Browse Items (16012 total)

Addresses the importance of storytelling, and the "sheer power of narrative" in CT. In particular, argues that CT is "not an allegory," and that Chaucer plays with time by putting ParsT and Ret at the end, which reinforces the fact that "there is…

Argues that "completion is not essential to the meaning or value of romance in the Middle Ages" in discussing works by Chrétien as well as SqT, Th, and "the dynamic of opening and closing" of KnT.

Interprets the biblical allusions and references in MerT as Chaucer's invitation to his audience to "consider the ethics of appropriating morally authoritative texts." The narrator, January, and May manipulate textual authority in various ways,…

Fumo reads Criseyde as someone "who does not believe in love" and perhaps "does not believe at all," a representation of fourteenth-century epistemological concerns "reanimated in the context of a Petrarchan psychology of enamourment." Criseyde's…

In TC, as in CT, Chaucer plays with genre, first postulating it and then blurring the reader's expectations of what it will do. Readers are forced to question the value of "Art as an interpreter of Life."

Sixteen essays by different authors, one on the Old English dual pronoun, thirteen on Middle English (Chaucer, Langland,and the Pearl poet), one on the reception of Gower by Ben Johnson, and one on the scholar Elizabeth Elstob (1683-1756). For eight…

Since in his most carefully completed poems Chaucer avoids or undercuts any full thematic resolution, it is unlikely that the missing conclusion of HF would explain away the dynamic tensions of the poem. Probably the most inconsequential of the…

Considers manuscript variants of MkT and NPP, historical contexts of various details, and the dramatic effectiveness of the interruption that bridges the two. Argues that the so-called "Modern Instances" should conclude the Monk's sequence of…

HF demonstrates metaphorically the unreliability of the transmission of knowledge. Chaucer makes the point by abruptly cutting off the authority figure at the end.

In ManT, Chaucer intentionally thwarts his narrative skills, thus creating an "anti-tale" or a "farewell to his book." Providing "images of linguistic destructions," the tale prepares for the Parson's new direction in language and thought.

At NPT 7.3445, the referent for "my lord" is Christ.

Explores the "literary value" of Chaucer's "pretended inferiority complex on the subject of poetry," commenting on the "modesty convention" (or humility topos) in the GP description of the Prioress, the moralization of NPT, the question of Providence…

TC is vindicated as a finished work of art, as complete in terms of the clarity and proportion that constitute its beauty. Chaucer's poetic allusion to Dante's "Paradiso" 14.28-30 is cited as an apt ending, and Morgan stresses the appropriateness of…

Explores a variety of practices and meanings associated with Pentecost in Chaucer's time as context for a nuanced understanding of responses to SumT, especially its ending, which parodies the feast. In addition to traditional iconography, dramatic…

Explores Chaucer's play "with the very concepts of finished and unfinished" in CT, surveying the ends of several tales and Ret. Suggests that Chaucer's sense of an ending distinguishes him from modern sensibility.

Briefly surveys the tradition in which sight and the many-eyed Argus were figures of either intellectual perception or deception. For Chaucer, in KnT, MerT, WBP, and TC, Argus "typifies a common failing in men"--their inability to comprehend truly…

Chaucer, in TC, and the Gawain poet "understate" the prowess of their heroes and emphasize the negative aspects of courtly love. The heroes fail to realize their chivalric ideals--Troilus, because he is vulnerable to Criseyde's inconstancy; and…

Alphabetical dictionary of people, places, institutions, and events of the Middle Ages; the entry on Chaucer (p. 116) summarizes his life and works and comments on his dependence on Boccaccio.

Presents over 600 entries on texts, critical debates, methodologies, cultural and historical contexts, and terminology on British literature from the fifth to the sixteenth century. Represents all medieval literatures, including Chaucer, and presents…

Testing the premise of A. C. Spearing's "Textual Subjectivity" (2005), Klitgård explores the dramatic monologues of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner and uses of narrative personae.

Summarizes medieval attitudes toward dreams and traces their roots in the Bible and classical tradition, emphasizing their prophetic qualities. Then discusses dream vision conventions and their uses in "Pearl," "Piers Plowman," and several shorter…

Reads MLT as a "thought experiment" in which the topos of the ship (familiar in both romance and political/legal philosophy) is used to confront the "conflict of laws" among the various cultures represented: Christian, Islamic, and pagan. With ClT,…

Medieval literature utilizes landscape symbolism for both positive and negative emotional effects. The article touches on KnT, FranT, BD, and medieval lyrics.

Pask develops a distinct genre from Foucault's formulation of an "author-function": the life-and-works narratives that emerge in the historical perceptions of readers of Chaucer, Sidney, Spenser, and Donne.

Prints eight previously published essays with a new introduction, all pertaining to the influence of bureaucratic and literary language on the standardization of English. Chronicling the development of Fisher's idea that standard written English…