Browse Items (15542 total)

Explores Chaucer's familiarity with conventional costume description and fabric reference in medieval genres, especially romances and fabliaux, and argues that Chaucer often reverses traditional patterns of audience expectation in which romances are…

Chaucer's passages about Arthurian knights, though brief, reveal the poet's understanding of the traditions of Arthurian romance.

Chaucer's many references to astrology have often been discussed, but only recently (as in Wood's "Chaucer and the Country of the Stars") have there been any book-length studies of the subject and of its function in his poetry.

Examines how a twentieth-century atheist can read and respond to Chaucer, suggesting that a form of "dialogism" can mediate between the present and the past and can enable us to recognize that Chaucer is essentially more humanistic than, for example,…

Assesses editions and translations of Chaucer's works between 1660 and 1750 (including Speght 3, Dryden, Urry, and Morrell) for the ways they reflect the principles and practices of Augustan scholarship, lexicography, aesthetic outlooks, social…

One of the most consistent strands of controversy has been Chaucer's reputation for the "bawdy" in CT. What has been objected to as "bawdy," "ribaldry," "wantonness," "scurrility," "incivility," and so on "has "shifted and changed over the…

An extended examination of Boccaccio's "Teseida," Chaucer's KnT, and their relations. After describing "Teseida" and its debts to Dante and the classics, Boitani surveys Chaucer's uses of the work in Anel, PF, TC, and, more extensively, KnT.…

Boccaccio provided Chaucer with a means for understanding and configuring antiquity and modernity. Chapter 1 focuses on kinds of love, tensions in Theseus's rule, and the subjugation of women in KnT. Chapter 2 explores how chroniclers, Boccaccio, and…

Boccaccio's "Amorosa Visione" and the Chaucer's BD and HF were deeply indebted to de Lorris, Machaut, and Dante, but Boccaccio was never comfortable with "court poems," while Chaucer used "cortesia" with subtlety and ease.

Discusses the sources of LGW in Boccaccio's "De cassibus virorum illustrim," "De mulieribus claris," and "Genealogia deorum gentillium."

Describes a "flicker of humour" in Chaucer's allusion to Boethius in NPT (7.3294-95), indicating that the poet disagrees with his authority on the point of musical sensitivity.

Item not seen; cited in MLA International Bibliography.

The innovative material in the first three books of Capgrave's "Life" is indebted to the fifteenth century's interest in Chaucer's "elevated" and pious passages, especially those in TC. Stylistically, however, Capgrave's attempt to emulate his…

Chaucer's optimism, humor, and satire as well can be properly appreciated only in the light of his Catholic view of life. Some typical mistakes in translation are also made from lack of enough knowledge of Catholicism: the doctrines, liturgies,…

Explores the range and depth of Chaucer's familiarity with the "Liber Catonis," its commentaries and glosses, and the likelihood that he memorized portions as a schoolboy. Identifies verbal echoes of "Catoniana" in Chaucer's works; then focuses on…

Although Chaucer typically "covered his tracks," a major source of HF is Plato's "Timaeus" in the translation and commentary of Chalcidius.

Examines CT characters for individuality not conditioned by the story in FranT, MilT, TC, GP's Host and Merchant, MerP, MerT, and RvT.

Survey's Wurtele's studies of Chaucer, clarifying the critic's consistent concern with characterization and how it relates to critical trends.

Nine essays by various authors accompanied by a cultural timeline and a comprehensive index. For the individual essays, search for Chaucer and Chaucerians under Alternative Title.

The references to chess in BD are confused because Chaucer seems not to have had any firsthand knowledge of the game, his source being not a proper handbook but the "Roman de la Rose." Applying the chess metaphor from Jean de Meun to a dissimilar…

Keen surveys a range of late medieval attitudes toward chivalry, knighthood, and warfare, especially a "streak of puritanism" that criticized the vainglory of chivalry. He considers a range of texts, including Chaucer's ParsT and the GP description…

Gauges Chaucer's familiarity with the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes, commenting on the English poet's use of "vavasour" to describe the Franklin and on his allusions to Lancelot, Arthur, and Gawain. Suggests the possibility that Chaucer's…

Understanding medieval literary use of scriptural tradition requires knowledge of relevant social history, especially for Chaucer--not merely a "textual" man but a "moral, social, and political man." The complex Christian tradition, functioning…

Assesses the details and implications of the clothing and accoutrements of the clerical and academic pilgrims in GP, discussing the Prioress, Monk, Friar, Clerk, Physician, Parson, Pardoner, and Summoner. More richly symbolic than secular dress,…

There are those Chaucer readers who feel that he failed to take life seriously enough. His view of the world was indeed serious; it was not, however, a tragic view. His art is his love of the human comedy and thereby hang the tales of some of the…