Browse Items (16320 total)

Studies the Christian and Platonic underpinnings of romantic love in Renaissance drama and poetry, exploring its roots in courtly traditions, and distinguishing it from love depicted by Augustan, Romantic, and modern writers. A section on Chaucer…

Introduces Chaucer's life and works to "those who are new readers" of the poet, evoking a sense of late-medieval life, especially London, Chaucer's court life, and international contexts. Explicates the tales and tellers of CT in thematic chapters,…

Maintains that the Summoner's fondness for "overheating foods" conveys lechery, adducing evidence from Reginald Pecock's fifteenth-century "The Reule of Crysten Religioun."

Observes that William Dunbar ridicules sexual impotence by means of the image of a dog ineffectively lifting its leg and maintains that the image and its implications derive from the "striking (and probably original)" use in ParsT 10.858,

Examines the characters of Griselda and Walter in ClT, with particular attention to the diction associated with them: "bountee" and "sadnesse" for Griselda and "shapen" for Walter. Also examines the words the characters do and do not use.

Biographical dictionary of some 200 political and cultural people of late-medieval England, "Englishmen" and "Englishwomen," along with "foreigners prominent in English history," arranged chronologically by life-dates, with descriptive and…

Summarizes ClT, describing it as a successful riposte to WBT and a victory for "book-learning."

Argues that the astrological data in GP and MLH establish the date of the beginning of the Canterbury pilgrimage as April 17, the same day as the departure of Noah's ark, evoking notions of sinfulness and salvific baptism, reinforced by imagery of…

Argues that in Book 4 of TC Chaucer presents a "conflict between reason and desire" (amplified from Boccaccio's "Filostrato"), helping to characterize and evaluate Troilus as, simultaneously and ambiguously, "both strong and weak," reasonable as a…

Argues that the old man of PardT is neither a Messenger of Death nor Old Age personified, but a figure of the exemplary wisdom and virtue of the aged, set in contrast the youthful rioters and their foolish avarice. Compares Chaucer's "aged stranger"…

Re-examines the narrator's eight-year sickness in BD, surveying previous commentary, and arguing that, unlike in Chaucer's French sources, the illness is insomnia rather than love-sickness and that God rather than a paramour is his only physician. As…

Investigates the dramatic ironies of PardPT (comparing them with those of WBPT), arguing that the Pardoner does not reveal "more than he intends, but rather the converse": that none of the pilgrims "is able to see the full meaning of what he says"…

Characterizes the Squire as a "young man among his elders" on the pilgrimage, describing his "nervous, apologetic tone" that derives from his uses and abuses of "rhetorical decorum, "tinged with "self-regard" and snobbish "anti-intellectualism." The…

Explores the background and implications of the reference to "seinte Note" (St. Neot) and the possibility of punning in "viritoot" in MilT 1.3770-71.

Close comparison of passages in TC and their sources in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" discloses how Chaucer "sets in motion" early in his poem "a train of events whose implications go far beyond the immediate moment, perhaps beyond the love story itself,"…

Explores the Augustinian "figurative implications" of PrT, identifying a "clear symbolic pattern" evident in interpreting it Scripturally--the "childishness" of the teller and her protagonist, the literalness of the Jews, echoes of the liturgy of the…

Argues that FranT is one of Chaucer "satiric masterpieces" and that it reveals "how ludicrously and inadequately the Franklin grasps the essence of gentle behavior." The Franklin is well intended, but the morality and reasoning of his Tale are…

Describes the development of John Gower's critical reputation, his life records, his literary career (including attention to manuscripts, sequence of composition, and revisions), the major social and political themes of his works, and his…

Contrasts Troilus's ascent through the spheres at the end of TC and the narrator's comments on it with the analogous materials in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and "Teseida" (with nods to Dante and Christian liturgy), explaining Troilus's placement among…

Describes medieval understanding of astrology and examines the "technical side of astrological passages in Chaucer" as well as their "meanings . . . in their poetic contexts. Includes discussion of FranT, Mars, GP, MilT, WBP, MerT, MLT, and ParsP.

Shows that the diction, style, and substance of the Eagle's disquisition on sound in HF (606-863) illustrate the "techniques of Ciceronian persuasive rhetoric on a relevant science, the physics of sound," part of the poem's unifying concern with the…

Argues that the KnT is "especially suitable for the beginning of the pilgrimage" in CT because it "presents the continual subversion of noble efforts to bring order out of disorder" and because, in comparison with its sources," it poses a "pagan…

Regards MkT and NPT as "Chaucer's highest literary achievement in the construction of pairs of tales," arguing that the faults of the MkT are "redeemed" by juxtaposition with the "brilliant" NPT insofar as the pair pose several "arresting contrasts":…

Argues that Thomas Wyatt's ballade "If thou wilt mighty be" translates directly from Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," unmediated by Chaucer's Bo; his use of the ballade form, however, may have been inspired by Chaucer's Truth. Compares and…

Argues that MLT is neither saints' legend nor romance, but that its "heroic theme, setting, and characters suggest strongly that . . . it belongs to the literary genre of epic and to the sociological genre of myth."