Browse Items (16107 total)

Contrary to Kittredge's view that FrT and SumT are "merely comic interludes" in the marriage group, the Prologues and Tales of the Wife, Friar, and Summoner share a common concern, the debate on "experience" vs. "auctoritee." In questions of…

Examines CT and Gower's "Confessio Amantis" as part of an imaginative reaction to the political circumstances following the Second Barons' War, arriving at a new role in "speaking to and for" the Henrician community.

Reprints Nevill Coghill's modern translation of Mk 7.2727-66 (Croesus), included here among a variety of literary samples and commentaries on the theme of luck.

Celebrates the character and career of C. David Benson, surveying his publications and professional activities.

Describes C. S. Lewis's formulation of courtly love and applies it to TC, arguing that Chaucer exaggerates certain of its features to show its "weaknesses" (particularly through humor, Pandarus, and the narrator) and to replace it with divine love.

This appreciative biography uses "Chaucer Knight" as the title of chapter sixteen, deriving the appellation from a memorial in the "Cambridge Review" on the occasion of Lewis' death.

Explores why C. S. Lewis chose not to discuss FranT in his "Allegory of Love," arguing that Lewis made the decision because he wanted to attribute the "final defeat of courtly love by the romantic conception of marriage" to Edmund Spenser in his…

Theorizes "the consequences of political discourse on bodies" in literary and cinematic frame-narratives, including discussion of CT, along with the "Pañcatantra," the "Vetala" of Somadeva, Boccaccio's "Decameron," Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Trilogy of…

In medieval literature, the sins of Cain and Nimrod acquired sexual overtones associated with wandering. Warner assesses in this light the "Alliterative Morte Arthure," Dante, Abelard, Langland and NPT.

Describes the late-medieval literary affiliations of the city of Calais, emphasizing its role in the Hundred Years War and commenting on allusions to the city, noting that Chaucer knew the city personally but "mapped its spaces" (in the GP…

Outlines the history of the defection of Calchas from Troy to the Greeks as found in Latin narratives that pre-date TC.

Considers Henryson's Testament of Cresseid as an extension of Chaucer's TC and a transformation of it-two different senses of "translation." Duncan examines the characterization of Calkas and other means of creating compassion for Cresseid.

Explores Criseyde's role as daughter in TC, Calkas's putative authority over her in marital matters, and the views of other characters concerning her ambiguous, conditional consent to her father's wishes. Treats Criseyde's "feminine virtue" and…

Item not seen. WorldCat record indicates that this volume of poetry includes two poems entitled "From Chaucer's The Franklin tale" and "The Franklin's tale told twice."

Explores relations between concepts of selfhood and notions of spiritual and, especially, secular vocation in WBT, Langland's "Piers Plowman," and Gower's "Vox clamantis." The "wide scope" of late medieval applications of the Pauline notion of being…

Suggests two unattested emendations to SqT: pluralizing "Cambalus" in 5.656 (to mean two brothers), and changing "hewe" to "shewe" in 5.640.

Revised version of the 1986 original, now with seventeen essays, five of which are new. Revised pieces are "The Social and Literary Scene in England" (Paul Strohm); "Chaucer's Italian Inheritance" (David Wallace); "Old Books Brought to New Life in…

Cambridge MS Dd.4.24 contains a unique version of WBP: it adds five antifeminist passages and renumbers the Wife's husbands, making that section more organized and coherent. It is not possible to determine whether these changes were the work of…

Describes the role of Stephan Batman (c. 1542–84) in producing Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.15 (which includes CT), observes how the manuscript aligns with contemporaneous printed editions of Chaucer by Thynne and Stow, and explores how…

Considers the vexed critical history of MkT as a possibility for engaging classroom discussion about issues of theme, aesthetics, political perspective, and critical predilection. Focuses on various approaches to the tale before and after the heyday…

Surveys evidence-from publications of the Canterbury Tales Project-affirming that the Hengwrt manuscript "has the best text [of the poem], where it has text, but it may not have all the text which Chaucer wrote, nor have it all in the best order, nor…

Describes similarities and differences "between fourteenth-century and modern biography" and argues that medieval writers of verse fiction were interested in characters "as individuals." A "sense of abundant life" is generated by the ironies and…

SqT and MLT are alike in that both tell and do not tell the story of incest.

In the context of spheres of male and female acts of treason, suggests that women's disloyalty (e.g., Criseyde) was typically seen as simultaneously political and romantic, whereas a male traitor's action could be more easily compartmentalized, as in…

Adds FranT to the list of possible sources of George Bernard Shaw's "Candida." Evidence for the influence includes a similar tone in the two works, concern with a "rash promise" or "reckless declaration," plot resolution through "magnanimity," and…