Browse Items (16107 total)

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.

Examines how the Jailer's Daughter of Shakespeare and Fletcher's play, a character not found in KnT, reflects a complex form of influence derived not only from KnT, but from MilT and RvT as well. Considers water imagery and liquidity, and "madness,…

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.

The GP description of the Knight engages late-medieval questions of war and pacifism, confronting the audience with an "ethical and political dilemma."

Characterizes the Knight as an "enlightened pragmatist" and interprets various details and stylistic devices of KnT (including "occupatio" and various kinds of opposition) as evidence that the teller is a man who seeks to affirm "ordering principles"…

Elucidates the puzzling portrait of the GP Knight by "historical information on chivalry" and especially on knights who went to Prussia as "Crusaders"; modifies opposing views of the Knight (as chivalric ideal or murderous hypocrite).

Similarities between Chaucer's description of the knight and the descriptions in "Warwick Pageant," a fifteenth-century complimentary biography of the Earl of Warwick, indicate that Chaucer's description contains not irony but praise.

Characterizes the GP Knight based on his participation in Christian crusades and his worthy "non-involvement" in the Hundred Years War.

Having moved in his own life from warfare to pilgrimage, Chaucer's GP Knight depicts Theseus, a conqueror in war at the beginning of his tale, as effecting a solution at the end "by the arts of diplomacy and rhetoric in parliament." Theseus, with…

Chaucer took great care in his descriptions of the Knight's own combats and the combats in KnT to conform to the chivalric norm of his day.

The discrepancies in the Knight's military curriculum reflect Chaucer's attempt to represent a desire for peace at home and for the transfer of destructive military activity to distant frontiers in Prussia and the Mediterranean. Luttrell explores…

Kelly recounts military and political events in Lithuania around 1390-92 involving Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox Christians, and recent converts. Focuses on the involvement of Henry Bolingbroke and on uses of the word "pagan," as backdrop to…

Reads KnT as an expression of the narrator's pessimistic yet stoic view of human "travails and uncertainties," evident in the prevailing "sense of the insignificance of the major actions" of the plot, and reinforced by grim humor and by the tension…

Examines details and reads tonal shifts in the GP description of the Knight (in comparison with the Monk) and in KnT, considering them as evidence of Chaucer's gentle, humorous depiction of chivalry. Neither sharply satiric nor wholly idealistic, KnT…

Like Peter of Cyprus, celebrated in Machaut's "Prise," Chaucer's Knight is a hero, his lists of battles showing him to be a Crusader-knight virtuous in devotion to duty. Chaucer deemed the knightly ideal possible in his contemporary world.

Reads KnT as "historical narrative constructed upon a foundation of misleading anachronism . . . to lend strength to the potentially objectionable sociopolitical agenda of its narrator."

Considers Chaucer criticism rather than praise of the Knight in CT.