Browse Items (16012 total)

Examining passages from BD, TC, and CT, Kim contrasts Chaucer's uses of multiple narrative voices with the ways other medieval writers write themselves and their readers into their texts.

LGW contains examples of "the destructive results of excessive passion." Classical, patristic, and medieval attitudes to Cleopatra are negative; Chaucer is thus ironic.

An essay on ecclesiastical patronage of art in the Middle Ages.

Surveys criticism that considers the Ceyx and Alcyone story in BD, exegetical readings in particular, and edits a version of the tale found in fourteenth-century Ovidian manuscripts available in Chaucer's England, with full apparatus and with…

Uses Homi Bhabha's concepts of borderline community and mimicry ("The Location of Culture" [1994]) to investigate the descriptions of the guildsmen in GP, 361-78, as they relate to shifts and tensions in Chaucer’s contemporary society, focusing on…

Thirty-eight essays and two commemorations celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Takamiya, focusing on "medieval manuscripts and early printed books, Arthurian literature, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century medievalism." Many of the essays pertain to…

Essays by various hands. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for The Medieval Boethius under Alternative Title.

LGW's "Legend of Thisbe" paraphrases Ovid's story in "Metamorphoses," pt. 4, according to the rules of classical rhetoric. Chaucer's changes in Ovid's story resemble those of other medieval paraphrasers: his neutral narrative style is changed to…

Surveys the iconographical tradition of "Venus-of-the-Seashell" ("Aphrodite Anadyomene") as background to assessing why Chaucer depicts Venus carrying a citole in KnT (1.1959) and carrying a comb in HF (line 136). Explores the images in Chaucer's…

Chaucer may have used prose alone in his "Boece" for clarity and freedom where two speakers face universal dilemmas.

In ParsP, the Parson vehemently rejects the "lies" of pagan fables, as in the scandalous ManT. Yet, medieval poets often used "unseemly stories of the gods"--especially stories dealing with love, sex, and immorality--for their own political or moral…

Both the historical basis for BD and its relation to Machaut's narratives have posed problems, but the dream-vision form can resolve them. Whereas Machaut used it to divide himself from his patrons, Chaucer employed it to indicate their "shared…

The focus of ManT is not adultery and murder but rather talebearing. Chaucer returns to Ovid for janglery as a serious crime. If janglery causes murder, the janglerer is as guilty as the murderer because he is the cause of the crime.

Although classical, Renaissance, and modern satire may represent recognizable genres, a definition of medieval satire must be sought through consideration of how classical satirists were studied in medieval schools and how three poets wrote.

Chaucer achieves maximum concentration on the moment of denouement by organizing his characters into two parallel and static triadic sets. When the characters are in their triadic configurations, no action takes place. The resolution of tension by…

Argues that in CT, "wight" could indeed mean a supernatural being and refer to Jesus Christ as Creator, which questions a long-standing editorial emendation by E. Talbot Donaldson in WBP, 117.

At the literal level, Griselda is subservient, loving, obedient, and patient; at the spiritual level, she emulates Christ, while Walter is a servant of God.

Argues that Troilus' ascent to the eighth sphere (TC 5.1807-27) combines Christian and pagan elements--the classical pagan notion of immortality among the stars transmitted to Chaucer via Alain de Lille, Dante, and Boccaccio, and the Christian…

Considers the impulses to go on pilgrimage in late medieval England and assesses the GP descriptions of the pilgrims in light of contemporary motivations for pilgrimage.

The categorical proposition, or sentence, is offered as a global model for narrative structure. The sentence structure, which makes meaning by suggesting the significant similarities between what might have been and what is actually said, takes the…

Argues that the word pair "gent and smal," used in the description of Alisoun in MilT, meant "well-built," with connotations of noble looks and behavior.

Item not seen. WorldCat record indicates that this includes English commentary by Milward on GP (and other works of English literature), with notes in Japanese by Okamoto and Suzuki.

Discusses ABC, Pity, Lady, and Mars in relation to the literary temperament of the poet's later works.

Identifies parallels between the "planetary deities" and the human characters in KnT; describes the "iconology" of Lygurge and Emetreus, particularly the psychological implications of their astrological affiliations; and explores the physiognomic,…

Argues that PF is "much more critical of human life than has been thought [and] that it finally adopts and orthodox Christian Position." Explores how the structure, details, and style of the poem undermine the narrator's views and work "to suggest,…