Browse Items (16012 total)

Examines thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Anglo-French, noting that Chaucer was steeped in an Anglo-French environment. This very Anglicized French--a second language of culture used to keep records--was the French Chaucer knew best, and his lexis…

Chaucer's connection with Ralph Strode is important in shedding light on the poet's "philosophical preoccupations." His "tutorial" from Strode might have exposed him to the entire range of philosophical speculation of the day.

Studies the "theology of marital relations" in MilT, WBP, and MerT, using ParsT as a partial statement of orthodoxy, surveying views from Augustine to Wyclif of the roles of procreation and pleasure in sexual relations between married partners, and…

Establishes that the "Breton" lay is a British lay composed by ancient Britons, not by minstrels of Brittany. The MED gives a British origin for most of its citations of "Britoun" and "Britaine." The validity of the sources for the other citations…

Compares MerT with "Comedy of Lydia" (an analogue) and suggests that Chaucer looks on the January-May follies with amusement whereas the laughter in "Comedy" is didactic.

The narrator of MerT evokes the same moral response from the audience as the authors of the "Comedy." Although the narrator appeals to the superiority of the audience over his dramatic characters, he perhaps admires their crudeness, which the…

Aware of the ethics of "commune profit," Chaucer condemns the self-seeking Franklin, Miller, Reeve, and Wife of Bath, while commending the other-centered Parson and Plowman.

Hubertis M. Commings' dissertation (1914) denying that Chaucer knew the "Decameron" and an influential article by Willard Farnham (1924) positing that the work was not known in England until 1566 both are speciously reasoned. Chaucerian echoes of…

Chaucer's use of Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato" as a source for his TC demonstrates three major kinds of creative "translacioun": innovative translation of specific words/phrases and lines, brief additions of phrases and lines, and the interpolation…

Describes the features of FranT that affiliate it with the genre of the Breton lay (Breton lai) and those that make Chaucer's work unique. Considers the sources of FranT, and explore its aesthetic success as an "imitation" of the genre, including…

Discusses seven examples of the influence of the "Ovide Moralisé" on Chaucer: HF 957ff., Anel 1-6, TC 5.1464-84, WBP 3.733ff., MLT 2.633-35, ParsT 10.261ff., and the recurrent phrase "alone, withouten any compaignie" (KnT1.2779, MilT 1.3204, and…

Identifies Chaucer's uses of the "Ovide Moralisé," particularly the narrative material of the French poem rather than its allegorical interpretations, often used in combination with Latin sources. Considers LGW, Form Age, TC, HF, ManT, and ParsT,…

Chaucer is indebted to "The Romance of the Rose" for many of his techniques of irony, such as the juxtaposition of units not in themselves ironical, the exposure of hypocritical or false reasoning, the unreliable narrator, ironical digression, and…

Studies rhymes and rhyme words (the elements least liable to errors in transcription) and amends the traditional view that Chaucer could have written Fragment A but neither B nor C: fragments A and C are equidistant from B and could be the work of a…

For Chaucer, the literary traditions of Ovid and Jerome created a dual image of woman as predator or victim. Chaucer refines and deepens the "double-sidedness" of these traditions, bringing the polarized alternatives into complicating relation with…

Reviews discussions that consider Nicole de Margival's "La Panthère d'Amous" to be a source of HF, challenging most of them for lack of specificity or because shared details are conventional. Only two brief passages evince Margival's influence and…

Argues that Chaucer was influenced by the now-lost Prologue to "Sir Orfeo" of the Auchinleck manuscript, evident in similarities in "concept, diction, and syntax" between the FranP and the extant versions of the "Orfeo" prologue and between the…

Describes the commentaries and glosses that are included in medieval manuscripts of Statius's "Thebaid," and shows that Chaucer was influenced by such glosses in details and passages of HF, Anel, TC, and KnT. The influence of Statius and the glosses…

An epistolary exchange between teacher and student on the intellectual and emotional challenges of reading Chaucer in a twenty-first century undergraduate classroom.

Contrasts Chaucer's depiction of London's social tensions in CT with Boccaccio's depiction of Florence's unity in Decameron 6.2, Pampinea's story of Cisti. The duplicities and deceptions of CkT and CYT (at odds with the Host's governance) are like…

Considers evidence from ParsP (10.42-44), KnT (1.2605-16), and LGW (635-58) that Chaucer may have been familiar with Middle English alliterative romances, arguing that the proposition is unlikely. While he may have known alliterative religious…

The English word "digression" is first recorded in TC 1.143, where the narrator comments on the fall of Troy. This digression anticipates ideas and images that occur later in the poem and reflects the narrator's difficulty in coming to a conclusion.

In SNT and PrT, hagiography is used in an orthodox form, while in MLT and ClT, the devices of hagiography are used to amplify the moral character of secular tales. Hagiographic devices indicate that these tales are serious, not satire.

Contrasts the unequivocal hermeneutics of "eating a book"--i.e., internalizing the text of the Bible and its "one true meaning"--as depicted in the illustration of the Cloisters Apocalypse (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection, MS 68.174)…

Scholars of the early twentieth century such as Naunin and Manly denied any significant influence of medieval rhetoric upon Chaucer. In more recent days, however, this attitude has been reversed, so that Payne ("The Key of Remembrance") could claim…