Browse Items (16108 total)

Viewed in both historical and literary contexts, the Friar's "typet" (probably a shoulder cape with a deep hood) and his "semycope" (a short cloak) show that he is breaking sumptuary laws for his fraternal order. That he also dresses in the finest…

The Friar's varied activities are recounted in terms that have both commercial and non-materialistic applications. Ambigous diction points toward deeper questions about the use of wealth and, together with the sexual innuendoes and the enumeration…

The Friar's name alludes to St. Hubert, patron saint of hunters. Thiel investigates Chaucer's knowledge of the saint and invites comparison with St. Thomas.

Shows that the legend of St. Nicholas may be a source of the detail about the marrying young women in Chaucer's description of the Friar in GP 1.212-13.

Identifies associations of the name "Huberd" (Hubert) with the Man in the Moon, the magpie, Cain, and theft, arguing that Chaucer's use of it for his Friar (GP 1.269) reveals the character's "inherently evil nature" and the "incongruity" of Chaucer's…

Justifies various differences between FrT and its analogues by attributing them to the literal mindedness of the narrator, "one who takes distinctions seriously."

Portrays the symbolic and naturalistic use of the cat and applies these concepts to SumT and its critique of the mendicant orders.

Reads the widow of FrT as a figural "type of the Church" that contributes to the "comic irony" of the Tale and deepens the guilt of the summoner by "playing off" of the biblical story of Rebecca.

Explores ecclesiastical connotations of the word "rente" in the GP description of the Friar, in SumT, and elsewhere in medieval usage.

Reads the noun "swan" as "swain" in the rhyming comparison with "Jovinyan" in SumT 3.1930, adducing logic, consistency of imagery, and source material.

Disputes Lowe's interpretation of KnT 1534-39. Arcite's sudden changes of mood, that of Chauntecleer (on a Friday) in NPT, the meaning of "gere" (a wild or changeful mood), and the first Adam's fall on the sixth day all suggest that Friday is not…

The discrepancy between the vice of the teller and the moral of his tale requires the pilgrim audience to revise and postpone its judgment and thus to contribute to the meaning of the exemplum.

Examines gardens in Chaucer's narratives as a means to show how literary and social conventions impose constraints and provide opportunities for the poet and characters alike to react to conventions. Surveys literary and historical gardens with…

Chaucer employs traditional garden topoi (locus amoenus, hortus conclusus, and paradys d'amours) to draw attention to precursors, to create discrepancy between CT context and tradition, to individualize narrators, and to show literary indebtedness in…

Considers the Wife of Bath's "colloquial, conversational idiom as a key to her character," examining details of diction, syntax, and imagery, and comparing her with Alison of MilT.

Suggests that GP 198-200 alludes to Matthew 6.16-18 and helps to characterize the Monk as "contemptuous of fasting."

Suggests that collected "vidas," or "lives," of the troubadours may have served as Chaucer's model for the "portraits" of the pilgrims in GP. Individual "vidas" open anthologies of troubadour verse in some fourteenth-century manuscripts, and Chaucer…

Facing-page translation of GP into modern English iambic decasyllables; features illustrations of the pilgrims--reproductions of Caxton's woodcuts paired with original woodcut portraits--and an extensive glossary.

That the passage describing the Prioress's habit of wiping her mouth clean (GP, 133-36) has been misunderstood is shown in the translations by all modern translators, except Coghill, of "hir" in the phrase "hir coppe: (133) as "her" when it should be…

Explicates GP 1.673 (not 1.163, as in title), adding depth to the multiple, generally sexual innuendoes of the "stif burdoun" borne by the Summoner to accompany the Pardoner's song.

Explores the denotative, connotative, figurative, and ironic implications of the GP description of the Wife of Bath as one who knows "muchel of wandrynge by the weye" (1.497).

Offers examples from the "Roman de la Rose" and Deschamps' "Ballade" that the word "bourdan" had the meaning "phallus," showing that the sense would have been familiar to Chaucer when he used "stif burdoun" to describe the Summoner's singing with the…

Clarifies the reference to Christ catching Peter as he sailed in GP 1.696-98, focusing on the figurative meaning of "hente" and its implications regarding the Pardoner's faux relic, Peter's sail-cloth.

As Meyer Schapiro has noted, the mousetrap, associated with the Prioress in GP 145, is used by Augustine as a symbol of the cross that entraps the devil with the bait of Christ's flesh. The same allegory is found in Peter Lombard's "Sentences."

In GP, Sq-FranL, and FranP, Chaucer characterizes the Franklin as obsessed "with appearances and good feeling." FranT manifests these obsessions and exposes the teller's "superficial understanding of 'gentilesse'."