Browse Items (16012 total)

Study of extant manuscripts from fourteenth-century England reveals that Chaucer was familiar with Ovidian texts and commentaries of his time. He developed his own adaptation of tone and vocabulary, exploring the tension between courtly love and…

Discusses Chaucer's sense of history and his historical approach to the pagans and the imperfection of pagan theology and philosophy, centering on TC and on KnT.

Assesses Chaucer's relationship with Petrarch, focusing on translation theory, humanism, and Chaucer's uses of the Italian writer as source for ClT and the "Canticus Troili" of TC. Also assesses Chaucer's references to Petrarch in ClT and in MkT, as…

Compares pilgrimage in Japan with that in Christian culture and then discusses the pilgrimage to Canterbury in CT.

Addresses Chaucer's discourse on medieval political principles, including kingship and hierarchical order. Examines SqT, Mel, KnT, ClT, LGW, PF, and Sted.

Establishes the "intellectual background" to Chaucer's translation of Innocent's "De Miseria Humane Conditionis" as his "Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde," explores Chaucer's uses of the treatise in MLPT and PardT and their manuscripts glosses, and…

Examines treatment of several CT narrators and characters and sees examples of "othering" and hostile prejudice toward those characters. Proceeds from there to possible continuations of those prejudices in contemporary readings.

Holton argues that Chaucer generally prefers direct naming techniques, but he recurrently uses "pronominatio" (i.e., epithets and related circumlocutions) when relying on Virgil as a source in HF and LGW. Also shows how Chaucer exploits the negative…

We remain uncertain about the meaning of Cecily Chaumpaigne's release of Chaucer from a charge of rape, but the topic of rape (and forced marriage) in Chaucer's poetry reflects his sensitivity to the complex "definitional problems" of raptus. Chaucer…

Claims that Chaucer is a "rationalistic" poet, and suggests prospects for assessing Chaucer's use of dialectic or the "scholastic mode of reasoning" in his art, commenting on aspects of GP, ParsT, Mel, WBPT, Bo, TC, and HF.

Critical essays examine Chaucer's religious writings. Sixteen essays focus on fourteenth-century religious practices, and religious influences on Chaucer's writings, and offer ways of teaching religious themes and issues in Chaucer. For individual…

Traces a history of Chaucer reception in the context of Christian controversies by "situating Chaucer and the Chaucerian tradition in an international environment of religious controversy spanning four centuries." Emphasizes how Chaucer "engaged with…

Copeland outlines the classical-medieval tradition of rhetoric and its relationships with history, philosophy, and literary style. Considers the Pardoner as an embodiment of rhetoric and its potential for abuse; the Wife of Bath as rhetorical excess…

A survey of the financial and legal records of Chaucer's life from 1385 to 1400 leaves an impression of Chaucer as a cautious nonpartisan.

Approximates the parameters of Chaucer's knowledge and acceptance of medieval science, pseudo-science, and occult practice by surveying their presence in his works, including discussions of astronomy, astrology, alchemy, magic, physiognomy, etc. His…

Twelve essays by various hands on Chaucer's received Christian tradition, scriptural interpretation, and glossing. For individual essays, of this volume.

Discusses similarities and differences between Chaucer and Shakespeare, concentrating on biography, theme, and literary techniques as well as borrowings. Comments on Shakespeare's adaptations of TC and KnT, and explores the writers' audiences, their…

Chaucer discovered tragedy as a narrative genre not from Boccaccio but from Boethius and from the glossator of his own copy of "De consolatione," who may have been Ralph Strode. Chaucer's concept of tragedy included the fall of the innocent as well…

Examines scholarship that traces Chaucer's "subtle" influence on Shakespeare, by drawing connections between MerT and "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

Close reading of KnT, focusing on elements such as syntax, diction, and imagery, shows Chaucer's dexterous use of high, middle, and low styles. The variety and combination of elements produce the tone of the poem and "naturalize" its philosophical…

Comments on modern efforts to "get ahead" and contrasts them with attitudes toward success in HF.

In the prefatory note to the 1592 "A Declaration of the True Causes" (STC 10005), there is an allusion to the pseudo-Chaucerian verses "Chaucer's Prophesie."

Identifies personal opportunities Chaucer had "to learn the special fame" of St. Clare, and suggests that his allusion to her in HF (line 1066) evokes "a contrasting silence" in a "passage descriptive of strident clamor."

Rather than the usually accepted "Adversus Jovinianum," Saint Jerome's letter to Pammachius is the probable source of the Wife's reference to barley (WBP 145). At best the result is an ambiguous vindication of--and at worst an attack on--the martial…

As found in "The Golden Legend" ("Legende Aurea") and the "South English Legendary," the life of St. Kenelm offers striking parallels with both PrT and NPT, in which Chaucer refers to it (7.3110-21). Kenelm was murdered at age seven, perhaps the…