Browse Items (15542 total)

Chaucer's LGW testifies to the disparate views of women prevalent in the Middle Ages. A complex medieval notion of Woman informs the structure of the poem: in the prologue, Chaucer praises conventional ideas of female virtue, while in the legends…

Assesses the anatomical deficiencies of Emelye of KnT and Cecilia of SNT as samples of one medieval model of lesbian sexuality.

Verse translations of all of Chaucer's poetry, with the exceptions of CT, TC, and Rom, based on Skeat's edition and arranged in his chronology. Each translation follows Chaucer's verse form and is preceded by a one-page foreword that comments on…

TC shows Chaucer's ambivalence about the language of courtly love; he uses it denotatively with romantic meaning yet reveals its duplicity through Troilus's idealism, Diomede's cynicism, Pandarus's manipulativeness, and Criseyde's combined sincerity…

Surveys the sources of Chaucer's lists and examines them for the effects they create, for the rhetorical ends they accomplish in undermining or leavening the direction of a tale or poem, as in TC, Anel, FrT, Rom, WBT, PardT, MkT, MkPT, MerT, Mel,…

Analyzes Chaucer's notion of tragedy in TC against the background of classical and medieval conceptualizations of the genre and Chaucer's own rewriting of sources.

Chaucer self-consciously makes the reader aware of the achievement of the writer, of the reader as reader, and of the intelligent response he is asking the reader to make. All three point to Chaucer's fascination with the power of language as a key…

Looking at BD, HF, and PF, Robinson examines Chaucer's relations to his masters and his dilemma in connecting books and imagination with actual life, in creating puzzles for the demands he felt "of the poetry of the poem." Chaucer's dreamscapes are…

Hewitt studies BD, HF, and PF with reference to Chartrian allegorists and the "Roman de la Rose," using theories of Heidegger, Derrida, and Lacan.

Explores Chaucer's literary self-consciousness by tabulating and analyzing his wide-ranging and complex variety of literary terms, including terms that describe the process of writing and the impact of literature, as well as terms of genre, rhetoric,…

Examines the topoi of "game" versus "ernest" and "authority" versus "experience" in Chaucer's works, considering the influence of medieval rhetorical tradition on the poet's imagination.

Chaucer involves his readers in a romancelike quest of introspection. By way of infinite regression, they encounter first the text, then a reading character, and finally themselves. The process encourages both Socratic self-knowledge and pleasurable…

Briefly surveys the practice of drawing lots in ancient history, the Bible, medieval literature, and Chaucer's works, focusing on the GP "lottery" to select who will tell the first tale.

The introductory lines in question (Th-MelL *2143-54), if analyzed syntactically, lexically, and rhetorically, indicate that the "litel tretys" is Mel itself, rather than CT generally or the source of Mel.

Interpretations of "tretys" in MelP have assumed a single referent for both occurrences of the term. But here and elsewhere Chaucer challenges assumptions of consistency between word and meaning. In making the first use of "tretys" refer to Mel and…

A biography of Richard Stury, based on public records, with recurrent attention to his forty-year acquaintance with Chaucer as friend and associate. Touches on the "long unsolved question of Chaucer's relation to Lollardy."

Reads Chaucer's reference to cooks' turning "substaunce to accident" (PardT 538-40) as a joke about Lollard attitudes toward the Eucharist. Employing Freudian psychology of jokes and New Historicist evaluation of Lollard views and views of Lollards,…

Social history of late-medieval London produced to accompany an exhibition at the London Museum "concerned with life in London" during Chaucer's time. The text comments on Chaucer's life and on social, political, mercantile, and ecclesiastical…

An account of London in the late fourteenth century, including descriptions of its historical topography and architecture, the city's customs, a chronicle of its major events and history, and its role as an intellectual center. Chaucer is mentioned…

Challenges the notion that a documented rental fee paid by Chaucer may be related to the date of his birth.

Some features of Chaucer's putative lost lyrics may be inferred from those that exist. There may have been hundreds of occasional lyrics, reflecting Chaucer's penchant for octosyllabics and decasyllabics and for isosyllabic stanzas. He was skilled…

Describes the nature and legacy of the dream vision genre and assesses Chaucer's four dream poems (BD, HF, PF, and LGW), exploring the dynamics of courtliness and learning, experience and authority, endings and implications,…

Archibald surveys Italian, French, and English literary instances of love compared to heaven, hell, paradise, or purgatory, commenting on Chaucer's uses in CT (WBT, KnT, and especially MerT) and LGW and exploring the more sustained use of this set of…

Comic irony was used by Chaucer throughout CT, even in the tales generally considered to be serious or pious. ManT, SumT, FranT, PhyT, MLT, PrT, SNT, and ClT all display Chaucer's ironic point of view, although the reader's appreciaiton of this…

Argues that Chaucer's claim in LGW that St. Augustine "hath gret compassioun / Of this Lucresse" is neither ironic nor misinformed, but is an accurate account of Augustine's position. Situating Augustine's comments about Lucretia within the broader…