Browse Items (15542 total)

Discusses the problematic nature of relating late-medieval nominalism to Chaucer's literary texts. Chaucer's representation of philosophizing clerks suggests that he took a dim view of such figures of contemporary life, whom he tended to portray as…

Chaucer's punning in ShT is complex, some puns depending upon the eye ("tale," "tallynge") and others upon the ear alone. The Shipman imports into English a foreign form (the fabliau) and foreign (especially French) financial words "that hadden…

Frequently used in ParsT, colloquial anaphora enhances the homiletic style in such repetitious expressions as "Now Comth...," "Look forther...," "Certes...," and "Soothly,...."

Surveys scholarly discussion of Chaucer's sources for his extrapolatory glosses in Bo, arguing that he was indebted to "some version of the Remigian glosses," to Jean de Meun's "livres de confort," and to a complete version of Nicholas Trevet's…

Comments on discussions of Chaucer's Purse that relate the poem to Lancastrian politics, offering further corroboration that Purse is subversive.

Documents that compounding was an active process of word formation in Middle English, tabulating Chaucer's compound words and showing that he favored combinations of two Old English nouns rather than combining a noun with another word form or Old…

Covenants, a pervasive theme in CT, may bind guest and host, ruler and subject, spouses, kin, or God and humanity. The covenant supports a willingly assumed hierarchy, a model for order; yet these bonds may be reversed.

Explores the attitudes toward death depicted in ABC, Purse, HF, and Bo, and studies CT for evidence of what Chaucer's own opinion of death may have been.

Surveys background to Chaucer's idea of nature; identifies his uses of nature as a personification of divine ordinance, as in PF; and argues that Chaucer anticipates modern naturalism when he does not personify nature, as in KnT.

Chaucer's Nature, when the term is explicitly used, is an "idee fixe" essentially based on the orthodox medieval conception. The writer, however, examines the interest and attitude with which Chaucer represented the various aspects of humanity, and…

Correale traces allusions to Lamentations 1.12 in Marian "planctus" tradition, arguing that appeals for sympathy linked to Mary underlie Constance's prayer to the Virgin in MLT.

Notes that the account of the Princess of Apulia found in some versions of the "Gesta Romanorum" has parallels with the biblical account of Jonah and with MLT, which alludes to Jonah.

Constance is not the passive ninny she has been accused of being. She possesses a presence which demands and receives forcible response; she moves in her world with self-sufficiency; her virtue is heroic; her ability to accept what God sends gives…

Constance is not, as Delany (1974) claims, a character who embodies and recommends self-degradation and abject submission to power in all its forms. What is important is that Constance discovers in the course of her experience that Providence, not…

Diffident comparisons point out the "Englishness" of both Chaucer and Langland (though Chaucer gives us little of London city life, his limits being Dartmouth, Strother, Oxford, and Cambridge). Bennett discusses the down-to-earth tones, association…

Explores the affinities and "common sympathies" between William Langland and Chaucer, including their "Englishness," their views of religion and virtue, their shared sense of human variety, and the possibility that Chaucer may have read "Piers…

Through study of Machaut's 'dits', we begin to get a sense of what Chaucer saw in Machaut's work. In addition to appreciation of his style, Chaucer must have recognized in Machaut's constant theme--human love, rightly and wrongly ordered--a sense of…

Considers the conflict between "authority," which is based on higher culture, and "experience," characteristic of folk mode, emphasizing the significance of "game in ernest" in CT. "Game" derives from the festive storytelling contest.(In Japanese).

Traces Chaucer's increasingly creative use of sources and development as a poet: his treatment of French materials in Rom, BD, and HF; his use of Dante in BD and HF; his adaptation of Boccaccio in Anel, PF, and TC; and his own developing,…

Classifies French conversational loan words (A-D) in CT by frequency, grammatical nature, and date of first occurrence. Only thirty-nine words are used first by Chaucer, who innovates less than previously thought.

Cites echoes of FranT in Shakespeare's "The Tempest" as evidence of Chaucer's influence, focusing on the "generous view of diminished art" in both.

Chaucer defines the "up-so-doun" world using three devices: dramatized "impossibilia" (the rhetorical expression of a passionate conviction believed to be an impossibility), role reversal (involving a triumph of the weaker over the stronger), and…

Identification of the source, 1 Samuel 6, of "Truth, a "poeme a clef," leads to the question of how allegorical interpretations of a medieval exegete could impinge on the poet's life and work. Emphasizing medieval name lore (onomastics), the author…

The Cook's association of delight with being "clawed...on the bak" probably alludes to medieval practices of hospitality.

The headdress, cloak, and jewelry of the Prioress, correct or appropriate according to fourteenth-century views, conflict ironically with her character.