Browse Items (15542 total)

Surveys medieval ideals of friendship and their classical and biblical roots, arguing that Chaucer presents a double view in his presentation of Pandarus's friendship for Troilus: "both the world's notion of what a friend is and the moralist's notion…

Friar Lawrence of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet echoes Pandarus of TC. As rhetors, both are fond of apothegms; dramatically, each acts as a go-between; thematically, each reflects how truth escapes human efforts to capture it in fiction.

Pandarus is a persuader, not a philosopher; so he sees before him not existential problems so much as materials to be shaped to a happy resolution. An earthly maker, at points an imitation of the Divine Creator, he tries but fails to achieve a human…

Deals with poetic structure and morality.

Analyzes the rhetoric of Pandarus's speeches in TC, exploring how they align with Chaucer's changes to Boccaccio's Pandaro and how they reflect the emphases and concerns of medieval rhetoricians. Explores the different techniques of persuasion…

The semantic range of "proverbs," and Chaucer's emphasis on the word, indicates that Mel is a series of parables, or allegorical narratives.

Rhetorical style of ParsT emphasizes parallelisms, paired words, and tautologies for powerful effect.

Reads the GP description of the Prioress as an ironic frame for PrT, concluding that they combine as an "exercise in depicting and ridiculing popular anti-Semitism rather than condoning it."

Gauges the Pardoner's attitude toward his Canterbury audience, including the Host. In PardP, he reveals how he usually treats his audiences, then insults the pilgrims by leveling differences in PardT. Like Faus Semblant of the "Roman de la Rose," the…

Examines the Pardoner as an example of the "fixities and fluidities of fourteenth-century discourses about gender." Potentially subversive, the Pardoner is also a patriarchal figure and "anxious to assume the signs of a phallic and authoritative…

Suggests that Haze Motes of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood" is "not unlike Chaucer's Pardoner" and the Old Man of PardT, who is "perhaps the Pardoner's alter-ego'."

Evidence from a Latin handbook for preachers ("Fasciculus morum"), mendicant literature, and canon law suggests that the "association of pardoners with fake relics was not as uncommon...as is currently believed."

Combines psychoanalysis, ethnography, and "queer theory" to examine pilgrimage, travel, and specific locations as narrative devices that undermine and assert masculinities in CT, especially those of the Pardoner, the Host, and the Knight in the…

Surveys the history of indulgences in Church history as background to Chaucer's character of the Pardoner, commenting on abuses and critiques of the practice recorded in English documents as corroboration of Chaucer's depiction.

Medieval manuals of preaching demand that the good preacher be a good man, yet the Pardoner's sermon is very effective. CT is an investigation of the possibility of reaching some compromise between the preaching methods of the evil, but eloquent,…

Focusing on authority, knowledge, and character, Minnis argues that Chaucer was aware of the fourteenth-century theological debate on the validity of a moral tale told by an immoral man.

Suggests that the "fatal treasure" of PardT gains ironic dimension when seen in light of the theory of the "treasury of merits," used to explain or justify the sale of indulgences.

Kendrick considers a portion of PardP (lines 352-88) in light of two thirteenth-century charlatans' spiels invented for performance by jongleurs: Rutebeuf's "Dit de l'herberie" and Peire Cardenal's "Dit de l'onguent."

Physically, and by his associations with hares and the Summoner, the Pardoner is a grotesque, analogous to a major feature of the English Decorated Style in the visual arts. Also, the Pardoner is homosexual.

Describes the commonplace "medieval notion of the hare's sexual peculiarities," locating it in several sources, and explicating its implications when applied to the Pardoner and his staring eyes in GP 1.684.

Treats the Old Man of PardT as a figure of the Wandering Jew, exploring relations between the figure and the transtemporal materiality of relics, and linking it with "other explicit and implicit references to Jews" in the depiction of the Pardoner…

Examines the "distorted reflection or negative image" of the Christian mass in PardPT and in the GP description of the Pardoner, showing how the language, imagery, and details of the liturgy of the mass run throughout the Pardoner's materials,…

Surveys and summarizes critical assessments of Chaucer's Pardoner and PardPT from ca. 1940-1970, observing trends and emphases. Then offers a reading of the Pardoner as an extravagant "put-on" who deliberately creates an outrageous personality for…

Contrasts medieval and modern charitable giving, indulgence granting, and false relics, and assesses the Pardoner as a "professional collector," and "high-pressure fund raiser," reading PardPT as "an exposition" of the Pardoner's "fund-raising…