Browse Items (15542 total)

The pagan references in TC perform two obvious functions: they provide local color and they help to delineate character (as in Pandarus' scorn of Troilus--who has just uttered a prayer to several pagan deities--calling him a "mouses hert," III,…

KnT suggests the transitory nature of human life and offers as consolation the prospect of a heroic and noble death in the figure of Arcite.

White explores the role of literature in "peace studies," traces pacifist theory through the ages, and surveys pacifism in English literature from the Middle Ages to modern prose, poetry, and film. The chapter on the Middle Ages comments on Old…

Windeatt compares several of Chaucer's works and their sources to show that through variations in narrative pace and increased attention to pinpointing time, Chaucer makes something quite new. Considers PF, MLT, TC, KnT, and several of the tales in…

Describes late medieval literary production in the city of Oxford, characterizing it as a "crossroads for intellectual work of all kinds," summarizing its library holdings, and surveying affiliated literature. Comments on Oxfordian influences on…

Surveys depictions of and reactions to Oxford in English literature, from legends of St. Frideswide to modern fiction and screenplays.

Though Ovid's influence on Jean de Meun and Chaucer has long been recognized as far as mythology and irony are concerned,Ovid's "neoteric" narrative techniques also provided models for the two writers; cf. Chaucer's BD, TC, and WBT.

Focuses on Chaucer's uses of Ovid, specifically his use of the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe in LGW.

Addresses Chaucer's works as part of a larger examination of the influence of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," particularly his employment of ekphrasis--the use of poetry to
portray other types of art.

Ovid's "Metamorphoses" is crucial to the development of characterization in western European literature. Ovid complicates the conventional "divided consciousness" of earlier characterizations through relativism, rationalization, rhetoric…

Explains the sexual resonances latent in the reference to Priapus in MerT 4.2034-37, citing tales in Ovid, the commentary tradition, and PF. January's statue of Priapus "constitutes a kind of devotion to the obscene god who was the true patron saint…

Essay not located; reported in the MLA International Bibliography, with the following note: "Proceedings of the Northeast Region Conference: Voices Far and Near: Myth, Legend, Folktale, Fantasy, Held Friday, October 25 and Saturday, October 26,…

Argues that Ovid's "Tristia" and "Ex Ponto" influenced the ideas of Fame, Fortune, and Rumor in HF, along with several details in the poem.

Desmond studies the discourse of erotic violence in medieval literature and iconography, surveying depictions of the "mounted Aristotle" and focusing on the adaptations of material from Ovid's "Ars Amatoria" found in the letters of Héoïse and…

Argues that Chaucer's allusions to Argus in WBP, MerT, and TC derive ultimately from Ovid's "Ars Amatoria" and "Amores" and capitalize on the "conventional moral significations" of the moralized commentary tradition, lending resonances to the…

Traces connections between Ovid and Chaucer and asserts that "Chaucer emerges not simply as a conveyor of or apprentice to Ovid, but as a 'collaborator' in an Ovidian poetic, one who necessarily and wilfully transforms Ovid's 'book' into his own." In…

Surveys texts by and about Ovid that Chaucer and Gower "might have used," arguing that the influence of Ovid was pervasive, complex, and crucial to the "careers and poetic self-fashioning" of both medieval poets, a model of poetic authority for them.…

Compares the Wife of Bath's version of the Midas exemplum with Ovid's original in "Metamorphoses," suggesting that the divergences exemplify the Wife's penchant for misquoting and/or misunderstanding authorities and align with her deafness, a…

Suggests that although Chaucer generally follows Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" in his account of the labors of Hercules, one discrepancy may have been influenced by a scholists' gloss to Ovid's "Ibis" 401-2.

Argues that Ovid inspired the structure, narrative complexities, and thematic focus of CT—its tales-within-a-tale structure, its multiple narrators characterized by their tales, and its concern with two kinds of love, higher and lower—and shows that…

Identifies Ovid's "Amores" 3.4.41-42 as a possible source for the "incompatibility of beauty and marital fidelity" that underlies the choice offered by the loathly lady to the knight in WBT 3.1219-27.

Identifies Ovid as the ultimate source of Chaucer's references to the friendship of Theseus and Piritheus in KnT, perhaps mediated by the "Roman de la Rose 8148-54 or moralizations of Ovid's works.

Describes Ovid's response to Virgil, and gauges Ovid's influence on Chaucer, focusing on the latter's acquaintance with "Ars Amatoria," "Remedia Amoris," and "Amores," and on the "self-conscious, obtrusive narrator." Like Ovid, and unlike Virgil,…

Examines the "nature and extent" of Ovid's influence on CT, identifying wide-ranging allusions to various Ovidian works and providing parallel passages, assessing Chaucer's emulation of Ovidian techniques and considering Chaucer's uses of…

Thaisen illustrates how a distribution of orthographical variants can be an "internal standard of reference," using as an example the Ad3 manuscript of CT. He comments on the order of tales in the manuscript and on various features of the…