Browse Items (15544 total)

Describes and critiques a number of the paratextual notes and hard-word glosses that Thomas Speght included in his editions of Chaucer's works, noting many inaccuracies, but also demonstrating Speght's efforts to clarify words and references for his…

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…

Chapter 12 opens with an introduction to Chaucer's life and works, followed by appreciative commentary on CT as a comedy that is "social, not divine." Includes "Questions for Study and Discussion" on CT generally, and focused questions on KnT, MilT,…

Reprints twenty-sex selections/excerpts from previous criticism, seventeen pertaining to CT, four on TC, two on LGW, and one each on BD, HF, and PF.

Surveys major British and American writers from Chaucer to Dylan Thomas. Praises Chaucer for his lively characterizations and his "variety and vitality" of narration, with particular attention to CT, but including commentary on the poet's life and…

Explores paradoxes of thematic and structural order in KnT--the "mechanical" ups and downs of Fortune, the narrator's control, the human order of design and progression, accumulative resonances of Boethian material, and the "logic, justice, and order…

Explores nuances of medieval "wild" and "hare" to clarify Chaucer's "joke" about Thopas's hunting in Th 7.755-56.

Explores unanswered questions about Chaucer's knowledge of Petrarch and use of Petrarchan material in TC 1.400-420 and in ClT, focusing on close reading of Chaucer's "deviations" from Petrarch's Sonnet 132 in his translation of it in TC, with…

Provides textual evidence to confirm that the three portions of the Middle English Rom--A, B, and C--derive from different manuscript groupings of their French source, the "Roman de la Rose," corroborating arguments that the three portions were…

Argues that the "citole" held in Venus's right hand in KnT 1.1959 evinces the influence of "the 'Ovidius moralizatus' of Petrus Berchorius (Pierre Bersuire)," and explores the possibilities of other influences on the depictions of Venus in KnT and in…

Explores resonances between the characterization of Chaucer's Prioress in GP and the life and legend of St. Eligius, clarifying how the Prioress's swearing by "Seint Loy" (i.e., Eligius; GP 1.120) is both appropriate and highly ironic.

Observes that NPT differs from most of its cock-and-fox analogues "in its explicit, reiterated warning against flattery," a traditional feature of, instead, "fox-and-crow" tales. Also, the explicitness of the moral in NPT is a "convention…

Exemplifies how several features of the characterization of Chaunticleer in NPT are "firmly grounded in medieval natural history," particularly his "uxoriousness, regal pride, and choleric temperament," as well as his connections with preaching, all…

Identifies a series of analogues to the book-burning episode in WBP 3.816 in eastern versions of the "Seven Sages" (or "Books of Sindibad"), identifying similarities and differences between them and Chaucer's account, and suggesting that oral…

Reviews J. A. W. Bennett's 1957 book "The Parlement of Foules: An Interpretation," exploring the weaknesses and strengths of his critical methodology and application.

Compares Chaucer's version of Hermengyld's miracle in MLT 2.554-74 with analogous passages in Trevet's and Gower's versions of the Constance story, suggesting that one stanza is missing from Chaucer's account, perhaps due to scribal error.

Analyzes the dialect forms and textual variants of the "Tale of Gamelyn" in four of the twenty-five CT manuscripts that contain it (Ha4 Cp La Pw), arguing that, in "Gamelyn," these manuscripts evince a textual tradition and editorial practice which…

Suggests that several details of the Wife of Bath's chiding of her elder husbands (WBP 3.257-62) derive, ultimately, from Isidore of Saville's "Etymologiarum."

Describes several "difficulties" in the close reading of medieval poetry, and then examines complex "interplay between the real and apparent plots" of "Pity," reading the addressee as both a Lady and as an abstract emption, and tracing shifting…

Explores relations between medieval romance and medieval religious drama, focusing on the "woman cast adrift" motif in the Digby Mary Magdalene play. Assesses how contrasts between the protagonists' agency in the play and in versions of the Constance…

Parodies more than eighty works, most from the western literary canon, in strings of 140-word "tweets," with an Introduction, Glossary, and Index. Includes CT (pp. 184-85) in seventeen tweets, with emphasis on GP, WBP, and MilT, and touches of faux…

Corroborates and extends Carleton Brown's effort to show (in 1937) that the MLH was intended to introduce the first story in the CT, exploring evidence and counter-evidence for positing an "original opening sequence" as follows: GP, MLH, Mel, MLE,…

Argues that "gentilesse" is the main concern of SqT, linked to the sub-themes of integrity, mercy, education, truthful rhetoric, youthfulness, and social class.

Tabulates and assesses the uses of singular "ye" and "thou" in CT, considering usage norms, rhyme patterns, and scribal variants, and identifying patterns of high incidence of "incorrect" usage in CYPT, KnT, WBP, and Mel, while ParsT is also highly…

Critiques attempts to modernize Chaucer's verse for the sake of the "common reader," preferring Augustan "imitations" to twentieth-century renderings in verse or prose, but finding them all to be relatively dull and incapable of replicating Chaucer's…