Browse Items (15542 total)

The walled-garden images in KnT, MerT, the GP sketch of the Prioress, WBT, FrT, and BD illustrate that walls not only provide safety but also exclude women from the knowledge needed to progress from virginity to motherhood and to "wise womanhood." …

Chaucer uses wordplay as a device for establishing the Nun's Priest's resentment of his subordination to the Prioress. The Priest disassociates himself from the anti-feminist sentiment of the tale with his final claim "I kan noon harm of no womman…

Examines the early editions of Chaucer (Caxton-Speght), and argues that editorial direction may have led to an emphasis on Chaucer's moral "gravitas," at the expense of attention to his comedic aspects. The reception of those texts, in turn, may have…

Brief short story in which the narrator's desire to hear an authentic story--"to get to the Canterbury Tales outside the covers of a book"--leads to a change in his life.

Assesses Chaucer’s "enticing eroticism and provocative perversity" as "clear and vital signs of premodern pornography." Historicizes terms such as “obscene,” “pornographic,” and “erotic,” and proposes “Chauceroticism” to describe the various ways the…

Describes the erudition of Anne of Bohemia, reads CT "alongside contemporaneous works in Czech, German, and Latin" (languages familiar to Anne), and maintains that Anne was Chaucer's "imagined reader" who "shaped the way he wrote and what he chose to…

Describes the sources of SqT and explores its relations with KnT and Anel, focusing on the narrator's clumsy concerns with the "knotte" or major point of the Tale and arguing that this and other shortcomings indicate ironically the Squire's naïve,…

Examines Chaucer's depictions of music, poetry, sound, noise, cacophony, and harmony in PF; MilT; and, most extensively, HF, exploring how he adapted notions derived from Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" and his "De musica," medieval perception…

Reads the GP description of the Monk as strongly critical of the cleric's worldliness, particularly in light of "St. Benedicti Regula Monochorum."

All attempts by critics to ascribe psychological implications to conventional self-revelations of a fictional character such as Chaucer's Pardoner lead to a false evaluation. The text does not contain the slightest suggestion that the Pardoner is a…

Maintains that Chaucer corrected Boccaccio arbitrarily when he claims at MkT 7.2248 that Persians wrote about Zenobia.

Item not seen; WorldCat record indicate that this is the author's dissertation from the University of Bonn, pertaining to Chaucer's uses of proverbs.

Intended for an upper-class public, MilT has high literary value owing to its structure, motivation, style, and place in CT (especially the contrast with the preceding KnT), consistency with the Miller's personality, and also characterization,…

Identifies in NPT echoes of the "Roman de la Rose," particularly in the characterizations of Chaunticler and Pertelote.

Exemplifies how several features of the characterization of Chaunticleer in NPT are "firmly grounded in medieval natural history," particularly his "uxoriousness, regal pride, and choleric temperament," as well as his connections with preaching, all…

Attributes the reference to Taurus in NPT 7.3194-95 to the medico-astrological tradition of associating Taurus with necks and throats, part of a pattern of imagery in the Tale that may reflect the influence of Bartholomeus Anglicanus's "De…

The rhetorical devices disavowed by the eagle in HF are NPT's substance which mocks badly used rhetoric: misapplied or mechanical or out of place. This mockery lies behind the Nun's Priest's anti-feminism, induced by the airs and graces of the…

Suggests that the comparison between Chauntecleer's and mermaid's singing in NPT (7.3269-72) is an "ironic joke" as well as being an "ironic anticipation" of the rooster's fate, connected with the theme of predestination in the Tale.

Describes how, as protagonist of NPT, Chauntecleer is the "mock-hero" of Chaucer's burlesque, engaging in three "battles" and failing because of his own vanity, the target of Chaucer's satire. His "avisioun" was no vision at all, a result of…

Argues that the allusions in NPT to mermaids as sirens and to Burnel the ass help to indicate Chauntecleer's own culpability in his temporary downfall as well as contributing comedy to the Tale.

Evidence from several sources indicates that "susters" in NPT 7.4057 may be a triple-entendre: sibling sisters, nuns, and paramours. This heightens the implied parallel between Chauntecleer and the Nun's Priest.

Argues that when Chauntecleer "purposely mistranslates" the proverb about women being man's "confusio" (NPT, 7.3163-65), he puns on "the two possible connotations of the word . . . and mischievously discard[s] the negative one."

Observes that Chauntecleer's description of laxatives as "venymous" [var. "venymes"] in NPT 7.3155 parallels a similar connection in Roger Bacon, and suggests that Chaucer's use carries "antifeminist irony."

Etymological puns reveal MkT, NPT, and SNT to be a trilogy concerned with the common themes of marriage, sexuality, and decline of the church. The tales dramatize a confrontation among the three pilgrims in which the Priest discloses the Monk's…

Identifies patterns, details, images, and wording in NPT that direct the "reader's attention not only to basic biblical narrative of Adam and Eve, but also to the theological commentary on the Fall." The overall moral of the Tale is the universality…