The century between Dante and Boccaccio saw the poet's role as prophet deteriorate. Boccaccio and Chaucer found a middle road between blasphemy and reverence wherein language has its own independent set of standards, as one sees in comparing the…
Matthews, Lloyd J.
Chaucer Review 20 (1986): 221-34.
Chaucer's acquaintance with Dante and his return from the Italian journey in 1373 provide termini of 1372-74 for Mel. Later, Mel was included among the CT to be narrated by the Man of Law. Finally, it was moved to its place in fragment 7 or B2.
Form Age, For, Sted, Gent, and Truth show a progression from a strict Boethian adaptation to a more Christian or specifically Augustinian view. The tension appears in the pervasive irony.
The "Clementine Recognitions" and "Apollonius of Tyre" were probably known to Chaucer. He eschews their incest motif but reminds readers of it by his reference to Apollonius in the introduction of MLT.
If we recall the Thomistic distinctions among vows, oaths, and promises and if we focus on action rather than on character, the long complaints in FranT can be seen as essential to the structure rather than as excrescences.
The Wife's remedies are sometimes equated with cures or seen as a reference to Ovid's "Remedia amoris." The allusions in WBP to erotic magic indicate, however, that they are erotic stimulants.
In the Dido episode of LGW, Chaucer minimizes both Aeneas's destiny and his character, focusing on Dido's character and thus producing a (negative) feminist exemplum.
Cherniss, Michael (D).
Chaucer Review 20 (1986):183-99.
LGWP may be viewed as the poet's last of four experiments in the dream-vision form and as a self-contained dream poem rather than a simple prologue. Chaucer affirms the visionary's initial views and attitudes but mocks the authority of its central…
Ethopoeia, Latinized as "adlocutio" and treated by most rhetoricians, classical and medieval, is a subspecies of dramatic character portrayal, as distinct from the formal portrait. TC 5.1054-85 employs it in Criseyde's interior monologue. Other…
Both narrators and tales (WBT, ClT) owe much to the traditional portraits of rhetoric and dialectic (logic, philosophy), e.g., in Martianus Capella and Alan of Lille. The pilgrims are composites not of "estates satire" conventions but of details…
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…
A comparison, not a source study, which discovers parallel attitudes toward style, character, and tradition, especially on the role of humor in "Ulysess" and CT.
Although PF ends inconclusively, Chaucer gives it a sense of ending through the concluding roundel, which provides an image of resolution, affirming that, while life may be inconclusive, art can provide an ending.
Fleming, John V.
Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 182-99.
The rich Virgilian background of TC brings into focus Hector and Deiphoebus--bound to Troilus by brotherly love and manipulated by Pandarus--and the parallel perfidies of Helen and Criseyde. In TC, the betrayal of Deiphoebus is "a feminist…
Gallacher, Patrick J.
Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 200-12.
From Greek medicine, the concept of the six "non-naturals" intensifies and clarifies the relationship between the friar and Thomas and throws light on the summoner in FrT. The "non-naturals" are circumstances that affect health: air, sleep and…
The crux may be explained by reference to Canticles 3:11 and the medieval commentators (e.g., William Durandus in his "Rationale divinorum officiorum"). The first crown is Criseyde's virtue; the second is the pity that Pandarus asks her to show…
Krochalis, Jeanne E.
Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 234-45.
Hoccleve's request for a portrait (supplied in the Harley 4866 MS of "The Regement of Princes") is something new: the author's likenesses had heretofore been stylized. Hoccleve's lines (4992-5012) place Chaucer in a holy or ecclesiastical setting. …
The reference to Rochester just before MkT helps explain the choice of teller, the nature of the tale, and the narrator's refusal to "pleye" when he is interrupted. Rochester Cathedral included a monastic house; it contained a mural of Fortune's…
Holley, Linda Tarte.
Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 26-44.
Optics as expounded by Roger Bacon provided the theory of perspective and radiating lines; architecture and manuscript illumination provided the technique of viewing scenes and personages through a frame. In TC, there are physical, verbal,…
Behind FranT is the "Inferno," cantos 9-10--the cantos of the heretics, especially the Epicureans, and of Medusa. The teller's epicureanism prevents him from probing beneath the letter to the spirit. Likewise, his Dorigen is "astoned" (astonished,…
Though evidence is inconclusive, it seems likely that Chaucer's Friar was named for Saint Hubert, whose legend and confusion with Saint Eustace give characteristic resonances to the name and its bearer, particularly in his relationship with the Monk…
