Browse Items (16035 total)

Woods discusses the effect and significance of space and place in seven tales of CT, exploring place as an index of character and space as a site of characteristic potential. In KnT, Theseus and the narrator consider chivalry analogous to nature; in…

Assesses Chaucer's methods of drawing audiences into a mutually creative process by confronting them with questions.

Assesses Chaucer's influence on "The Unicorn's Tale," found in the early-sixteenth-century Asloan MS and adapted from Nigel of Longchamp's "Speculum Stultorum" which Chaucer alludes to in NPT 7.3312-16. Focuses on verbal echoes from Chaucer's NPT…

Examines CT in light of medieval discourses on allegory and of modern theories (exegetical, deconstructive, Bakhtinian), considering framework, prologues, and tales, especially WBT,PardT, and CYT. Also discussed are ParsT, Ret, Th, MkT, FrT, SumT,…

Beginning with Kittredge's argument that the thematic and structural unity of CT lies in the pilgrims and their dramatic interchange, and moving to the counterarguments of Muscatine (1957), Robertson (1962), Jordan (1967), Pearsall (1985), and Benson…

Reads FranT as an epitome of the CT to the extent that both are concerned with the "ideal of patience and the problems of time and change," emphasizing the universality of these concerns and their appearances throughout the CT. As in Marie de…

Demonstrates that Chaucerian estates satire in CT influenced the development of dramatic "city comedy” at the turn of the seventeenth century. Shows that in his "Ho" plays Dekker adapts Chaucer's London topographies, characterizations, themes, and…

Chaucer was the first to consider Boccaccio's stories tragedies. But unlike Boccaccio, who served a cautionary moralism and wished to stress retributive justice, Chaucer aimed primarily at sympathy and empathy, developing a generic theory that…

Revisits the concept of "Chaucerian tragedy," considering KnT, MLT, and NPPT, as well as TC and MkT, and explores the faults or faultlessness of Fortune's victims in these works, the moral sophistication of the narrators of the tales, classical…

Considers the relations among French, Anglo-French, and English in the linguistic and cultural conditions of Chaucer's time. Calls for a new sensitivity to translation as process, proposes more subtle awareness of interdependent etymologies (e.g.,…

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…

Compares conceptual metaphors in MilT and in its Croatian translation by Luko Paljetak (1986) in order to determine which metaphors are "conventional in both languages and cultures." In Croatian, with an English abstract.

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,…

Argues that TC is a psychological "novel" insofar as it explores how the lovers' uses of courtly language and conventions disguise their "urgent sensuality" ("drängende Sinnlichkeit"), even from themselves. Compares and contrasts Chaucer's and…

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.

Surveys courtly virtues in Chaucer ("courtoisie," "franchise," "gentillesse," "honour," "joie," "pitie," etc.) and the vices which are grounded in pride and the pursuits of fortune. Focuses on KnT when examining the virtues and on the fabliaux for…