Browse Items (16035 total)

Unlike its analogues, MerT develops themes and images associated with the myth of Proserpine's rape and Ceres's search for her daughter. As a result, both May and January are presented as culpable and victimized.

MerT 4.1418 may be the source for the image in Joyce's Ulysses.

SqT dramatizes the relationship between two types of narrative: the fantastic and the metafictional. The former is seen in the mirror, ring, steed, and sword brought to Cambyuskan's court; the latter, in the response to these gifts by the courtiers…

FranT contains a system of alternating parallel events--troth-plighting, complaint, and compassionate help--repeated in threes, reinforcing the theme of "gentilesse." The "trouthe" and "complaint" episodes show a "progressive decline," but the…

The deceptive nature of physical sight in FranT is based on the medieval theory of optics, whereby one's vision--buttressed by "proper" control of the will--aided one in knowing God, while "improper" control made one susceptible to the dangers of…

We do not understand how the Franklin views the concept of "gentilesse" that informs his moral vision. Kellogg compares the Franklin's use of key chivalric terminology to its uses in Middle English romance, thereby illuminating the Franklin, FranT,…

FranT is a rhetorical . . . completion" of SqT, which should itself be read with "rhetorical and lyrical" rather than narrative models in mind. The literate mode of Dorigen's complaint and Aurelius's two speeches to her contrasts with the oral mode…

Of the characters in FranT, Dorigen is "most fre" in the senses of independence and generosity. She chooses her own fate (life instead of the suicide characteristic of the scorned woman) and her own lover (her husband instead of the lusty, would-be…

Examines the interrelations of "truth," "freedom," and "woman" as these terms are constructed in FranT. The Franklin's masculinist discourse posits distinctions between truth and fiction, appearance and reality, plain speaking and rhetoric, although…

Chaucer's four additions to the story of Virginia can be explained, and the whole poem understood, as clarifications of "her allegorical role as the human soul" in rejecting sin.

The rhetorical trope 'translatio' subsumes metaphor, allegory,and irony, providing a basis for understanding how the Pardoner translates himself into his characters and the Old Man into the rioters. The Pardoner represents his own Otherness while…

While Chaucer undoubtedly mined John of Wales's Communiloquium for details in PardT, he also consulted Jerome's Letter 22, to Eustochium, for details not found in John's florilegium. Comparison of PardT with Jerome's letter elucidates Chaucer's…

The verb "assoillen" and the noun "bulle," two terms that cluster in the prologue and epilogue to PardT, engage in wordplay with "soilen" and "boles" respectively. The Pardoner, who implicity claims to be God, attempts to "soilen" the pilgrims…

Physically, and by his associations with hares and the Summoner, the Pardoner is a grotesque, analogous to a major feature of the English Decorated Style in the visual arts. Also, the Pardoner is homosexual.

The Pardoner's pragmatic claims for salvation are part of a larger "question of Christian worldly prudence" in CT. His "response to his own tale . . . alerts us to the growth of a pragmatic attitude toward individual death and salvation."

Summarizes the theological tradition of second or eternal death that results from mortal sin. The concept is reflected in the figure of the Old Man, who is paradoxically both in death and deathless.

Using the same folkloric motif as exemplum, Chaucer and Kipling conflate it with other motifs to form a new configuration; both embed the narrative in a series of fictive frames and modify it by commentary of multiple fictive voices. A comparative…

Reviews anti-Semitism in PrT from a historical point of view. Defines anti-Semitism and its typical features: the death of the clergeon mirrors that of Christ; the Jews are linked with the devil; and they engage in usury. PrT is definitely…

A collection of essays treating the legend of Jews killing Christians, particularly children. Fourteen essays cover such areas as case histories, folkloristic tales and literary texts, surveys of the legend in different locales, ritual-murder…

Beheading appears frequently in Indo-European, Old Germanic, and Old and Middle English narratives, with varying connotations. The textual history of PrT shows this element as sometimes deleted and sometimes restored.

Examines PrT and the Prioress's sketch in GP as reflexes of gender performance and the historical conditions that shaped such performances. The anti-Semitism of her tale results from her suppression of her "bodiliness," represented in a fetishizing…

Focuses on the story of the martyred child, Hugh of Lincoln, said to have been murdered by Jews for religious purposes. Jacobs traces the story through history, songs, and legend. Considers the prayer at the end of PrT.

Since Chaucer uses the same passage in the Roman de la Rose as a source for the Prioress and the Wife of Bath, these two characters "are bonded in ironic literary sisterhood."

Mel suggests that interpretative perspective is crucial to meaning. Like the rest of fallen nature, language is indeterminate, so prudence is required to make sense of contingent existence. Apparent contradictions in Mel disappear if we understand…

Although critics have generally seen Mel as a simple allegory in fairly close translation, the Tale departs from Renaud in significant ways to question the nature of authority (good advice can be wrong; authorities can disagree; motivations can…