Massachusetts Studies in English 2 (1970): 71-79.
Characterizes the narrator of BD as a comic "would-be courtier" who takes pains to "appear courtly and noble and in love." The narrator is also likeable and much in awe of the Black Knight, functioning as a device whereby Chaucer censures excessive…
Maintains that the characterizations of the Monk in GP and in MkPT are consistent, and attributes their differing tones to the Monk's decision to "change his image" in the eyes of his fellow pilgrims while requiting the Host's derision with the…
Brown, Melissa L.
David Chamberlain, ed. New Readings of Late Medieval Love Poems (Lanham, Md.; New York; and London: University Press of America, 1993), pp. 119-43.
Thought to be the work of Chaucer until 1775, Roos's translation clarifies the role of the Lover as a "woful lover." The humor and criticism of the poem are aimed at the Lover, not the Lady.
Brown, Muriel.
Michelle Sauer, ed. Proceedings of the 11th Annual Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature (Minot, N.D.: Minot State University, 2003), pp. 82-89.
Brown approaches the loathly lady's sermon on "gentillesse" as political allegory, emphasizing "the transforming power of relinquishing control over those who work, the third estate."
Brown, Murray L.
Mediaevalia 11 (1989, for 1985): 219-44.
Conjectures that, while Deschamps may have met Chaucer in 1360, his "Ballade to Chaucer" was probably written in 1391 and reflects the association of Chaucer and Deschamps with the Order of the Passion of Jesus Christ in the late 1380s and early…
Brown, Murray.
R. Barton Palmer, ed. Chaucer's French Contemporaries: The Poetry/Poetics of Self and Tradition (New York: AMS Press, 1999), pp. 187-215
Deschamps's "Ballade" dates from Sir Lewis Clifford's diplomatic mission to the French court in 1391, when France and England were closer to peace than they had been in almost a decade. Both Chaucer and Deschamps were associated with the Order of the…
