Browse Items (16087 total)

Introduces Chaucer and his world, with sections on his life, English history, and culture; the lyrics and short poems; translations and "minor" poems (including TC and the dream visions), and CT, with discussion of manuscripts, the order of the…

Assesses parallels between PrT and the "liturgy of the Feat of the Holy Innocents" (mass, vespers, etc.), a source likely to have been known to Chaucer. Also labels PrT a "devotional" tale, sharing distinctive similarities of imagery and symbolism…

Identifies modern analogues to ShT and Boccaccio's "Decameron" 8.1 in Thomas Menkel's 1946 short story, "Secret Debt," and Menkel's reported source in a "Scotch joke," surmising general transmission of the tale.

Identifies predecessors in Old French fabliaux for courtly details, diction, locutions, and situations in MilT and RvT, helping to create comic irony by contrast between "elegance and 'harlotrye.'"

A sweeping survey of puppets, puppeteering, puppet shows, and their cultural legacy in England. Surmises briefly (p. 52) that "popet" (Th 7.701) and "popelote" (MilT 1.3254) may evince knowledge of puppet performance in Chaucerian England, but also…

Considers the "pulpit rhetoric" of PardPT, the friar in SumT, and MerT, arguing that they all share general techniques, imagery, and symbols of medieval sermons, without following strictly the structural formality of "artes praedicandi." Observes…

Assesses the influence—direct and mediated—of Italian literature on English poetry from Chaucer to Robert Southwell (excluding verse drama), considering issues of meter and style as well as plot, atmosphere, and theme. Opens with appreciative…

Argues that Chaucer's characterization of the Prioress in GP "leaves shadows of doubt" about the Prioress, along with "several kinds of uncertainty" and some "strong implications" for the audience. Further, in PrT, her "own words . . . convict her of…

Lends authority to Gerard Legh's claims about Chaucer's status at the Inner Temple (and writing HF for a ceremony there) by adducing Legh's "standing as a heraldist."

Introduces the conventions of "impersonal" style based in classical rhetoric and developed in medieval rhetorical handbooks Then anatomizes the characteristics of Chaucer's descriptive techniques in relation to his "predecessors and contemporaries,"…

Introduces "the study of poetry," suitable for classroom use. A section on "Implied Argument: Irony and Ambiguity" includes a reading of PardT 6.728-33 that suggests a "profound idea wells up in this passage—the idea that we cannot conceive of…

Clarifies the appropriateness of Symkin's wife swearing by the "croys of Bromeholm" (RvT 1. 4286), adducing Roger of Wendover's "Flores Historiarum" and, possibly, the clerical status of the wife's father.

Suggests sources in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" for the "corounes tweyne" of TC 2.1735 (noting parallels with SNT 8.221) and for the Invocation to light in the Proem to TC 3, reinforced by several other echoes of "Filostrato."

Anthologizes a selection of poetic characterizations or descriptions of people, historical and fictional, from English poetry. Includes the GP description of the Clerk (1.285-309), in Frank Ernest Hill's 1930 translation.

Identifies the "contrast between surface respectability and corrupt motive [as] the keenest source of the comedy" in ShT, and suggests that there is a pun on "cozen" and "cousin." Explores similar contrasts and other devices in CT that produce comic…

Questions Germaine Dempster's 1948 suggestions about the production of "manuscripts postulated as heads of genetic groups" and lines of descent for CT witnesses, offering several alternative explanations. Includes attention to the change of ink in…

Suggests that the Friar's name, "Huberd" (GP 1.269), "may be an ironic literary allusion, to Hubert 'l'escoufle,' the kite, a bird of prey, and a lewd cleric and confessor in the Old French poems of the 'Renart' tradition."

Considers "Of Aristotle and his commentators and disciples" to be the "most worthy" of several possible meanings of "Aristotle and his philosophye" in the description of the Clerk's books in GP 1.295.

Follows W. C. Curry (1926) in understanding the Pardoner to be a eunuch, and explores the Biblical and exegetical implications of this characterization, reinforced by animal imagery, and associated with the Pauline "vetus homo" (Old Man), arguing…

Shows how the theme of common profit and the figure of tolerant Nature bridge the opposing views of the love among the high- and low-class birds in PF. Other contrastive pairs in the poem--the two sides of the gate, Priapus and Venus,…

Suggests that "double meaning seems deliberate" in a pun on "lecher" and "healer" in Pluto's use of "lechour" (MerT 4.2257) when he pledges to restore January's eyesight.

Quotes, translates, and anatomizes the Latin "arguments" of the "books" found in Statius' "Thebaid" that underlie Cassandra's summary of the Statius' work in TC 5.1457-1533, with its twelve-line Latin summary interpolated in most TC manuscripts.…

Suggests that a portion of Dorigen's speech in FranT (5.1541-44) has wrongly been ascribed to her by various editors, indicating why it should better be assigned to the Franklin as narrator. Also suggests that the reference to a "clerk" (Fran 5.1611)…

Suggests that editors consider capitalizing "nature" in GP 1.11, arguing that Chaucer personifies Nature as "virtually the patron saint of birds" in PF.

Includes (vol. 2, pp. 1030-31) a summary of the plot and main characters of TC, categorizing it as a "Chivalric romance," and praising it as an "almost perfectly constructed narrative poem" with "effective depiction of character" that "forecast[s]…