Browse Items (16012 total)

Traces the legacy of gladly learning and gladly teaching, from Plato's "Timaeus" in Chalcidius's translation through Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose" to the GP description of the Clerk (1.308), also noting the presence of the legacy in the…

Posits that John of Salisbury's "Policraticus" is the source of the closing comment of the GP description of the Clerk (GP 1.308); "gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche."

Treats the theme of "gentilesse" in ClT as a response to its presence in WBT, arguing that it helps to characterize the Clerk, underlies Walter's decisions, and encouraged Chaucer to choose "precisely this legend for exactly this spot" in CT.…

Reads details of ClT as evidence of the Ckerk's pedagogical skills in his efforts to instruct the Wife of Bath and others.

Bakhtinian approach to the sketch of the Clerk: there is an intricate dialogue between the latter and the narrator. The facts behind the story and the way it is told reveal much about Chaucer's complex personality.

The Clerk's dismissal of Petrarch's opening "descriptio" is ironic--for the "king of rivers" would be understood by knowledgeable pilgrims to signify rhetorical powers and divine wisdom. In fact, the Clerk deploys a full range of rhetorical figures…

The Clerk and T. S. Eliot's title character in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" share intellectual interests. In addition, both are "caught" between the external and the internal, both are reluctant to speak, and both speak allusively.

Examines several medieval notions of testing and promise-making, arguing that in ClT the Clerk makes fun of naive "essentialist" allegory. Haines reads wit and sarcasm in Griselda's tone at the "portentous" line 666 and suggests that this tone helps…

Mitchell examines the polyvalent meanings of ClT and reflects on the processes of moral deliberation and the polarities that possible meanings represent. The Tale invites us to think hard about the nature of moral thinking.

Bodden reads ClT as Chaucer's deconstruction of the violence of hagiography. Plot and purported allegory clash in the Tale, and Walter is concerned not with Griselda's obedience but with her outward show. Virtue without will is no virtue at all. The…

Goodwin explores the practical problems of source study - terminology and the constraints of publication - in relation to ClT. Comments on Boccaccio's and Philippe de Mézières' Griselda stories as "sources of invention" for Chaucer's version.

Surveys Chaucer's seven clerks (Nicholas and Absolon of MilT, John and Aleyn of RvT, the clerk of FranT, Jankyn of WBP, and the Clerk), describing the extent to which the characterizations accord with or echo what is known of "fourteenth-century…

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…