Browse Items (16038 total)

If Chaucer intended to turn Boccaccio's "Teseida" into a chivalric romance, he did not succeed, "but if his purpose was to make the frequently banal conventions and optimistic outlook of that genre play an ironic counterpoint to the tale's bleak…

Despite the tenets of "dramatic theory" from Kittredge to modern times, the links between the pilgrims and their tales are not reliable bases on which to build valid literary criticism. Not the psyches of the pilgrims but the different styles of the…

Studies the "meaning of the dream-poems," exploring Chaucer's concerns with the "nature and causes" of dreams, the importance and role of imagination, tensions between courtly and commonplace ideals, and the "contest" between "authority and…

Edits Book of the Duchess, House of Fame, Parliament of Fowls,and portions of Legend of Good Women (G-version Prologue and Dido), providing an introduction, bottom-of-the-page glosses and commentary, selected source material, and textual notes for…

Japanese translation of BD, HF, and PF, based on Robinson's and Skeat's editions.

The chief French sources and analogues of Chaucer's four dream poems, presented here in translation, are brought together for the first time. Included are Machaut's "Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne," Froissart's "Paradys d'amours," Jean de Conde's…

Examines the philosophical content of Chaucer's dream visions--the interplay between the soul and its courtly context--arguing that in Chaucer's world, the ideal of courtesy rather than any explicitly spiritual principle holds together a fictive…

Sixteen essays by various authors on BD, HF, PF, LGW, and the short poems. Fifteen are reprints or excerpts from longer works published between 1948 and 1994. Includes a brief introduction to each of the poems (and the section on the short poems), a…

Chaucer's dream visions reveal him as immersed in a literary quarrel of ancients and moderns. His iconoclasm is restrained in BD and HF, but he mocks the artificiality and decadence of contemporary love poetry in PF and LGWP.

Applies Joseph Frank's theory of "spatial form" in the modern novel (forms in which meaning is created through simultaneity and juxtaposition rather than through linearity and causation) to BD, PF, and HF. Examines particularly the use of myth (Seys…

Chaucer's reference to "ferses twelve" in BD remains a tantalizing problem. He may have been thinking of a non-standard version of chess, such as the Courier game, which includes twelve pawns; or the narrator may be thinking of draughts. In any case,…

Explains the association of the eagle and air (as the medium of sound) in HF by identifying a number of iconographic affiliations of eagles with air in medieval depictions of the four elements. Includes 6 b&w illustrations

Considers the eagle of HF "in the light of medieval expositions of the soaring eagle as an image of the flight of thought," focusing on the bird as an "intellectual symbol" and its flight as an "act of contemplation" as seen in Gregory's "Moralia in…

In having the Eagle retell the story of Phaethon from Ovid and from medieval interpretations of Ovid, Chaucer oversimplifies and creates conflicts or deficiencies of meaning; this allusive and contradictory treatment of literary tradition in HF…

Argues that both Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun--and their "respective 'poetics'"--are "at issue" in BD 321–34 (where the "Roman de la Rose" is named), and in GP 725–46 ("Chaucer's Apology"). These evince Chaucer's deep, sophisticated, and…

MkT is very likely a virtually unrevised early poem, the first to be written after Chaucer's return from Italy in 1372 and his first collection of stories. As such, it deserves a separate existence, as Chaucer's early poem 'De casibus vivorum…

Studies how imagery contributes to theme and operates at an element of structure in BD, HF, PF and TC: light and dark imagery in BD, acoustic imagery in HF, natural versus courtly love in PF, and the contrast of fortune's wheel and celestial light in…

Examines how Chaucer's early poems (i.e., those written before 1380) engage the conventional forms, techniques, and themes of French and Italian models, enriching them via "humour and realism" and applying them to "new uses." His innovative…

The success of Chaucer's early translations from French cannot be attributed solely to his knack for finding the "mot juste" or to his "good ear" for English idiom. He drew on the native English poetic tradition for visual concreteness and…

Considers BD, ABC, Pity, and HF to be Chaucer's "Edwardian" poetry, produced when he was closely associated with the royal family--first with the households of Elizabeth of Ulster and her husband, Prince Lionel, and then with the king's household.

Explores the relationship between reality and romance in KnT, comparing the Tale's presentation of details and ideals with those found in Froissart's "Chronicle," and arguing that the Knight operates with the "assumptions of chronicle history" and…

Suggests that the "Ovide Moralisé" (14.827-30) is the "probable source" of the reference to Elysium in TC 4.789-90.

While six Middle English terms of emotion are in some measure coterminous - "onde," "affect," "mood," "spirit," "passioun," and "affeccioun" - only the latter two closely approximate modern usage. "Passioun" connotes a state of being acted upon;…

The end of PF shows a flagging of spirits; the end of TC is complex and self-reflexive. Although several early poems indicate that Chaucer could not think of an ending or that he lost interest, ABC is notable as a return to the beginnings.

An introduction to the social, political, and intellectual history of Chaucer's age, aimed at a general audience. Individual chapters pertain to fourteenth-century England and its relations with the Continent, social hierarchy, "cracks" in the social…