Browse Items (16456 total)

Identifies a previously unnoticed--and apparently spurious--attribution of a proverb to Chaucer in Edmund Southerne's "A Treatise Concerning the Right Use and Ordering of Bees" (1593).

Offers an analogue to the Miller's breaking doors with his head (GP 1.551) in one of John Trevisa's additions to his 1387 translation of Ranulf Higden's "Polychronicon."

A discursive review of Chaucerian scholarship and research published in 1952.

Suggests that the physiological detail of her "kamuse nose" (RvT 1.3974) helps to characterize Malyne as "sexually attractive and promising."

Compares and contrasts the rapist-knight of WBT with his analogous protagonist in John Gower's "Tale of Florent," arguing that Chaucer's knight "emerges as a very clear and a very strong character"--the "kind of young fellow who can commit rape and…

Admires the structural patterns of GP--seven groupings, significant juxtapositions, alterations of detail and generalization, etc.--suggesting that they produce "a poetic realization of plenitude and diversity," underpinned by a concern with "degree"…

Compares and contrasts the relative courtliness of a range of Valentine's Day poems by Graunson, Gower, Lydgate, and Charles of Orleans to make clear that the First Eagle's address to the formel eagle in PF is comically inappropriate and pompous,…

Challenges the theory that Chaucer wrote in iambic pentameter, assessing the evidence of Chaucer manuscripts, using them to argue that the prosody of Chaucer (and that of his fifteenth-century followers) depends upon length or duration rather than…

Attributes the need to use translations of Chaucer's works in college classrooms to students' lack of "linguistic awareness," and assesses the relative virtues of eight translations or modernizations of NPT, commenting on fidelity to meaning,…

Argues that the version of the Clerk's Envoy (4.1177-1212) found in the Ellesmere manuscript is the original version, modified by a scribe to compensate for an eye-skip error. Reassesses earlier arguments that the Ellesmere version is itself the…

Assesses manuscript variants and stemmata, relations with source material, and "scribal characteristics" of PhyT to explain that they indicate scribal rather than authorial alteration. Argues that similar evidence, plus comparison with alterations…

A romance novel of the life of Katherine Swynford, rich in psychological and historical detail. Includes a wide variety of historical characters, including Geoffrey Chaucer, Katherine's future brother-in-law, who she instinctively recognizes at their…

Develops an allusion to Chaucer building a "house of Fame" in Gerard Legh's "Accedence of Armorie" (1562) and combines it with Chaucer's "connections with" the Inner Temple to suggest that the poet may have written HF "for one of ritualistic…

Categorizes ways in which Chaucer describes "sequences of events" or actions in his poetry, identifying types that include "summary," "contrasting summary," "close chronological narrative," and "loose chronological narrative." Describes the…

Suggests that the positions of the two initial half lines of BD 357058 be swapped to make better sense.

Describes a strong strain of morality in Chaucer's writing and emphasizes his "reticence" in expressing it. Then explores tragic dimensions of WBPT, focusing on Wife's early marriages (in comparison with May's and January's in MerT), her memory of…

Comments on previous criticism of the character of Criseyde, and explores the "infinite suggestiveness" of her more positive characteristics such as self-knowledge, charm, and desire to please others.

Suggests that Chaucer's description of the embodiment of human speech in HF (1068-81) was influenced by Dante's similar concern in "Paradiso" 4.37-48.

Suggests that Pierre Bersuire's account--"or one like it"--of a hunter-devil dressed in green may account for Chaucer's similar description in FrT 3.1382ff.

Describes and edits an anonymous lyric, here titled "An epistle to his mistress for remembrance," spuriously attributed to Chaucer in Trinity College Cambridge 599 (R. 3. 19).

Argues that details and source material make clear that the description of Tiberce's visit to Pope Urban in SNT 8.352-53 indicates Tiburce received the sacrament of Confirmation as well as the sacrament of Baptism.

Explores nuances of "tregetour" in FranT 5.1141 and 1143; HF 1260 and 1277, arguing that their magic would have been understood by Chaucer and his original audience to entail illusion rather than mechanical contrivance or sleight of hand.

Resists editorial glossing of "cherles rebelling" (KnT 1.2459) as "an allusion to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381," offering other possibilities from commentaries on Saturn's astrological influence.

Identifies several previously unnoticed references and allusions to Chaucer in Nathaniel Whiting's "I1 Insonio Insonadado" (1638), including two euphemisms for the sexual revenge in RvT.

Articulates a number of parallels and contrasts among the tellers and tales of KnT, MilT, RvT, and CkT, focusing on character, accident versus fate, intention, and paradox. Emphasizing the Knight's "chivalric idealism" and the "strong earthiness" of…