Browse Items (16369 total)

Viewed in historical context, the pardons of Chaucer's Pardoner likely were based on forged papal bulls associated with St. Mary's, a hospital with a questionable reputation. The Pardoner's lack of character provides an ironic contrast to the ideal…

The 1992 report of the Committee on Chaucer Bibliography and Research; lists 367 Chaucer studies.

Chaucer's lyrics were known to readers at an early date, even before they appeared in print in the early fifteenth century. Earlier references are apparently lists, but the emulation of Chaucer's rhetorical strategies, rhymes, and phrasing suggests…

Chaucer employed color adjectives more extensively than did his contemporaries. He preferred basic colors and used them most in connection with human beings. Chaucer's most "colorful" poem is KnT, followed by Rom and GP. Often, his colors are used…

Contemporary documents concerning aspects of liturgical life indicate that the people of Chaucer's time were a "fervent laity served by a fervent clergy," notwithstanding the adulterous monk of ShT and Chaucer's corrupt Pardoner, Summoner, and Friar.

In TC, as in CT, Chaucer plays with genre, first postulating it and then blurring the reader's expectations of what it will do. Readers are forced to question the value of "Art as an interpreter of Life."

In Bo, Chaucer's substitution of "the eye of the lynx" for the original "eye of Lynceus" points to his philosophy of vision. The lynx is sharp sighted and can perceive "the imperfection of things apparently fair." The poet's task is also to see…

Challenges Haldeen Braddy's assertion that Cecilia Chaumpaigne was the stepdaughter of Alice Perrers, since, in fact, Chaumpaigne was not one of Alice's surnames. Elsewhere, Braddy's reading and citing of sources on this issue are suspect.

Like the "Gawain" poet, Chaucer manipulates tense for narrative purposes, often using the historical present to accentuate "key events, characters, and descriptions." Some of Chaucer's endings may have been added by scribes, making his exact…

Throughout his works, Chaucer employs "mercurial figures" who appear as "emblematic escorts, to lead readers safely past narrative fissures." In BD, these figures appear not only as Mercury himself but also as the whelp (d-o-g for g-o-d), who…

Cruxes in BD--how it can function both universally and individually, why it was composed some years after Blanche's death--can be better understood by placing the poem in the context of tomb sculpture. At the time Chaucer was writing,Henry Yevele…

Chaucer's system of corporeal signs and gestures suggests a continual praise and blame of the flesh. Movement (or lack thereof) in CT is associated with sickness and health; the body is treated as subject and object, as an "affective medium of…

Chaucer's RvT contains sufficient close parallels with Boccaccio's story of Pinuccio and Niccolosa to suggest that the latter might have been a source for the former. Two German versions of the cradle-trick story, although more similar in general…

Root draws on selected primary and secondary sources to illustrate that WBP was influenced by the doctrine of mandatory confession decreed by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.

Lines 878-81 of WBT have been glossed incorrectly to suggest that while an incubus would get a woman pregnant, a friar would cause only dishonor. In fact, the tradition of the incubus is much darker, for this individual, associated with evil, had…

The ending of CT is intentionally ambiguous,leaving the choice of a final meaning--if there "is" one--to the reader. The most characteristically "Chaucerian" reading of the ending is also the most modern: to choose not to make a choice is to make…

Looks for evidence that certain medieval writers were aware of the newly emerging "arithmetical mentality." Because of his work at the Customs House, Chaucer was much more aware than most writers. He knew counting boards and algorisms, the ancestor…

In TC, Chaucer uses not only sophisticated, upper-class materials but also lower-class matter that has "moved 'upward' into the most prestigious and learned layers of medieval discourse." This "gentrification" can best be seen in Chaucer's use of…

Reviews critical opinion about the date on which the pilgrims started for Canterbury and concludes that it was Easter Saturday, 18 April 1394. The term "Ram" refers both to the constellation Aries (thus confirming the date) and to the sign Aries,…

Although Chaucer does not satirize the three estates in CT (there is no high nobility; clerical offenders do not reflect on the church; the peasantry does not speak), he does attack the middle class and its values through the Wife of Bath, who…

Certain ribald but spurious lines added to the pear-tree episode and printed by Caxton in 1478 helped to shape readers' attitudes toward Chaucer for three centuries, until Tyrwhitt removed them in 1775. The lines are probably the work of a scribe…

Suggests that the source for Nero's fishing nets of golden thread and for the cutting of both Seneca's arms as he lies in the bathtub come from the unedited "Alphabetum narrationum," ca. 1308.

The "whit thyng" the miller's wife sees in the dark bedroom is not the clerk's nightcap. Instead, the term is taken from medieval philosophy, wherein objects are first judged by color. On closer inspection, they become human and take form. The…

Although often glossed erroneously as "hypocritical," the word "spiced," as applied to the Parson's conscience, indicates an individual whose soul is touched suddenly and profoundly by religion, "as spices might do the palate."

Although PhyT and PardT may seem to bear little relationship to each other, a thematic unity rooted in the "Roman de la Rose" links the two tales. Raison's exemplum contains ideas and images of sexual violence and natural generation that Chaucer…