Browse Items (16473 total)

Describes the importance of mental images to medieval understanding of cognition and memory, and clarifies the importance of such images to understanding Chaucer's works as iconographical poems. Meaning inheres in such images and enables both…

Descriptive survey of major developments in Chaucer criticism and scholarship, treated historically and sub-divided into eight categories: 1) canon, 2) texts, 3) language and versification, 4) biography, 5) learning, 6) sources, 7)…

Accompanies Benson's discursive "Reader's Guide to Chaucer," included in the same volume (pp. 321-51). Lists selected "critical and scholarly works" (some lightly annotated), and indicates with an asterisk works that are "especially suitable for…

Identifies elements of MilT that burlesque the Annunciation, the Incarnation, and the Flood, explaining imagery and allusions derived from the biblical narratives and mystery plays.

Comments on the "theatricality" of MilT and explores how the comic characteristics of each of the main characters have darker sides, especially in the cases of Nicholas, Alisoun, and Absolon.

An alphabetical dictionary that lists people, personifications, and allusions (direct and indirect) in Chaucer's works, providing brief identifications and exhaustive citations of occurrences. Entries for sources, such as the Bible, Boccaccio, Dante,…

Compares the miracles in MLT with those in its source in Nicholas Trevet, arguing that by emphasizing emotion over religion Chaucer renders the narrative more powerful and humanistic.

Considers the imagery of transubstantiation and transformation in PardPT and in the GP description of the Pardoner. In traditional Christian terms, the Pardoner fails to use properly the things of the world for spiritual purposes; in terms of Jungian…

Suggests that the influence of Mandeville's "Travels" on SqT and on alliterative poetry including "Pearl" may have been due to the circulation of the work at the Lancastrian court of John of Gaunt.

Suggests a possible "echo" of HF and PF in Philip Sidney's "Old Arcadia," where "philosophical reflections by the dreamer are partly burlesqued" in the vision which follows.

Proposes that "purposeful" alienation that was characteristic of humanist thinking between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries: contempt for the world that belies an underlying fascination with it. Assesses the presence of the sentiment in several…

The Pardoner's interruption of the WBP causes shifts in her tone and subject, but also alerts us to parallels between the two characters: wide travels, sermon-like autobiographical prologues, and tales which feature central characters who are…

An anthology of Middle English verse, with individual introductions and facing-page glosses and notes. The General Introduction (pp. 1-40) considers prosody and poetic techniques, genres, and various linguistic concerns. Includes FrT (discussed as…

Traces the varieties of the stag-hunt motif in the art and literature of the Middle Ages, including classical roots, considering hunting manuals, imagery and fictive presentations, and allegorical uses. Includes recurrent references to Chaucer's…

Contrasts the "opposing principles of conduct" that underlie the main characters in FranT and MerT, arguing that the "values" expressed there are "dramatized and explored" throughout CT. Moreover, the view of "gentilesse" expressed in FranT sums up…

Examines the commonplace theme of "agere et pati" (to act and to suffer) in the works of Chaucer and Spenser, especially KnT and books 1-4 of Spenser's "The Faerie Queene," exploring oppositions between deed and emotion, action and passion, and…

Presents a "structural description" of TC which anatomizes its five-book construction, its "time units" and their chronology, and its "narrative units" (signaled by shifts in narrative "modes") and their patterning. The description of these various…

Reproduces in color the illustrations of the CT pilgrims from the Ellesmere manuscript, and comments on CT, Chaucer and his portrait, and the production and transmission of the manuscript.

An introduction to Chaucer's pronunciation, grammar, and prosody, followed by an extensive analysis of his lexicon that considers aspects of his syntax, prose vocabulary, colloquial language, oaths, scientific diction, characterization through…

Studies Chaucer's poetic achievement in major and minor works with recurrent attention to relative chronology, the development of Chaucer's art, sources and analogues, and treatment of genres. Focuses on BD; Ven, Pity, and Mars as complaints; HF; LGW…

Comments on charms in TC, ParsT, and MilT as an introduction to a general survey of medieval charms and the need to study them more extensively, especially those in medical manuscripts.

Shows that the use of verbs as rhyme words is ubiquitous in medieval (and later) poetry, and therefore not particularly Chaucerian as has been suggested. Suggests that rhyming with infinitives is especially prevalent because the form is…

Prosodic analysis of the Middle English lyric "Alysoun" that identiies several commonplace parallels with the description of Alisoun in MilT.

Surveys Chaucer's seven clerks (Nicholas and Absolon of MilT, John and Aleyn of RvT, the clerk of FranT, Jankyn of WBP, and the Clerk), describing the extent to which the characterizations accord with or echo what is known of "fourteenth-century…