Browse Items (16039 total)

Francis Kynaston's translation of TC in Latin rhyme-royal stanzas was influenced by Henryson's and Shakespeare's depictions of Criseyde. Substantial omissions in Books 4 and 5 of the translation simplify the character and reduce readers' sympathy by…

Comments on Bevan's efforts to represent in a film script various aspects of Chaucer's art in TC: Chaucer's sense of history, the subtleties of his diction, and his "world view."

In TC 5.1095, "publisshed" (contained in five manuscripts) is preferable to "punisshed" (in fourteen manuscripts) because the fourteenth-century sense of "denounced publicly" better suits the immediate context in the poem and the widespread bad…

Considers three groups of ecclesiastical figures in CT, categorizing them by religious role and descriptive technique: 1) members of religious orders (Prioress, Monk, and Friar), who the narrator "damns by faint praise and irony"; 2) servants of the…

Argues that the GP description of "Chaucer's perfect Knight . . . seems carefully constructed to accord with the aims" of a "unified crusade" that was articulated by Philip de Mézières in his proposal to organize an Order of the Passion of Jesus…

Argues that the cuckoo-merlin dialogue in PF deconstructs the traditional human-animal binary by presenting a "fleeting realization of anthropomorphism gone awry." The cuckoo's "brood parasitism . . . resolves itself into a mode of communal profit"…

Twelve essays by various authors who assess Chaucer's uses of and attitudes toward the familiar and the foreign, especially the Mid-East, in SqT (four essays), FranT, CT, CYT, PrT, KnT, LGW, and MLT. Includes ten essays published between 1983 and…

Examines the word "cunning," omission of its sexual connotations in the MED, and the ways in which Chaucer puns on the word in previously unconsidered sexual contexts.

"Balade de bon Conseyl," or Truth, the most popular of Chaucer's short poems, is generally thought to be derived from the Bible and Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy." Out of the twenty-four copies, only in one version does the envoy to "Vache"…

Describes various motifs in MLT, observing that it "includes features common to the early form of the 'märchen' combined with relatively late developments," and claiming that Chaucer's "most important addition to his source," Trevet's "Cronicle," is…

Most critics agree Th parodies Middle English tail-rhyme romances. A regularity of stress, external rhyme, internal alliterations, stanza pattern, and a "bobbing" meter reflect Chaucer's polished craft. While offering an ample measure of "sentence"…

Surveys historical comments on the odor of daisies and suggests that Chaucer's praise of its odor in LGWP may be due to botanical accuracy, unusual because he usually follows literary conventions.

Challenges characterizations of the Wife of Bath that treat her as an icon or as a representative figure. Reads WBP for the ways that it may be regarded as a "modern case history" that reflects a complex personality rife with desires and regrets.

Reconsiders CT as the source of the opening line of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," exploring intertextual relations with the opening of Dante's "Divine Comedy" as well. Also clarifies the importance of Chaucer's role in the English tradition of…

CT responds to Dante's Commedia in a "conscious attempt " to continue its "poetic tradition" of pilgrimage narrative. Chaucer's pilgrims "comment or focus on one or more aspects of the Dantean pilgrimage," and both works define the human image and…

When read "astrolabically" rather than astrologically, the "chronographia" of ParsP is accurate and ripe with spiritual meaning. It was inspired by Dante's presentation of the stars in the "Divine Comedy" and indicates the imminence of Easter.…

Review article on Christine de Pizan's "The Book of the City of Ladies," Amazonian version of Augustine's "City of God."

Characterizes the Monk as the "satiric consummation of all possible monastic faults," analyzing him in light of the "seven points of disciple" of the Rule of St. Benedict (obedience, poverty, celibacy, propertylessness, labor, claustration, and…

Maintains that the characterizations of the Monk in GP and in MkPT are consistent, and attributes their differing tones to the Monk's decision to "change his image" in the eyes of his fellow pilgrims while requiting the Host's derision with the…

Invoking a medieval association of book and body, Prendergast examines the cultural history of Chaucer's remains. The study assesses fifteenth-century attempts to mourn Chaucer's death, traces early modern ambivalence toward the poet's body-as-relic,…

Close comparison of passages in TC and their sources in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" discloses how Chaucer "sets in motion" early in his poem "a train of events whose implications go far beyond the immediate moment, perhaps beyond the love story itself,"…

Identifies a "pray for Chaucer" trope in fifteenth-century commentary on the poet, observing a "metaphor of literary history" that is based in "guild-like community," underpinned by notions of purgatory, intercession, and friendship. Rooted in Thomad…

Review article.

Morris Halle and Samuel J. Keyser, through careful computer analysis, seem to have put down the myth of the hundred-year-hibernation of Chaucer's decasyllabic line. By studying the stresses and their positions in the line, Halle and Keyser have…

Chaucer is more attentive to the noises produced by people and their actions than to those of natural phenomena. He often suggests noises rather than describing them directly. His noisiest passages involve tournaments, chases, and music.