Browse Items (16104 total)

Lends authority to Gerard Legh's claims about Chaucer's status at the Inner Temple (and writing HF for a ceremony there) by adducing Legh's "standing as a heraldist."

Introduces the conventions of "impersonal" style based in classical rhetoric and developed in medieval rhetorical handbooks Then anatomizes the characteristics of Chaucer's descriptive techniques in relation to his "predecessors and contemporaries,"…

Introduces "the study of poetry," suitable for classroom use. A section on "Implied Argument: Irony and Ambiguity" includes a reading of PardT 6.728-33 that suggests a "profound idea wells up in this passage--the idea that we cannot conceive of…

Clarifies the appropriateness of Symkin's wife swearing by the "croys of Bromeholm" (RvT 1. 4286), adducing Roger of Wendover's "Flores Historiarum" and, possibly, the clerical status of the wife's father.

Suggests sources in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" for the "corounes tweyne" of TC 2.1735 (noting parallels with SNT 8.221) and for the Invocation to light in the Proem to TC 3, reinforced by several other echoes of "Filostrato."

Anthologizes a selection of poetic characterizations or descriptions of people, historical and fictional, from English poetry. Includes the GP description of the Clerk (1.285-309), in Frank Ernest Hill's 1930 translation.

Identifies the "contrast between surface respectability and corrupt motive [as] the keenest source of the comedy" in ShT, and suggests that there is a pun on "cozen" and "cousin." Explores similar contrasts and other devices in CT that produce comic…

Questions Germaine Dempster's 1948 suggestions about the production of "manuscripts postulated as heads of genetic groups" and lines of descent for CT witnesses, offering several alternative explanations. Includes attention to the change of ink in…

Suggests that the Friar's name, "Huberd" (GP 1.269), "may be an ironic literary allusion, to Hubert 'l'escoufle,' the kite, a bird of prey, and a lewd cleric and confessor in the Old French poems of the 'Renart' tradition."

Considers "Of Aristotle and his commentators and disciples" to be the "most worthy" of several possible meanings of "Aristotle and his philosophye" in the description of the Clerk's books in GP 1.295.

Follows W. C. Curry (1926) in understanding the Pardoner to be a eunuch, and explores the Biblical and exegetical implications of this characterization, reinforced by animal imagery, and associated with the Pauline "vetus homo" (Old Man), arguing…

Shows how the theme of common profit and the figure of tolerant Nature bridge the opposing views of the love among the high- and low-class birds in PF. Other contrastive pairs in the poem--the two sides of the gate, Priapus and Venus,…

Suggests that "double meaning seems deliberate" in a pun on "lecher" and "healer" in Pluto's use of "lechour" (MerT 4.2257) when he pledges to restore January's eyesight.

Quotes, translates, and anatomizes the Latin "arguments" of the "books" found in Statius' "Thebaid" that underlie Cassandra's summary of the Statius' work in TC 5.1457-1533, with its twelve-line Latin summary interpolated in most TC manuscripts.…

Suggests that a portion of Dorigen's speech in FranT (5.1541-44) has wrongly been ascribed to her by various editors, indicating why it should better be assigned to the Franklin as narrator. Also suggests that the reference to a "clerk" (Fran 5.1611)…

Suggests that editors consider capitalizing "nature" in GP 1.11, arguing that Chaucer personifies Nature as "virtually the patron saint of birds" in PF.

Includes (vol. 2, pp. 1030-31) a summary of the plot and main characters of TC, categorizing it as a "Chivalric romance," and praising it as an "almost perfectly constructed narrative poem" with "effective depiction of character" that "forecast[s]…

Distinguishes medieval and modern notions of "seemliness"--a sociological concern distinct from legality and morality--and clarifies medieval ideas of linguistic, sartorial, aesthetic, and marital propriety in CT, observing a "gap" between what is…

Reads the CT as a sustained dramatic narrative, following the Chaucer Society order of the tales, and paying particular attention to the GP and the links among the tales. Focuses on characterization of the pilgrims, especially the Host, and their…

Identifies satiric elements in the description of the Guildsmen in GP--stylistic jibes and social critique, including the association of them with the Cook, who is later identifiable as the historic Roger de Ware, of ill repute.

Cites Bo and quotes portions of "The Former Age" as evidence of medieval transmission of ancient ideas about "about the happy age before the coming of civilization."

Clarifies the typicality of Chaucer's Miller by identifying characteristics that "were commonly ascribed to millers in late-medieval literature." Like analogous miller's, he is "is red-haired, coarse-featured, socially ambitious, muscular,…

Anthologizes in chronological order poems and extracts from English poetry written in Britain, including selections from Chaucer in Middle English (pp. 5-8): "Now welcome, somer" (PF 680), "At the gate" (TC 5.1114-1183), and "The fresshe flour"…

Assesses the characterizations of Troilus and of Criseyde in Freudian, psychological terms--Troilus as weak-willed and perhaps the "victim of an Oedipal tie to his mother"; Criseyde, strong-willed and "adept in the psychological handling of others,"…

Comprehensive bibliography of Chaucer studies published between 1908-1953; some entries include brief indications of content and/or lists of book reviews. Arranged in topical categories such as Chaucer's life, works, modernizations and translations,…