Browse Items (16318 total)

"Pite" and its synonym "routhe" occur almost always in their original erotic context in Chaucer's earlier works: Pity, TC, PF, and FranT. It may be equated with "generous self-sacrifice" on the part of the lover. As Chaucer broadens the concept,…

Examines the characterization of Chaucer's pilgrim-narrator in CT, focusing on the scene in ThP where the Host requests a tale from this narrator and exploring the ironies of the Host's expectations, the readers' knowledge of earlier Chaucerian…

Although Pandarus did not appear in literature until Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato," 1336, by 1440 his name had degenerated into a common noun in English. This rapid development argues against the dualism and complexity modern critics find in him. The…

Evaluates LGW as a series of brief narrative poems, assessing LGWP as an account of Chaucer's experiment with choosing a new subject matter for poetry (one that is "essentially alien to the code of courtly love") and gauging the importance of the…

A discussion of the characteristics of Nature in PF.

Explores the performative rather than formal aspects of tragedy in Chaucer, surveying contemporary use of the term and Chaucer's projections of his narrative personae as tragedians in TC, LGW (Philomene), MkT, and PhyT. Notes the incompatibility of…

Contemplates "Medieval English Studies in Germany" as a model for cultivating a "truly global," interdisciplinary ideal of medieval studies, describing critical trends, boundaries, and bridges in several subdisciplines, and commenting briefly on the…

Comparative analysis shows that several changes and emphases Chaucer introduces into Boccaccio's "Filostrato" produce richer characterization in TC. All three major characters "think as well as feel" in Chaucer's poem: Troilus with his fatalism;…

Suggests that the "main source" of TC "may have been" Beauvau's "Le Roman de Troyle et de Criseida," a French prose translation of Boccaccio's "Filostrato." Compares 300+ brief quotations (in all three languages), commenting on verbal and structural…

Argues that Thomas Aquinas was a "direct and major source for Chaucer's philosophy," demonstrates the availability of Thomas's work to Chaucer via Merton College, and explores the similiarities between their views of virtue and of the…

Comments on Chaucer's uses of words that have come to be regarded as obscene or distasteful.

Identifies details in TC and KnT that reflect the influence of the version of the Thebes legend found in the "Ovide Moralisé."

Analyzes the function of the proper names as playful, complex allusions, and associates with January--holder of the silver "clyket" to the garden--both Janus, god of passageways, and Saint Peter, who holds the keys to paradise.

The discovery of Dryden's indebtedness to Chaucer (TC, V, 817: "That Paradis stood formed in hire yen") for a line in "Absalom" ("And 'Paradise' was open'd in his face") is attributed in the California edition of Dryden's works to an article…

Raybin and Fein introduce the six essays included in a "special issue" of Chaucer Review, all pertaining to Chaucer and aesthetics.

Suggests that Aristotle is the "most likely" referent for "the philosopher" in ParsT 10.484.

Examines Chaucer's use of arithmetic--connected with money, towns, upward social mobility, government, the vernacular, astronomy-astrology, universities, commerce--in BD, HF, PF, TC, Astr, CT, GP, KnT, MilT, RvT, MLT, ShT, SumT, CYT, and Ret.

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…

Contrasts MLT with "The King of Tars," "Bevis of Hampton," and the Becket legend (where Thomas Becket's mother is a "heathen or Saracen"), arguing that, unlike the "contradictory approaches . . . to the conversion of the Muslim Other elsewhere, MLT…

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.…