Browse Items (16012 total)

Spenser imitated Chaucer's bumbling narrative stance and tone and employed Chaucerian allusions to feign a humility that dismarmed criticism and enabled him to undercut the Tudor myth. Further, he expected his reader to understand the pretense. …

Treating "impersonated artistry" and "unimpersonated artistry" in light of current theory in the human sciences, Leicester addresses the "dramatic principle" in CT, assuming the position that the "tales are radically voiced." Each is "an expression…

Max Weber's distinction between an "ethics of commitment" and an "ethics of responsibility" can help make the connection between theoretical assumptions and pedagogical practices explicit. An "ethics of commitment" leads to the idea of the teacher…

Assesses how and in what ways "disease of both body and soul" is a recurrent concern in CT, especially in fragment 6 which includes PhyT and PardT. Surmises that the fragment may have influenced Daniel Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year," and…

While depicting love and marriage in the Marriage Group, Chaucer presents the "delights of both the flesh and the soul." The group opens with Mel; WBPT, ClT, and MerT offer extreme but lively views. FranT presents an ideal secular solution, while…

Greenwood contrasts Chaucer's and Malory's uses of models and antimodels in depictions of chivalry and courtly love.

Examines "politeness strategies" (ye/thou) and emotional language in light of genre expectations and characterization. In MilT, MerT, and ShT, wives use various linguistic strategies to manipulate their husbands and others, but the linguistic…

Offers ShT as an example of how the use of fabliaux aids an understanding and exploration of marital dynamics, suggesting that the tale presents the merchant's marriage as a sort of economic contract between equals.

Intellectual backgrounds to the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, with particular attention to literature, classical, and late-classical influences; the concept of the universe and the earth; human physiology and psychology; and cultural…

In TC, Criseyde's appeals to Hector for clarification of her status in Troy suggest that Criseyde seeks a romantic response from Hector rather than the official response she receives. This disappointment acts as a catalyst for future behavior in the…

The marriage agreement in FranT and the Franklin's comment on "maistrie" are not functional parts of the tale, but digressive answers to the Wife, Clerk, and Merchant while obeying the Host's command to "telle on thy tale."

Treats various features of book 5 of TC (lack of proem, several amplifications, various sources) as "apparently gratuitous or insufficiently integrated matter," evidence that Chaucer intended to write his poem in four books but found that he needed a…

Consider "the two quite different versions of the Dido and Cleopatra stories as they appear in the works of major Latin and English poets, beginning with the commissioning of Virgil's "Aeneid" ca. 29 B.C. and carrying through to the publication of…

The apparent "magic" of SqT is explicable via medieval understanding of the rational explanation of marvels. Surveying medieval attitudes toward science and technology, DiMarco argues that the gifts of SqT are presented as scientific objects that…

Explores the relationships between power ("maistrie") and gender in CT as these relationships are reflected in conversation and the dialogue of spouses and lovers in seven Tales: MilT, WBT, ClT, MerT, FranT, ShT, and Mel. Using techniques of…

Small debates turn on method, large debates on content--goals and purposes. Chaucer's BD and the Old English "Solomon and Saturn" are comparable big debates. In BD the Dreamer is converted, not refuted, when he recognizes the "routhe" the Knight…

Surveys the history and state of scholarship on a key concept of fourteenth-century nominalism--the dialectic of divine omnipotence--and its applications to Chaucerian and other Middle English texts. Warns that a view of the "potentia absoluta" as…

Pasolini in his "Canterbury Tales" identifies himself as Chaucer because his central concern is relationship of artist to art, focusing on sexuality and morality. The Merchant's Tale and Wife's Prologue show respectability cloaking lust; the Friar's…

BD and PF shift from "belief to skepticism in Chaucer's attitude toward the three principal ways of arriving at truth--religious experience, written authorities, and revelations of dreams."

Describes the Devonshire manuscript (Ds) and comments on its provenance. Newly identifies a Chaucer fragment in the manuscript (f. 59v) from TC 1.946-52.

It was commonly assumed in the Middle Ages that the devil carried arrows and shot them at his human prey. That the Friar's "yeoman" bears arrows "brighte and kene" (1.1381) is yet another clue that escapes the stupid summoner.

Suggests that in the drama of CT the Summoner's idea of friars residing in Satan's arse (SumP) was prompted by the demon's promise to the summoner in FrT that he would know the devil's "privetee" (3.1637), an echo of the Miller's claim about "Goddes…

Examines the allegorization of Pluto and Proserpine in the "Ovide Moralisé" and argues that it discloses how as figures of "earthly lust" their episode is well integrated into MerT.

Suggests that in FrT the association of the fiend in with the color green may show how exegetical tradition filtered into folklore.

Surveys originary myths in which human females have sex with supernatural beings, focusing on versions of the story of Albina and her sisters, who have sex with demons-incubi and give birth to the giants of Albion. Evans reads the Wife of Bath's…