Browse Items (15542 total)

Argues that MerT reflects delusive male infantile fantasy, reading January as ego, Placebo as id, Justinus as super-ego, and May as an idealized mother figure. The Merchant's encomnium of marriage and Damain's courtly behavior are extensions of…

The use of "gnof" to describe John the carpenter is appropriate because it suggests "churl" and "numbskull" and further emphasizes the "ease with which John is hoodwinked."

Questions the gloss of "gnof" (MilT 3188) in major editions of CT. In all of medieval literature, the word appears only here, and it cannot be elucidated from the context. The editor's gloss ("churl") is inconsistent with the behavior of John, whom…

The glossing of "gnof" as "churl" to describe John the carpenter is misleading, for John is characterized as a "caring, concerned man."

Williams examines historical and cultural links between England and Portugal during the Middle Ages as well as circumstantial links between Chaucer and Fr. Hermenegildo de Tancos, author of "Orto do esposo," speculating on similarities between PardT…

The Parson's attribution of a statement on the Crucifixion to Saint Augustine has never been identified; it may be a "Freudian slip," or it may originate in Augustine's detailed discussion of prelapsarian v. postlapsarian sexuality ("The City of God"…

In SNP the identification of "ydelnesse" as a diabolical agent anticipates the dramatic rejection of pagan images later in the tale.

A feminist reading of the Wife of Bath's personality and behavior, focusing on her married life, her sexual attitudes, and linguistic usage.

Comments on the conventional nature of the imagery and diction of Ros and argues that the poem was composed to "compliment" and "delight" the child-bride of Richard II, Princess Isabelle of Valois, on the occasion of "her entry into London in 1396."

Praises the stylistic appropriateness of Astr to its youthful audience, showing how Chaucer adapts the lexicon, syntax, and rhetoric of Massahalla to be more suitable to his ten-year-old son, Lewis. Chaucer relies on native rather than Latinate…

A Modern English translation in rhyme royal stanzas, based primarily on F. N. Robinson's text.

Discusses various critical readings of TC 3.1093 and suggests that the line should be read "at once ironically and without irony."

Comments on the portentousness of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and on the moon as the cause of the rainstorm in TC 3.624-28, when Criseyde decides to stay at Pandarus's home.

Suggests that Pandarus's phrase "ye haselwodes shaken" (TC 3.890) might be paraphrased as "you offer food to pigs."

Calchas's speech at the beginning of book 4 extends and enlarges the perspective of the narrative grown increasingly narrow during the course of books 1-3. Whereas in TC 1-3 the lovers are portrayed as increasingly confined--both spatially and…

Reads TC allegorically, with sustained attention to astrological imagery, characterization, narrative structure, the biblical Book of Daniel, and the Augustinian theme of the transference of power.

Through his poetic wit Chaucer makes Criseyde resemble a religious, even Christ. These suggestions add to the irony of the love.

Criseyde's sexually charged endearments for Troilus in bk. 3 of TC provided amusement for Chaucer's contemporary audience, adding new dimensions to Criseyde's character.

Four puns not previously uncovered in the poem are "astoned" (5.1728), "inne...oute" (5.1519), "in armes" (2.165), and "ese" (2.1659). The last three have sexual suggestiveness.

Criseyde's garden and Pandarus's home are integrated symbolically with the theme of mutability in TC. Both sites display Pandarus's dream of circumventing mutability and figure his attempts as a go-between to shape an unchanging earthly union in the…

Reads KnT and TC as "tales of fortune's fools" in which the traditional themes of romantic love and knightly chivalry are undercut by verbal play and the trivialization of notions of pity, mercy, grace, and love.

Chaucer plays on his audience's awareness that Boccaccio (not Lollius) is the true source of TC; he also engages in similar play between the pagan setting of the poem and its Christian message.

Tallies John Keats's early references and allusions to TC in his letters to Fanny Brawne and assesses how his lyric "What can I do to drive away" follows Chaucer's poem in representing the "rhythmic experience of pain passing into sweetness and…

Schowerling investigates the influence of Chaucer's TC on four writers of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Writers and works discussed include Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," Sidnam's paraphrase of TC, Shakespeare's "Troilus and…