Browse Items (15542 total)

Explores similarities between ambiguity and rhetorical invention in rhetorical tradition from Plato to the twenty-first century. Then discusses three examples of "conscious exploitation of the potential of ambiguity": "Sir Gawain and the Green…

Ballad 285, in praise of Chaucer, draws from Brunetto Latini's definition of philosophy in his "livres dou tresor."

Reviews recent rhetorical analyses of TC, examining how and how much "rhetoric affects the composition" of TC. Kokonis first reviews the "history and evolution of rhetoric"; then shows how rhetoric became part of "medieval aesthetic tradition," and…

Lollard insistence on plain speech brought about a split between plain and literary language that persisted into the sixteenth century. Harris considers the "Pearl" poet and the fifteenth-century reception of Chaucer.

Assesses the styles and rhetorical devices of FranT. Matching rhetoric to meaning, Chaucer's "modulation of style" in FranT helps to characterize the narrator and the major characters of the Tale and to guide readers' understanding of the variable…

The ways these three pilgrims use four rhetorical devices--"occupatio," "brevitas," "digressio," and "descriptio"--reveals their personalities. The Knight's self-conscious narrative stance shows his pretensions: his insensitivity in his use of…

Argues that Proserpina's angry response to Pluto in MerT (4.2264–70) "highlights the historical relationship between Chaucer's depiction of women's speech, medieval grammatical [classroom] instruction, and theories of delivery" that derive from…

Explores rhetorical devices in KnT, and suggests that "analysis of its rhetoric" reveals that the poem is "organized" as a "demande d'amour," identifying how Chaucer adjusted the rhetoric of his source, Boccaccio's "Teseida."

Considers three rhetorical features of HF (introductory features, "occupatio" and the inexpressibility "topos," and repeated rhyme) to refute John Matthews Manly's view (1926) that Chaucer's early writing lacked originality and that his use of…

Assesses brief passages from Langland and Chaucer as indications of late-fourteenth-century proto-pragmatism--or reliance on experience and rhetorical argument as epistemological modes. The variegated opinions, unstable exempla, and inconclusive…

Traces the textual and iconographic history of the Reynard stories from twelfth-century Flanders to nineteenth-century England. The combination of text and picture was a particular success for Caxton, who translated the Dutch stories and printed them…

The "Roman de Renart" has been overemphasized as a source for NPT and for other Middle English works; English animal fables, perhaps influenced in part by the "Roman," are more likely sources and should be explored more thoroughly.

In medieval beast fables, including NPT, the fox is a figure of vice. Neither his basic animalism nor his comic villainy qualifies him as an anti-hero, but his consistent distortion of truth does.

Identifies similarities and differences between marginal illustrations in the Smithfield Decretals (British Museum Royal MS. 10 E.iv) and narrative motifs in versions of the "Roman de Renart," commenting briefly on the presence of the distaff in the…

Also published in Sheila Delany, Medieval Literary Politics: Shapes of Ideology (Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 74-87.

Chaucer's TC responds to antifeminsit treatment of the Criseida character, especially Boccaccio's; Henryson's version replies to Chaucer.

Analyzes MerT, MilT, ShT, and FranT in light of the two-fold nature of the English medieval marriage contract: personal duties and business responsibilities.

Disliking the unrealistic and the marvelous aspects of romance, Chaucer experimented with the genre in highly original ways in TC, KnT, FranT, SqT, and WBT. Chaucer comments on the romance through the inconsistency between the naturalistic…

Chaucer uses conventions of the friendship tradition to explore the power of erotic desire; Lydgate rewrites the fatal rivalry to emphasize male friendship over male-female attraction.

Offers "senex style" as the a label for an particular network of themes of aging, related rhetorical commonplaces, and narrative poses in a range of late-medieval and early modern works, focusing on those where an "I-persona that extols the wisdom,…

Both Boccaccio in Decameron and Chaucer in FranT rewrite the story of Menedon from Filocolo, and both investigate whether social worth is dependent on lineage or character. While Boccaccio emphasizes the new urban nontraditional man, Chaucer attempts…

Although many assume that Chaucer and Langland felt compelled to revise their works to avoid anti-Wycliffite censorship, such censorship was restricted to clerical writing. Chaucer drew on Wycliffite translation techniques to improve his skill, as…

Filios compares the folktale of Griselda with four medieval versions, exploring their adaptations. Boccaccio's tale is eroticized, with the teller Dioneo disagreeing with the conventional happy ending that reinforces dangerous power relations;…

Describes the transmission of WBT, through John Dryden's modernized English version in "Fables: Ancient and Modern" and Voltaire's French in "Ce qui plait aux dames" to Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz's Polish "Co sie damom podoba" in "Pisma rózne wierszem i…

Two CT manuscripts reveal simplifications of Chaucerian narrative as part of the fifteenth-century reader response valuing sententiousness and formal coherence. Huntington Library MS 140 includes ClT without its framing references, followed…