Browse Items (16320 total)

Identifies an analogue to the pear-tree episode in MerT, a folktale entitled "Women Always Get Away With It," first published in Puerto Rico in 1915-16 but evidently part of oral tradition.

Debunks tendencies in Chaucer criticism to read "too much into the text," identifying and exemplifying the "realistic fallacy," the "anachronistic fallacy," the "schematic fallacy," the "ideological fallacy," the "didactic fallacy," the "allegorical…

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…

Comments on the sentimental charm of PrT that conflicts with its narrator's "hatred of the Jews," and upon the combination of "touching sentiment" and "mechanical" rhetoric in MLT. Then considers the "poignant emotion" and pathos of ClT as they help…

Argues that Pandarus is "honorable and well-intentioned in each of his three roles" in TC: traditional friend to Troilus, courtly friend to Troilus, and protective and loving kinsman to Criseyde. Chaucer's efforts to "knit together" these sometimes…

Discusses PardPT as a "dramatic monologue, in the form of a sermon," set within a "'fabliau' framework." Identifies the various parts of the sermon structure and explains similarities between the "framework" and Chaucer's other fabliaux, particularly…

Explores the ambiguities of betting terminology and suggests that Pardarus's use of such terminology in TC 4.622 means that he is urging Troilus generally to "take his chances."

Contends that parallels between the "sacrifices" in FranT and two analogous ones found in Jean Froissart's "Chroniques" 2.137-38 encourage us to see the offer of the Franklin's magician to be illusory and worthless while Arveragus's offer of the…

Explores Middle English examples of the word "wombe" to suggest that it may mean genitals as well as belly in MerT 4.2414.

Comments on various aspects of KnT and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (sources, dates, verse forms, etc.), discussing most extensively their uses of rhetorical devices. Finds KnT to be inferior because in it "form dictates to matter" and because…

Explores the "really profound difference" between the Reeve and the Miller, commenting on the Miller's rich characterizations in MilT and the vitality and "kind of justice" that underlies the outcome of his Tale. RvT, conversely, is an unwholesome…

Reads WBPT (with attention to the GP description of the Wife) as a "crucial example" of the way Chaucer "sees the relation between deception and self-deception" and a "median" among the Canterbury pilgrims as a gauge of hypocrisy. Balanced between…

Reads WBT psychoanalytically, exploring its "sexual taboos," its phallic and vaginal significations, and the sexual fantasy that is "at the heart of the story." The tension between authority and submission in the Tale conveys meaning equally well for…

Contrasts the climactic love scenes in Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato" and in TC, considering details, omissions, emphases, and narrative perspectives to argue that Chaucer makes the scene "emotionally, and indeed sexually, more intense" without being…

Reads MLT as a satire on its narrator whose volatile comments on the action of the poem contrast sharply with Constance's own patient acceptance, and characterize him as "anti-Boethian, anti-humanistic, [and] anti-religious," a man interested in…

Suggests that the three books of HF reflect the three medieval "linguistic arts," or trivium, focusing on how book 3 reflects the techniques of logic or dialectic, depicting the pros and cons of fame and "refining it into a philosophic idea." The…

Comments on the tripartite structure of PF, its shifting tone and three styles (religious/philosophical, romantic, realistic), the sad plight of the narrator who is left without love, and the predominance of Nature, the poem's "heroine" who fails to…

Reads Mel as a "moral allegory," identifying where (in relative degrees) Chaucer and his sources encourage peaceable Christian humility and reliance upon on God's aid rather than self-assertive militancy in resisting the world, the flesh, and the…

Explores MkT as a revelation of its narrator, positing a structural arrangement among the individual tragedies and their various depictions of Fortune and interpreting this arrangement as a reflection of the Monk's character and psychology: he…

Studies Chaucer's uses of "gan" and "do" with infinitive forms, tracing the history of the usage in English and providing statistics about Chaucer's uses and their relative chronologies. In Chaucer's works, "gan" is generally periphrastic and used…

Identifies several medieval visual images of a sow playing bagpipes and suggests that the iconography underlies the reference to bagpipes and the two references to a female pig in the GP description of the Miller, helping to characterize him as…

Identifies and transcribes an extended praise of Chaucer as a "pierles poet" (cast as a description of his burial site) found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce MS 290 (90 (Bodl. SC 21864).

Inculdes comments on the "somnium animale" in classical and medieval literature, particularly Chaucer's dream poetry. Explores the possibility that the dream in PF influenced Mercutio's dream of Mab in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."

Suggests that FranT is an exposé of "bourgeois sentimentality," and argues that its "central theme" is the "difficulty of perceiving truth in a world of illusions." Self-deceived, the Franklin mistakes his own desires for reality. He projects a…

Explores the imagery, action, and word-plays of SNPT to show that they are "concerned with the interplay" between the dark, mundane world and the bright heavenly one. In their "werk," both the Second Nun and Cecilia help others to achieve "their full…