Browse Items (16035 total)

Hostile propositions about the friars ("antifraternalism") in polemical tracts, works of theology, and literary fictions belong to a common literary tradition that began with the polemics against the friars of William of Saint Amour, with arguments…

Those similarities to Lollard doctrine--protest against blasphemy, unwillingness to "curse for tithes," and distaste for storytelling--that have been used to argue that Chaucer's Parson was a Lollard or Wycliffite were not peculiar to the Lollards;…

Compares the antisemitism in the three works, describing the Jews of PrT as "an undistinguished mass with no face, and no individuality, a mass that can instinctively react, if given a chance, against their Christian neighbour"; they are less…

Argues that along with works by Langland and Gower, Chaucer's writings, especially CT, may be read as an indirect critique of crusading.

Questions why "The Assembly of Ladies" has been in print for so long and explores the role of its anonymity in its publishing history. Addresses its attribution to Chaucer, affiliations with the corpus of his works, and surmises about female…

Explores human affiliations with the "non-power" of animals in four Chaucerian images: capons in PardT, mouse in WBP (in contrast with lioness), stags in KnT, and carrion in ClT. Contrasts these with the brass steed as an image of power in SqT.

Tallies Chaucer's depictions of hunting in BD, LGW, and FranT, and argues that these, in contrast with other works in Middle English, show a "marked lack of sympathy for animals as quarries."

Explores the "double-contextual development" of characters and their actions in beast tales and beast fables, investigating double meanings (animal and human) in such narratives. Includes discussion of how NPT follows the Renart tradition in this…

Argues that the category of "allegorical animal poems" disguises the fact that such poems "simultaneously hide and reveal the contested nature of the boundary between humans and animals." Comments on fable tradition, the nature of allegory, and…

For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Anglo-Scottish Border and the Shaping of Identity under Alternative Title.

Edits and translates a hitherto unknown Anglo-Norman analogue to PrT. The "Hugo de Lincolnia" is the only vernacular version of the story of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln produced contemporaneously with Chaucer's hagiographical tale.

Demonstrates that John Lydgate's modifications of his sources in his "Troy Book" result in a "convincing picture of the ancient world," although Lydgate did not achieve the superior historical texture that Chaucer produced in KnT.

Brook suggests that Sir Paon de Ruet may have been "a cadet of the family of the Lords of Roeulx" and part of the entourage of Philippa of Hainaut. He was probably born about 1309.

Dawkins uses the frame-and-tale structure of CT to organize a series of excurses on evolution and the development of biological life. Recurrent references to Chaucer and CT, with brief discussion on evolutionary biology as a model in the Canterbury…

Charts the development of the dreamer in BD from concern with abstract grief to concern with real grief and from selfishness to concern for others; this progress effects "a detailed anatomy of compassion" that encourages compassion in Chaucer's…

The Basata people of Zaire have a tale called "Mesapo" that strongly resembles PardT although it was not influenced by Chaucer's work.

Medieval allegory "prefigures cinematic consciousness." In Wegener's film "Der Golem," "Judaeo-Christian figural allegory, coupled with the narratology and the phenomenology of film," shifts "the deep past into the present in centrifugal, shocking,…

Transmission of ancient Greek and Roman culture through Ovid to later tradition affected romance and shaped attitudes in popular literature. Heyworth discusses works by Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Chaucer (with emphasis on politics in the…

Explores the combination of religion and secularity in ClT, discussing its fusion of ideals and practical realities as Chaucer's means to increase the ambivalences of his sources. The tension between the Clerk's moralization of the Tale and its…

Adjustments to the traditional narrative in ClT compel us to read Walter, Griselda, and the "peple" as complex characters, rich in ambiguity, in a setting that "moves between an ideal and real world" (27). These complications enrich the simple…

Investigates various characterizations of Greeks in Old French and Middle English, including that of Diomede in TC, a depiction "informed by classical ideas and Chaucer's depictions of Jews and Saracens in other works." Troilus, in contrast, is…

Nakao assesses the use of "as she that" as it is applied to Criseyde, identifying the unusually high frequency of the phrase in TC, its various functions and semantic range, and the way that Chaucer exploits this variety "to hold in balance his…

Examines the "highly contrived" allegory of Hans Holbein's painting, "The Ambassadors" (1533), assessing its religious theme as conveyed through evocations of "astronomy and geometry, optics and various occult arts." Also argues that the painting…

Manuscript evidence indicates that only after Chaucer's death did editors assemble copies of individual tales and links to arrange the fragments (reflecting various stages of development in Chaucer's plan) into their differing ideas of a coherent…

The large amount of alliteration in narrative and lyric poetry of the courtly tradition, including Chaucer's poetry, is derived from certain veins of devotional prose of the thirteenth century.