Browse Items (15542 total)

Although Chaucer's narrator is sympathetic to the hero of TC, Troilus's "stellification" contradicts our expectations because he values his own desires over the welfare of the polis. Chaucer's "political and moral judgment against Troilus's…

A recurrent concern in Chaucer's works is the relation between society and discourse, a concern Chaucer shares with Italian humanists. In BD, Chaucer demonstrates the reciprocity of speaker and listener; the playfulness and lack of closure in HF…

Through the tree catalog and the "unassimilated voices of the lower birds" in PF, Chaucer records his awareness that distinctions between nature and culture and between human and nonhuman are "species-ist"--an awareness similar to modern…

Explores fusions of penitential values and Wycliffite ideals in Chaucer's LGW, ParsT, and Ret, arguing that he used them to counter Richard II's use of exempla to suppress political dissent.

Argues that GP 259-62, 642-43, and TC II, 36-37 are allusions to the Great Schism: the Friar like a pope in his "'double' worstede"; the pope like a popinjay (of two voices?), and the proverb that more than one way leads to Rome.

Revises, and reprints as one, the following essays: "Inverse Counsel: Contexts for the 'Melibee'" and "Chaucer's Tale of the Second Nun and the Strategies of Dissent."

Late sixteenth-century Elizabethan reception of Chaucer focused as much on his "recreational" talents as a vernacular poet and stylist as on his doctrinal or philosophical themes. Constructed as a "prodigal" poet as well as a laureate, Chaucer was…

Chaucer's narrative style--describing a host of particulars in minute detail--was influenced by nominalist denial of the ontological existence of universals. But Chaucer's preoccupation with Boethian themes indicates a continuing interest in more…

Examines the dating, authorship, textual history, and medieval popularity of "De Maria Magdelena," attributed to Origen, as a basis for exploring Chaucer's use of it in his "Orygenes upon the Maudeleyne," cited in LGWP F427 (G418) and here regarded…

Examines the "psychological realities" of Troilus's fear of losing Criseyde after she departs from Troy, comparing Chaucer's and Boccaccio's versions to show how, in TC, the hero's "immoderate fear distorts perception" and causes him to judge…

The search for Chaucer's puns has increased dramatically in modern scholarship, particularly John Gardner's. By adopting some conservative principles, we can curb the "extravagence of pun-hunting." First, puns should be distinguished from innuendo…

Argues against specifying the Pardoner's sexuality, on the grounds that historical evidence discourages such specification and that specification can only render the character less enigmatic and thereby less queer. Sexual characteristics ascribed to…

Bakhtinian analysis of Chaucer's polyphonic satiric techniques in CT, especially GP and MilT, emphasizing their place in the development of English satire and the rise of realism and journalistic claims of accurate reportage. Treats Chaucer's…

Treats rhetoric and consolation in BD, TC, KnT, FranT, and WBT.

Situates Chaucer's attitudes toward law and legal process in late-medieval thought, discussing statute law, legal procedures of resolution by love, and Italian, Thomistic, post-Glossarian philosophy of law. Tale-telling and pilgrimage represent two…

Chaucer's system of corporeal signs and gestures suggests a continual praise and blame of the flesh. Movement (or lack thereof) in CT is associated with sickness and health; the body is treated as subject and object, as an "affective medium of…

Chaucer's approaches to hagiography vary from ironic distancing in LGW to pious orthodoxy in SNT, preventing audience identification. Also treats Criseyde, Alisoun, and Dorigen. Griselda, a special case, is historicized and then dehistoricized.

The dialogue between Virginius and Virginia and other intensely religious elements suggest that Chaucer's PhyT was directly influenced by the account of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac given in contemporary mystery plays. This dramatic influence is…

Studies Chaucer's tales that revolve around miracles and saints. Maintains that SNT, PrT, and MLT reveal "Chaucer's artistry in deploying his understanding of medieval English piety."

Argues that Chaucer's "main contribution to English satire" is the "reunification" of "Horace's gentleness, Juvenal's verve, and St. Jerome's moral vision," augmented by his "facile use of the double-entendre" and "his own special combination of…

"[I]nvestigates Chaucer's artistic and philosophical debt to the poetic tradition stemming from the twelfth-century School of Chartres," exploring Chaucer's sources and considering the (neo)platonic concerns in BD, HF, PF, and CT.

Describes the "aesthetic implications" of the medieval world view, rooted in Plato's "Timaeus" and based on notions of quantity, ordered hierarchy, and analogy rather than "organic" unity. Developed by Boethius, Macrobius, and Augustine, this view…

The disjuncture between the confessional (yet not moral) part 1 and the fabliau-like part 2 of CYT derives in part from the essential split between the futile effort toward production in part 1 and the nonproductive but successful cheating of part 2.…

Influenced by modern critical approaches such as new historicism and cultural studies, Knapp reworks some material published earlier and adds new essays in a volume designed to examine the pilgrims' social contest and the "larger social contest"…

Modern sociological theories of criticism are applied to Chaucer's major works--BD, HF, PF, TC, and CT. In particular Pierre Macherey's ideological analysis is applied to structure and mimesis in Chaucer, and Jacques Lacan's theories on subjectivity…