Browse Items (15542 total)

Introduces Japanese analogues of PardT dating from the seventeenth or eighteenth century, and compares them with their Chinese and Indian ancestors, in order both to hypothesize the genealogies and to trace the change of motifs through transmission.…

Explores parallels of plot and detail found in "Pamphilus de Amore" (or "Pamphilus and Galatee"), "aspects" of the "Roman de la Rose," "parts" of Juan Ruiz's "Libro de Buen Amor," and the first three books of TC, demonstrating that the "'Pamphilus'…

Explores the tension between "solaas" and "sentence" in three features of NPT (its representations of humans and non-humans, its reference to the Uprising of 1381, and its gender politics), investigating the importance of the rhetoric of the Tale in…

Describes how GP reflects "Chaucer's fascination" with social diversity and "bodily variety," and reads MkT as a "verse anthology of disability narratives," using various approaches drawn from disability studies to examine several of the Monk's…

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…

Argues that the "organization and success" of MilT depends upon the "dramatic irony" of tensions between its courtly and common, sacred and profane, and realistic and fantastic elements, exploring such tensions in the signifying names of the…

Asks why Chaucer uses a "Latin masculine name of the month to refer to his very feminine heroine" in MerT, answering that it contributes to the theme of healing in the Tale, much as does Damyan's association with St. Damian, patron saint of healing.

Assesses ManT in light of its sources and analogues to reveal a "tissue of comic devices—of controlled incongruities, of hyperbole, of antiphrasis, of equivocations, allusions, and purposeful distortions" that "produce a parodic version of the…

Considers Chaucer's modifications in Troilus's letter (TC 5.1317-1421) of Boccaccio's original in "Filostrato" and of Beauvau's French translation in "Roman de Troyle et de Criseida," arguing that the changes reflect late-medieval English…

Defines and illustrates the meanings of "limitour" and "limitacioun" as applied to friars in the late Middle Ages, clarifying licensing, territorial jurisdiction, and the authority to beg, preach, and hear confessions. Focuses on documents of the…

Describes the "basic historical method" of KnT as consistent with the "contemporary aristocratic chronicle," showing how Chaucer uses Statius's "Thebaid" to archaize the plot drawn from Boccaccio's "Teseida" and create a world "believable" for his…

Argues that the KnT is "especially suitable for the beginning of the pilgrimage" in CT because it "presents the continual subversion of noble efforts to bring order out of disorder" and because, in comparison with its sources," it poses a "pagan…

Explores the epic elements of KnT and its sources, arguing that in placing love at the thematic center of his poem (replacing traditional political concerns), Chaucer was "attempting to make something entirely new" out of his material. By emphasizing…

Suggests that the "greyn" placed on the clergeon's tongue in PrT 7.662 is, ironically, a "breath sweetener," one of several satiric details observed in the Tale.

Explores the "conflict and friction" of GP as a stand-alone tale, also reading it forward to the following tales and backward from them. Designed for pedagogical use, includes several questions for discussion.

Surveys approaches to reception and interpretation of GP. Reappraises GP’s incompleteness as a symbol for the incompleteness of memory, establishing the beginning of CT as a kind of machinery that "set[s] the roadside drama in motion once again."

Makes clear the anti-clericalism, overt and implicit, in the works of the "Gawain"-poet ("Cleanness," "Patience," "Pearl," and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"), examining the theme in light of contemporaneous polemics. Includes several references…

Introduces the field of "critical animal studies" and assesses the degree to which characters and animals in FrT can be considered to have agency. Designed for pedagogical use, includes several questions for discussion and suggestions for further…

Reads the rocks of FranT as a representation of natural evil, only apparently avoided in the plot, and an opportunity for the operations of both "gentilesse" and unearned providential grace.

Offers the image of unholy clerics as rusted gold in Robert Grosseteste's "Epistolae" as a possible source of the use of the image by Chaucer's Parson in GP 1.500.

Surveys arguments that seek to identify sources and analogues to the claim in KnT 1.1625-26 that neither love nor lordship "likes competition with another of its kind," citing similarities with TC 2.755-56, FranT 5.764-67, and others, and arguing…

Interprets Pandarus's reference to "corones tweyne" (TC 2.1735) as "a highly complex symbol of the two main pillars of mediaeval law and authority--the spiritual and temporal powers of the church and the state," forbidding Criseyde from killing…

Judges ClT to be "more successful than it has been thought" because it is a tale of "idealized obedience" in which Griselda's submissiveness is an "imitation" of Christ's Passion and Resurrection and a demonstration that the human will can achieve…

Offers evidence that the "Chaucerian" astrolabe in the British Museum was constructed in the early fifteenth century, perhaps for Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, and provides "a scenario whereby . . . Chaucer would be exposed to astrolabes with…

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…