Browse Items (16320 total)

Anthologizes samples of satire from classical to modern literature, arranged by genre (Prose and Drama, Verse, Epigrams), including modernizations (by Nevill Coghill) of FrPT and SumP under Verse. The Foreward (pp. xv-xxxiv) describes the…

An edition of Guillaume de Lorris's portion of "Le Roman de la Rose," with glosses and an Introduction (pp.1-12) in modern French. Includes as an Appendix fragment A (lines 1-1705) of Rom, with glosses and an Introduction (pp.149-51) in modern…

Assesses "Dryden's conception of Chaucer," his poems, and the "purpose guiding" the changes he made while modernizing WBT, KnT, NPT, and the apocryphal "Flower and the Leaf." Also discusses Dryden's "Character of the Good Parson" and "Hind and the…

Explores the nature and function of dream vision in late-medieval English literature, focusing on BD, HF, PF, LGWP, "Pearl" and "Piers Plowman," and commenting on other works. Considers this poetry in light of post-Freudian psychology as well as…

Examines Troilus's two speeches on the "problem of free will and determinism" in TC (4.958-1082 and 3.813-40), observing complex irony whereby readers are led to agree with a perspective, then disagree, and then agree again. Chaucer "affirms both…

Reprints the 1949 edition, with few minor changes and an added "Selected Reading List" (pp. 137-39.)

Considers the theme of common profit in PF and Chaucer's treatment of source material, drawing examples from his uses of Dante and Boccaccio to evince that Chaucer is never an "arido tradittore" (dry translator) but an original poet.

Argues that Gautier Le Leu's "La Veuve" is a source--perhaps an oral source--of the WBP as a dramatic monologue; considers garrulousness, imagery, details of character and background, and marital violence

Argues that the Plague, or Black Death, "stands behind" BD, helping to "give it a shape and a meaning," describing late-medieval attitudes toward death and fortune as described in commentaries on plague.

Records various early modern reactions to Chaucer, particularly his language and style, and explores similarities between Shakespeare and Chaucer, focusing on their stylistic range, and their attitudes toward social class, education, and human…

Describes the "aesthetic implications" of the medieval world view, rooted in Plato's "Timaeus" and based on notions of quantity, ordered hierarchy, and analogy rather than "organic" unity. Developed by Boethius, Macrobius, and Augustine, this view…

Argues that details in WBP indicate that Jankyn, the Wife of Bath's fifth husband, is alive at the time of the Canterbury pilgrimage, even though the Wife is already "seeking for a replacement for him."

Corrects a line number in the citation of CYT in the "OED" definition of "point," and comments on Chaucer's punning use of the term.

Explains the use of "impossible" as a noun in SumT 3.2231, discussing the term as a label for classroom examples of logical sophistry and commenting on Chaucer's familiarity with such academic practice.

Translates a passage from Ramon Llull's thirteenth-century "De les Maravalles del Mon" (also known as "Felix" or "Livre de Meravalles") that has "marked similarities" with the account of the first deception in CYT.

Explores relations among details of the GP description of the Squire (CT 1.94-96), the "Roman de la Rose," and a passage from fragment B of the "Romaunt of the Rose," suggesting that Chaucer influenced the fragment and that the two passages derive…

Explores the "predominant secularity" of Chaucer's "attitude" toward the liturgy in his various references to and uses of ecclesiastical calendars, legendaries (saints' lives, hagiographies, or lectionaries), sacramentals, breviaries, missals,…

Investigates the combination of serious message (the nature of "love-in-the world") and comic method in HF, exploring Chaucer's shifts in narrative stance, his adaptations of Dante, his uses of irony, and the similarities between his methods and…

Traces the legacy of gladly learning and gladly teaching, from Plato's "Timaeus" in Chalcidius's translation through Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose" to the GP description of the Clerk (1.308), also noting the presence of the legacy in the…

Argues that the Clerk is characterized as a "middle-aged scholar and professional logician," distinct among the other clerks of CT for his age (probably "more than thirty and less than fifty years of age") and wisdom, and unique in the GP as a…

Argues that "Malkyn" in MLP (2.30) refers not to a generic "lewd woman" as suggested by W. W. Skeat but to the character Malyne in RvT, Symkyn's daughter, hypothesizing that Chaucer intended to cancel CkPT and follow RvT with MLPT.

Considers "gentilesse" (the "quality that makes human relationships most proper and ennobling") to be the main theme of the "Marriage Group" in CT, commenting on the virtue as it is presented in Mel, NPT, WBPT, ClT, MerT, and FranT, and exploring its…

Describes the commonplace "medieval notion of the hare's sexual peculiarities," locating it in several sources, and explicating its implications when applied to the Pardoner and his staring eyes in GP 1.684.

Argues that Chaucer's "main contribution to English satire" is the "reunification" of "Horace's gentleness, Juvenal's verve, and St. Jerome's moral vision," augmented by his "facile use of the double-entendre" and "his own special combination of…

Presents a late-fifteenth-century analogue to Chaucer's account of Ugolino, titling it "The Legend of Ugolino," found in MS. 6 of the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. Comments on the relation of the "Legend" to Chaucer's version,…