Browse Items (16035 total)

Chaucer's figurative language is mostly traditional, but its effect usually transcends the merely visual: it is emotional and intellectual--aiming at more than concrete realism. Often, however, the nature of this imagery eludes us because Chaucer's…

Studies Chaucer's similes and metaphors to trace the "development of imagery in each of [his] works" from BD through CT, suggesting that Chaucer shows a "progressive awareness of the image as an essential tool of his art." Results of statistical…

Assesses the six oaths by saints--Martyn, Denys, Peter, Yves, Austyn, and Jame--in ShT, arguing that familiarity with details of the saints' lives provokes the audience to condemn the characters in the Tale.

Illustrates how the descriptions of nature in TC reflect main characters' cognitive processes as well as the development of love.

Examines the apocalyptic tradition behind Nicholas's flood.

By comparing Chaucer's TC with Boccaccio's "Filostrato" in sounds, grammar, word choice, similes and metaphors, ambiguities, and construction, the article investigates Chaucer's literary and linguistic imitation and humorous innovation.

Examines Chaucer's involvement with the royal family and shows how one of his descendents became heir to the throne in 1484.

In Japanese.

Trigg considers recurrent issues in the reception of Chaucer: responses to his self-shaped "poetic signature," admiration for his rhetoric and sentiment, and mourning for the loss of his genius by poets who seek to emulate him. Surveys rewritings and…

Harry Russecks, miller of Church Creek, Md., is based on the miller of RvT. Barth's spirit of ribaldry is influenced by MilT.

Identifies three aspects of Robert Henryson's uses of proverbial wisdom in his "Fables," locating precedent for each of them in a work by Chaucer: use of proverbs by fable characters (NPT), comic misapplication of proverbial wisdom (MilT), and…

Shows that the characterization of Calchas in TC influenced the fifteenth-century "Sege of Troy."

Analyzes the relationship of the real world to the dream world in BD and surveys noncourtly innovations derived from French romances, taking account of Chaucer scholarship of the late twentieth century.

Explores metaphors of eating, drinking, hunting, and food preparation, within the framework of the "storytelling performances" of the Wife of Bath in WBT and the unnamed Wife in ShT.

Although Chaucer has been seen as a medieval nominalist or realist, or both at once, he should actually be recognized as an "intentional realist" in the modern (John F. Searle) sense.

Contends that Chaucer's "international presence," due to his European travels connected to his position and service within the court, "instilled in him a European sensibility distinctly at odds with his modern image as the avatar of Englishness."

In PardPT, Chaucer inverts three major precepts of Augustinian sermon rhetoric ("De Doctrina Christiana"): the preacher must pray before preaching, the preacher must maintain a grave and appropriate demeanor, and the preacher must maintain Christian…

Developing Walter Benjamin's model of translation and seeking to "rethink the dynamics of cross-cultural translation," Ginsberg explores how Chaucer's borrowings from and dependencies on Italian literature "disarticulate" the legacy of Dante,…

Examines the cultural, social, economic, religious, and literary aspects of Italy in Chaucer's day.

Glosses in Class Alpha mss of Claudian's "De Raptu Proserpinae," which Chaucer could have used at school, explain his description of Pluto and Proserpina as Fairies, his "many a lady" following Proserpina, the terrifying tone of Pluto's "grisely…

Chaucer's occupations--domestic servant, customs agent, justice of the peace, and clerk of the King's Works--shaped his literature, and his "servility" enabled him to become the "father" of English poetry. His biography and his works alike reveal…

Argues for the adoption of "thy selven" instead of "they shynen" (line 1015) as the "lectio difficilior: and as the reading supported by Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 16, the copy-text for most editions of HF.

The epithet "joly" or "jolif," used seven times to characterize Absolon in MilT, is inadequately translated as "jolly." Chaucer makes use of many Middle English meanings of the word to portray Absolon as "happy and light-hearted, amorous, a…

Argues from the evidence of life-records that Chaucer might well have accompanied Prince Lionel to Milan in 1368 when the latter wedded Violanta Visconti. Presents this in support of Ethel Seaton's discussion of PF (Medium Aevum 25.3 [1956]: 168-74)…

The two references to kneeling in SumT help create irony. The friar's kneeling in the first half of the tale "forecasts" his "spiritual downfall" in the last scene.