Browse Items (16012 total)

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.

Identifies the "characteristics" of Chaucer's prose style in Bo, Mel, ParT, and Astr, comparing and contrasting them, and arguing that his reputation as a prose stylist has suffered because of linguistic changes and changes in taste.

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.

Smith traces various threads of Chaucer's relationships with English poetic tradition: GP and Langland's "Piers Plowman"; Th and native romance; echoes of Sir " Orfeo"; alliterative verse in Chaucer; and the complex concerns of native tradition,…

Focuses on nineteenth-century critical attention to Chaucer as childlike, simple, or fresh for the ways that it contributed to later inattention to Chaucer as a religious poet, particularly inattention to Chaucer as an English Catholic poet. Examines…

Richmond studies British and American adaptations of Chaucer's CT for children, from Charles Cowden Clarke's "Tales from Chaucer in Prose" (1833) until World War I. She examines the selections and adaptations of the Tales and the accompanying…

Impressionistic survey of four Catholic motifs in the CT: the journey of Everyman, fate versus free will, marriage as a sacrament, and the Stoic notion of the "nobleness of man," considering them for the ways that, in Chaucer's presentation, they…

Examines the words "drinke" (TC 2.651), "dwale" (RvT 4161), "pervynke" (Rom 1432), and "herber" (TC 2.1705) and passages in CYT, NPT, KnT, and MerT, maintaining that Chaucer displays ample knowledge of medieval herbal lore.

Discusses iconography and pilgrimage, and Chaucer's investments in and depiction of the "power of images" through tales of CT, including GP, PrT, and PardT. Argues that "Chaucer demonstrates that devotional images . . . are inherently polymorphous…