Browse Items (16012 total)

For both linguistic and political reasons, the town in RvT from which John and Aleyn hail may be identified as Westruther in Berwickshire, making Chaucer's rendition of their speech "the first imitation of Scots dialect in English literature."

Chaucer exploited the structural similarities of the "Teseida" and the "Filostrato," though he shortened the first and greatly expanded the second.

Though traditional at root, Chaucer's diction, syntax, and rhetoric are made fresh by the poet's careful combination and articulation of traditional features. Doubleness (as in mixed styles, ambiguity, and irony) is characteristic of his style and a…

Assesses "unsavory" details of the GP description of the Summoner, the "bad feeling" between the Friar and the Summoner (WBP 3.829ff. and FrP 1265ff.), and concerns that link the GP Summoner and the summoner of FrT, clarifying the Friar's "attack" on…

Maintains that the Summoner's fondness for "overheating foods" conveys lechery, adducing evidence from Reginald Pecock's fifteenth-century "The Reule of Crysten Religioun."

Reviews evidence in GP that Chaucer's Summoner suffers from venereal disease rather than leprosy, using it as an example of little-known or overlooked scholarship that might be lost or ignored. Cites other examples more briefly, including the record…

Traces several iconographical, etymological, and punning associations of cherubs with redness, commenting on confusion with seraphs, and suggesting that these associations underlie details of the Summoner's description in GP.

SumT is not a hidden allegory, but a narrative that exploits characteristics of the fabliau to explore larger issues of morality and ethics. By focusing almost solely on the distribution of the "gift," critics have ignored most of the story and…

In TC, PF, HF, and CT the narrator/author split permits a veiled and implicit expression of judgment at the beginning to be suspended until the end.

Argues that Chaucer's references to a swallow in Alison's song (MilT 1. 3257-58) and to a dove in the Pardoner's claim about preaching (PardP 6.397) are suggestive, and may well derive from his familiarity with the two birds.

Argues that scribes altered Chaucer's modal auxiliaries, dative verb constructions, infinitives, and negations, simplifying Chaucer's syntax and making his stylistic compactness apparent by contrast.

Item not seen; WorldCat records indicate that this audiovisual movie "Depicts the various institutions, traditions, and forces which shaped Chaucer's life and writings. Includes medieval paintings, tapestries, and music, and portions of Chaucer's…

Argues that Chaucer produced Mel to demonstrate his allegiance to Richard II and to challenge the Appellants. Mel deconstructs the advice of Prudence, whose "advisory coup" echoes the Appellants' takeover.

Challenges the notion that Mel asserts orthodox Christian sensibility. By privileging prudence over the theological virtues and by omitting "Christ, the Church [. . .], the Trinity" and sacramental forgiveness, Mel suggests heterodox views.

Considers Mel as an allegory of translation, proposing that Chaucer applies legal theory drawn from Henry de Bracton's "De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae" to questions of ownership. In MelP, Chaucer uses "thyng" as a legal term pertaining to an…

Identifies three concerns in Mel: being reasonable in worldly affairs, sovereignty and proper cousel as themes, and the role of the tale in the sentence / solaas dynamic in CT. Includes a survey of criticism.

Reads SNT as paralleling Wycliffite dissent, arguing that Chaucer's alterations of his sources emphasize Cecilia's challenges to institutional values and power.

Biography of Chaucer that centers on the events of 1386 when he left London for residence in Kent and, by "virtue of necessity," imagined a new audience for his poetry--the embedded audience of CT, depicted in GP. Explores social, civic, and…

The "special quality" of MLT, ClT, PrT and SNT is their focus on spiritual transcendence rather than simply religious or moral values. All four tales "reveal exactly the same incandescent core of prayerful faith and spiritual aspiration presented…

Structural unity is achieved by the back-to-back romances in the tale, the first a mock quest, the second a narrative that asks what men most desire (gentility, youth, beauty). The Midas exemplum and the pillow talk of gentility are integral parts…

Until mid-thirteenth century, the East was, in spite of some factual knowledge, the fabled land of Prester John. Then real travel in the Tartar empire gave Europe facts just as marvellous.

Considers tears in devotional contexts as a model for viewing tears "as a mode of discourse that is as potent as it is paradoxical: both outward and inward, involuntary and applied, and forming a distinctive voice between passive and active."

Attributes January's cuckholding in MerT to "his own stupidity," reading Chaucer's deployment of antifeminist motifs as deeply ironic and part of his broader thematic concern to show that "everyone is morally responsible for his own acts." Chaucer's…

Statistical analysis, based on Mersand's still-valid assumption that Chaucer's romance vocabulary increased throughout his career, establishes different dates for the composition of different parts of SNT. The first part was probably written in the…

Reviews the "extreme implausibility" of attributing the art of individual tales in CT to the pilgrim-narrators, and argues that the "ideas and arguments" of the tales belong to Chaucer. Also reviews the sequential order of the tales as found in the…