Browse Items (16035 total)

Explores how the comic elements of Chaucer's narrative detachment in TC "qualify the tragedy or pathos" of the poem, and how diction, word-play, and five-book structure contribute to its tragicomic impact.

Challenges L. G. Evans' suggestion that TC 4.1585 alludes to Matthew 10.39 (MLN, vol. 74), Baugh arguing that the phrasing is the same as in a common proverb, and Donaldson that the emendation underlying Evans' suggestion ("lyf" for "lief") is…

Identifies several sixteenth-century statements of censorship of romances (one that mentions TC) and describes several early modern "justifications" for the "perennial itch to censor."

Offers a critical edition of Kynaston's "Amorum Troili et Creseide," with attention to his "methods of translating" TC and his "explication of Chaucer's life and artistry."

Suggests that there can be "little doubt" that Chaucer thought the term "vavasour" (GP 1.30, applied to the Franklin) signified "a man noted for hospitality," adducing evidence from Chrétien and other sources.

Investigates the collision between eroticisms and anti-eroticisms in Chaucer's works in which the queer appears. When these two concepts circulate in Chaucer's stories, the characters must confront both their identity-formation and their…

The first Japanese translation of the work with a brief explanatory introduction.

The "basic conception and function" of Absolon in MilT were inspired by Decameron 8.2, which also influenced ShT.

Identifies exegetical details in the characterization of Absolon in MilT, helping to identify the clerk with the sins of avarice, lechery, and pride and showing how he is a parody of Robyn the Miller "in the Miller's own tale."

Questions raised by and through many tales (KnT, Th, Mel, and PardT) and characters (Prioress, Wife of Bath, and Pardoner) disclose Chaucer's composite view of truth. The medieval Christian poet, however, would assume absolute truth to be beyond…

A consideration of the four "Adams" in CT (MkT, Mel, MerT, NPT) clarifies Chaucer's continuously revised sense of the allusive potential of the biblical figure, as well as the changing, expansive meaning within the various "Tales."

Following Aristotle, medieval poets consider poetry a branch of moral philosophy. Whether or not Chaucer knew Boccaccio's own glosses on the "Teseida," he adapts the Italian work to his own treatment of allegorical figures and so justifies Usk's…

Analyzes the epistemology of form as theorized by Boethius, Chaucer, and Kant, particularly in relation to the apprehension of natural beauty. Reads Form Age and For, in the manuscript setting of Cambridge University Library, MS Ii.III.21, as…

Distinguishes between academic and popular versions of Chaucer, defining and discussing various categories of popular intertextuality: adaptations, appropriations, invocations, and citations--diminishing degrees of engagement with original works.…

Examines agency as theme and narrative technique throughout Chaucer's corpus, considering the "multifariousness" of the topic. Agency does not refer exclusively to the human will; it also "embraces innumerable forces that operate interdependently" -…

The final three fragments of CT are united in a purposeful pattern by reference to Jeremiah 6. Allusion to testing and failure suggests the alchemical metaphor, enabling correlations between the particulars of specific pilgrims and the generality of…

Study of wine and ale in CT. In Japanese

Observes that Chaucer's treatment of Alexander in MkT is largely consistent with how Alexander is depicted in fourteenth-century romances and monastic allusions. Suggests that Chaucer declines to condemn Alexander as an unworthy pagan, despite being…

Argues that Chaucer is "constitutionally sensitive" to intellectual realism, preferring sensory experientialism instead. In BD, as in HF and PF, inconclusiveness and tentativeness defer rather than console and encourage a "broader mundane…

MilT 3589-92 alludes to Matt. 5:27-30, where Christ condemns lechery, using the images of hand and eye. Chaucer uses the same imagery to condemn the lecher Nicholas, whose punishment is to be burned a "hand-brede aboute" his "nether ye." The same…

Discusses Chaucer's ambiguous use of words such as "sely," "gentil," and "pite" in LGW, clarifying the gap between efforts to define "good women" and their human weaknesses.

Discusses how and why ambiguity is likely in TC, focusing on the relations between verbal elements such as contiguous structure.

Draws from TC examples of how voice contributes to ambiguity, considering how "suprasegmentals" and various phonetic and prosodic features contribute to voice.

Matthews considers ways of distinguishing between "medieval studies" and "medievalism" (relating the latter to "antimodernism") and assesses how late nineteenth-century American study of Chaucer "problematizes" the terms. The article contrasts…

Pearcy traces the history and literary use of amphibology-'in Chaucer, a statement capable of two interpretations, uttered by a speaker with supernatural or oracular powers to a listener who can perceive only a meaning at variance with the true…