Browse Items (16369 total)

Both in the GP portrait of the Reeve and in RvPT, Chaucer draws on medieval devil iconography and folklore, deepening the sinister character of this pilgrim and helping to explain his particular hair style, his thinness, his home in the North, and…

Pandarus does not commit incest with Criseyde. Chaucer's contemporaries would not have allowed it, and the text itself, while titillating, does not admit of it. One discerns the narrator expressing his own involvement with the heroine, but there is…

FranT contains a system of alternating parallel events--troth-plighting, complaint, and compassionate help--repeated in threes, reinforcing the theme of "gentilesse." The "trouthe" and "complaint" episodes show a "progressive decline," but the…

The 1991 report of the Committee on Chaucer Bibliography and Research; lists 365 Chaucer studies.

Despite critical efforts to prove that the trip to Canterbury was a four-day journey, the geographical and temporal inconsistencies within the CT defy this kind of realism. Instead, the journey took place on one "anagogical day"--April 18, 1394. …

The individual tales in CT contain multiple voices and the same narrative strategies as the frame itself--i.e., the central narrative interrupted by intervening narratives "read as both a narrating act and a narracted event that compels the…

Of the characters in FranT, Dorigen is "most fre" in the senses of independence and generosity. She chooses her own fate (life instead of the suicide characteristic of the scorned woman) and her own lover (her husband instead of the lusty, would-be…

Considers transformation "both as a theme and as a methodological problem." In SNT, faith is more "real" than experience, while in CYT, the "real" is not accessible to the Canon. Chaucer experiments with the relationship between the material and…

The "Canticus Troili," Chaucer's adaptation of Petrarch's Sonnet 132, alters words and phrases from the original and concentrates on Petrarch's content rather than his form. But it also contains syntax and subject matter from Bo, which Chaucer had…

The character Malyne, more complex than her fabliau antecedents, adds an ambiguous subplot to RvT. Emphasizing disorder, the subplot undercuts the theme of "retribution" in the main storyline.

There is a distinct difference between Dorigen's sensibilities and those of the men who speak for and about her. Considered from her perspective, the "generous" male acts are less generous, serving only to exaggerate her emotional suffering.

Both the Proem to TC 3 and PrP praise celestial ladies, celebrate their influence on the world, and relate closely to the story that is to follow. Moreover, the works discuss the same topics in similar ways. Chaucer praises both physical and…

The Monk (who, alone among the pilgrims, discusses both meter and genre at length) with his hundred tragedies can be viewed as a "rival poet" whose "imaginative narrowness," "verbal repetition," "tiresome" syntax, and encapsulated world view stand in…

The fourteenth-century "Antiovidianus," a satire on Ovidian art, provides a convenient way to view Chaucer's CYPT. The works share chemical, theological, and scatological imagery,illuminating Chaucer's constant exploration of the "tension between…

Describes illustrations of CT from the second half of the nineteenth century through 1981, noting that instead of attempting to recapture the Middle Ages as it was, these works reflect the various times in which they were created.

HF contains an inordinate number of lists of seemingly disparate materials in random order. Chaucer challenges the concept of authority by suggesting that the lists themselves provide the "authority"--not any one central force. Readers authorize a…

Examines the ambiguous character of Criseyde in TC 4. Chaucer gives her a point of view only to call her morality into question and he provides a sense of history that he never allows her fully to understand. TC is a "feminist work that fails to…

Analyses the Wife's Sunday costume and her traveling outfit from realistic and symbolic perspectives. Her dress reveals her economic and social class as well as her "allegoric nature"--fair outside and foul inside.

Chaucer most often depicts technology as an aid to trickery and fraud. Chaucer's mechanical wonders--such as those in FrT, SqT, and CYT--are potentially dangerous to persons lacking inside knowledge. Even simple machines can deceive. Though Chaucer…

The lack of popularity of PhyT may derive in part from the separate, seemingly modern, aesthetic it espouses--one designed not to "define virtue and suppress vice" but to illustrate a sense of "randomness and discontinuity" that anticipates a new…

When Chaucer notes in GP that the Pardoner could "wel affile his tongue," he is referring to the tongue as a weapon, a source of "slander and destruction," as noted in Psalms 56 and 63. Critics who have translated "affile" as "polish" have misread…

Chaucer's characters in CT can be seen to use principles of "speech act theory," especially "flouting" of rules in order to induce a different type of meaning from the discourse. Characters gain power or control by deflecting an attack with…

Movement in HF is simultaneously inward and self-reflexive and outward and upward, toward a world of "eternal phenomena" and a realm of "abstract ideas." The poem is thus poised between two worlds, and its incompleteness may indicate Chaucer's…

Chaucer's references to Seneca in CT outnumber those to any other philosopher save Solomon. Except for the references in ParsT and Mel, the use of Seneca generally serves as an amusing way of condemning characters who quote him.

The word "prayere' in FrT D 1489 might have been intended to read "pray," as it appears in nineteen of the manuscripts. Such a reading would reinforce the "prey" imagery in the "Tale" and would suggest that God allows fiends to harm only the…