Browse Items (16035 total)

Discusses the artistry of Chaucer's GP portraits: their relationship to contemporary literary expectations and the "conventional medieval portrait," their order, their importance in creating a "sense or 'reality,'" and their "interaction" with…

Examines how Chaucer manipulates the conventions of the "descriptio" in TC, arguing that he capitalizes on its metaliterary potential. Chaucer gives texture to the descriptio of Criseyde by spreading it throughout several portions of the narrative.…

Chaucer is concerned with showing the consequences of the consummation of the love of Troilus and Criseyde as it concerns both characters and narrator. The events following this consummation scene also broadly parallel those in Dante's "Purgatorio"…

Anatomizes Chaucer's uses of the "'ing'-morpheme," arguing that "Chaucer's dialect did not contain a gerund as a normal grammatical device" (even though examples exist) and that English "participles and derived nominal had become phonetically…

The printing history of Chaucer and Lydgate runs parallel until about 1540. After that, only the printing of Chaucer continues, although Lydgate's works are often included in editions of Chaucer or Chauceriana. The 1542 Statute "An Acte for…

Focuses on Chaucer's uses of "this" to "create narrative tone and dramatic meaning" in CT, discussing a variety of examples and exploring metrical, rhetorical, and syntactic features as they help in characterization. Includes comments on the six uses…

Identifies in KnT a "series of metamorphoses that expose the dehumanizing force of Venerian love," arguing that Chaucer converted Boccaccio's "random collection" of animal images into a "formal pattern" and obliquely affirmed the Boethian notion that…

Articulates various "levels of perception" manipulated by Chaucer to create comic irony through his personae in BD, HF, PF, LGW, and CT. The "Chaucerian pose" is relatively constant in the early poems where the narrator is a "reasonable man" (but "no…

Critical attempts to find structural cohesion or unity in CTare misguided. Instead of reading over or past the interruptions, omissions, and inconsistencies of the poem, we ought to recognize that, in many ways, its absences are central to its…

Eleven studies on reception and influence, the shared culture of the two authors, and specific tales. Includes an introduction by Koff and an afterword by David Wallace. For essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Decameron and the Canterbury…

Assesses the "relevance and importance" of the Decameron to the study of CT, considering evidence of Chaucer's knowledge of Boccaccio's work and the ways the two works reflect similar and different "cultural agendas." Comparison of shared motifs and…

Refutes Benson's view (SAC 3 (1981), pp. 77-120) that Ellesmere represents Chaucer's final arrangement of CT. Like Manly and Rickert, Blake thinks there is no Chaucerian order and that after Chaucer's death scribes tried to achieve a satisfactory…

Ishino attempts to unravel enigmatic aspects of PhyT, especially the death of Virginia.

Twelfth-century lyric employs a generalized, nonhistoric "I"; thirteenth-century composition represses this voice in favor of a specific and individualized narrator. BD, though it seems to endorse the latter, actually returns to the songlike,…

Surveys critics who argue that the Wife of Bath murdered her fourth (and perhaps her fifth) husband, compares details of WBP with those of the trial of Alice Kytelar in 1324, and suggests that the Kytelar trial may have influenced Chaucer's creation…

Reads ManT as a "story both of a wife who cuckolds her jealous husband and of a sexually aware trickster [the crow] who uses his knowledge, voice, and wit to gain freedom from his gilded cage." Both the wife and the crow seek freedom, but unlike the…

BD should be given Chaucer's own title (LGW 418): "The Death of Blanche." Chaucer's title is more fitting for a poem of anti-consolation that emphasizes "death's power over the loveliest visions of youth and happiness."

Treats PardPT as parts of a structured sermon against gluttony, gambling, swearing, and "'superbia', pride in its most Satanic form." The revelers and the Pardoner himself are guilty of the latter.

In Wallace's volume dedicated to examining various aspects of the importance of Rome and the Latin language--classical and Christian--in early British culture, this chapter focuses on their roles in theorizing and depicting relations between living…

Historical murder mystery set in 1400, in the months after Henry IV’s usurpation of Richard II’s throne. “Master” Chaucer and Adam are involved with copying Lollard treatises; Matilda, Chaucer’s house-maid, is involved with friar-cum-sleuth…

Resolves the apparent inconsistencies of astronomical dates in GP and MLP by explaining that Chaucer knew of and calculated by means of the "precession of the equinoxes," as is evident in FranT.

Speculates "about the real state of Chaucer's purse in late 1399," examining details of the poem "Purse" and the relative chronology of the poet's life records to conclude that he wrote "Purse" to Henry IV because of actual financial duress.…

Chaucer's acquaintance with Dante and his return from the Italian journey in 1373 provide termini of 1372-74 for Mel. Later, Mel was included among the CT to be narrated by the Man of Law. Finally, it was moved to its place in fragment 7 or B2.

Observes that Chaunticleer's mistaken reference to Macrobius as the author of the "Somnium Scipionis" (7.3124) may suggest that NPT predates PF (i.e., "no later than 1386"), where Macrobius is accurately identified as the author of the "Commentary"…

Absolon's intentions in MilT are uglier and darker than realized by readers who recognize the non-Boethian nature of the tale. Absolon's plowshare, for all its sexual symbolism, is a murderous weapon intended for Alison.