Browse Items (15544 total)

With characters slightly less than human, Chaucer's fabliaux, a sort of "guerrilla warfare on established values," deviate from the classical definition of comedy ridiculing vice and folly to correct deviancy. Fabliaux characters are opposed to the…

Examines the connotations of "man," "manly," and "manhood" and discusses concept of "real" manhood for these three authors.

Studies several versions of the story of PardT, identified as tale type AT 763 ("The Treasure Finders who Murder One Another"). Assesses the functions of the characters, the genres in which it has been written, and the purposes of the story…

Examines diachronically the values of "e" in weakly stressed syllables, revealing the extent, causes, and consequences of phonetic and morphosyntactic changes: loss of syllables and inflectional endings, efforts to make spelling consistent, and…

Argues that in its adaptations of poetic traditions (particularly representations of the four elements and "ars grammatica") and in dealing "explicitly with the problematics of language and poetry," HF is "almost an anti-'ars-poetica'.” In it,…

HF reflects Chaucer's efforts to imitate Dante's innovation and use of the vernacular; the poem shows Chaucer's struggles with nonstandard forms of English and the lack of an English literary tradition.

A diversity of critical perspectives presented by R. W. Hanning, D. Kelly, F. Goldin, J. M. Ferrante, E. Vance, W. Wetherbee, G. D. Economou, J. B. Allen, G. Olson, R. O. Payne, and L. Ebin to focus on creation of poetic works of Lydgate, Dunbar,…

Refers to Paul Zumthor's notion of "mouvance," and argues that CT should be understood not as a single text but as a group of different, co-existent texts. In Japanese.

Vernacular authors anxious about the fragility of texts due to the impermanence of the medium and scribal transmission called attention in their writing to forms of engraving in stone and wax. As writing habits changed, the depiction of writing…

Argues that Equat exemplifies how late medieval writers blended "theoretical and practical material, exploiting the flexibility of the vernacular and moulding it to their needs." Following Kari Anne Rand, treats Equat as the work of John Westwyk…

Explores the "various degrees of control" exerted by medieval vernacular poets over the production of their manuscripts, maintaining that evidence from the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts indicates Chaucer "was clearly not moving expeditiously…

Discusses the "very novelty of Gower's claim to be a nationally significant, elite, literary author by examining specific articulations of this claim." Examining the implications of such a claim, McCabe argues for Gower's influence on English poetry…

Derived from North's book, Chaucer's Universe (Oxford, 1988), this article argues that Chaucer's imagination was illuminated by astrological and astronomical knowledge of an unusually high quality.

Computer-generated concordances and frequency lists help in deciding which part of a character's vocabulary is especially significant. Pandarus' vocabulary emphasizes his expertise in using social and family relationships. Criseyde applies words to…

Shows that the use of verbs as rhyme words is ubiquitous in medieval (and later) poetry, and therefore not particularly Chaucerian as has been suggested. Suggests that rhyming with infinitives is especially prevalent because the form is…

Distinctions made between "expression-oriented" and "content-oriented" texts serve as a framework for demonstrating the interrelated nature of language in RvT. Philological tracings of word associations set up lexical chains that illustrate semantic…

Kendrick considers secular and religious contexts in which the smile of the Prioress may be understood.

Volume 1 examines various concerns with vacuous, misleading, and/or oblique language in bureaucratic and literary texts produced in London during the reign of Richard II, including discussion of CkT, ManT, and SqT for the ways they depict anxieties…

Surveys the impact on medieval poetry of Ovid as a love poet, including comments on Chaucer's use of "Ars amatoria" in WBP, where Ovid's "erotic poetics" are "domesticated" and the reception of his poem reaches its "zenith." Central to "Chaucerian…

Chaucer reconceptualized CT in response to a challenge levied in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Shaping the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner to embody the Seven Deadly Sins, Chaucer responded to Gower's taxonomy in the "Confessio" and, in doing so,…

Argues that the "citole" held in Venus's right hand in KnT 1.1959 evinces the influence of "the 'Ovidius moralizatus' of Petrus Berchorius (Pierre Bersuire)," and explores the possibilities of other influences on the depictions of Venus in KnT and in…

Argues that the image of the "citole" in KnT 1959, instead of a "concha" also found in traditional sources, contributes to the theme of "harmonious order" in the poem that is temporarily disrupted by the Venus/Mars strife.

Offers evidence that the "Ovidius Moralizatus" of Peter Bersuire (Petrus Berchorius) was the source of iconographical details associated with Venus in Chaucer's descriptions of the goddess in HF 131-39 and KnT 1.1955-66.

Reads Lydgate's "Temple of Glas" as a "sustained, ironic treatment of frustrated love," citing the following as sources of details of the poem and influences on its formal techniques: "Roman de la Rose," HF, TC, PF, KnT, and MerT.

Plots the course of Venus astronomically to show the planet would have been clearly visible in the northwest in 1374, 1377, 1380, and 1382, and possibly in 1375 and 1379.