Browse Items (15542 total)

Further enquiry can illuminate Chaucer's references and response to the visual arts, the artistic materials actually available to him, the applicability of artistic principles to his literary style, and the extent to and manner in which he…

Describes and promotes the use of image-rich material and virtual learning environments for teaching Chaucer. Includes cautions and recommendations.

The War of the Maidens, a founding myth of Czech history, may have come to England via Anne of Bohemia and may be part of the "political unconscious" of several of Chaucer's works, particularly his depiction of the Amazons in KnT.

Discusses the conflict between the letter and the spirit in NPT, providing a short survey of the history of literal interpretation. Chaucer freely accepts the letter as literature without excluding the morality. The Priest makes us turn away from…

Chaucer was evidently educated in the "ars dictaminis" (art of letter writing), which emphasized voice and point of view and may have influenced CT. While individual tales may have been written to be recited, CT as a collection was designed to be…

Explores the "difficulties" Chaucer encountered in translating Latin and continental works into English poetry and various verse forms, surveying complete works such as Bo, Rom, ClT, Mel, Ven, etc., and passages from various sources in larger works…

Identifies an early modern allusion to Chaucer and CYT (by Hugh Platt) and one on dreams and, possibly, NPT (by William Vaughan), neither previously noted.

Surveys commentary on Chaucer in Victorian critical journals, deriving three aspects of the Victorian view of Chaucer: he was a Child-Poet whose simplicity anticipated that of the nineteenth-century lower classes; he was the poet of the "green…

Studies Chaucer's views of war and chivalry, examining biographical and historical data as background to assessments of TC, KnT, and the GP sketches of the Knight and Squire. Pratt summarizes medieval theories of warfare and "just war" and discusses…

Eight previously printed essays, seven on Chaucer and one on Shakespeare's Cressida. For the essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Chaucer and Women under Alternative Title.

Until 1369, Wyclif, powerful and influential, dominated Oxford; the "Lollard Knights" were prestigious men of court;and John of Gaunt was patron of both Chaucer and Wyclif. Appendix applies Wyclif's ideas to Chaucer's poetry: Gent, Truth, Form Age,…

In CT (especially WBT, PardT, CYT, PhyT, SNT, and MLT), Chaucer shares with Wyclif the belief that the Church had lost its miraculous power and its focus on salvation, and he stresses the importance of the individual's role in personal salvation. For…

Gower's "Confessio Amantis" presents Genius's tales as morally simple, although the incest stories stimulate readers to ask moral questions. In MLT, Chaucer represents his narrator as misreading Gower, affecting a simplistically moral stance and…

Surveys commentary on the frontispiece to TC in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, MS 61, and argues that it was commissioned by Henry V as part of his program to promote Lancastrian legitimacy and English vernacular writing.

Fumo compares and contrasts Chaucer's invocation of Apollo in HF to its source in Dante's "Paradiso," arguing that Chaucer shares with Dante a "fundamental interest in defining the poet's role" as a "vessel of prophetic truth." Both poets are…

Simpson explores Chaucer's absorption of and reactions to Continental influences (Latin, French, and Italian), emphasizing the recurrent influence of Ovid as a source and a model. BD is a poem of deference to Gaunt and to French tradition; HF and PF…

Reviews scholarship on Chaucer and London and briefly examines the impact of the Black Death, noting that "the threat of death is everywhere in Chaucer's work." An appendix lists "Recent Studies Treating Chaucer and London."

Suggests that — in light of details of Chaucer's career and of medieval chess-playing — the significance of "fers" in BD 741 may be "threefold," referring to Blanche, to the chess piece, and to "Chaucer himself, the commoner promoted from pawn to…

Reprints Tolkien's assessment of the dialect features of RvT, originally presented to the Philological Society in Oxford (May 1931) and published in the Society's Transactions in 1934. This version is reprinted with attention to Tolkien's marginal…

Item not seen; listed in MLA International Bibliography.

Cautions that familiarity can blunt readers' awareness of the subtleties of satire in GP, recommending renewed attention to the characterization of the pilgrim narrator and differences between this character and "Chaucer the poet" as aspects of…

Traces the history of English from earlier times to Chaucer's age to reveal Chaucer's facility with language, focusing on his powerful and special words. Refers to J. R. R. Tolkien's 1934 lecture to the Philological Society, and claims that Chaucer…

Contrasts Chaucer's storytelling techniques in KnT, MilT, PardT, WBT, MLT, and MerT with those of their sources, contemporary writings, and folk traditions. Uses the approaches of Propp, Bal, Bakhtin, and Frye.

Suggests that Chaucer "creates a persona from his son (Lewis Chaucer) to be the initial audience" of Astr and argues that Chaucer's prose style is pedagogic, written to be easily understood by children.

Both Astr and Equat (if indeed Chaucer's), compared with run-of-the-mill technical writing, show Chaucer to have been a skilled translator and writer, unambiguous and interesting. If Equat is another's, the writer was heavily influenced by Chaucer.