Browse Items (15542 total)

Provides an overview of Chaucer as storyteller and narrator in CT, BD, HF, and TC.

Discusses the idea of "poetic feet" of versification in poetry, and examines how travel narratives are linked to poetic language. Compares CT (particularly ParsT, MkT, KnT, Tho, Mel, and TC, to Dante's "Inferno" and Mandeville's travel narrative.

Argues that in the Dido account of LGW Chaucer "channels" deep-seated cultural "anxiety about Phoenicians as he asserts his place in a Roman-centered Western tradition." By "removing the story of Dido's diasporic leadership, and misidentifying her…

Considers the imagery and implications of flatulence, wind, excrement, and refuse in medieval culture, considering anecdotes, visual imagery, religious commentary, and other literature. Occasional mention of Chaucer's works, with focused attention…

Most if not all early scribes used Hg, which avoided editorial tampering--i. e., introduction of new tales and links, revision of order of tales, "corrections" of lines, words, spellings. "The best an editor can do is follow Hg closely."

Advertises an interactive online edition of TC, designed to facilitate language instruction for students of Chaucer's Middle English.

Reconsiders the traditional dating of BD in light of the evolving relationship between Chaucer and John of Gaunt, as affected by Katherine Swynford. The date influences our reading of the poem.

Tallies and assesses Chaucer's uses of comparative constructions using as in CT (e.g., "as . . . as," "as . . . as is a . . ."), including their functions as set phrases.

Analyzes the variety of lexical doublets in Mel, comparing them with parallel collocations in the French source and commenting on stylistic and semantic implications.

In two recent articles discussing Chaucer's assonance (JEGP, 71; PMLA, 88) Percy Adams fails to make critical distinctions between phonemes that differ quantitatively, thus seriously undermining his own conclusions about assonance and obscuring…

In Sted and Mel, Chaucer either could not or did not make his attitude about the political and religious problems of his day clear. Akahori examines why he gave his hearty, moral advice to Richard II and what he really intended to say.

Discusses Chaucer's imagination, investigating the description of nature in TC. In Japanese.

Examines Chaucer's notion of "gentilesse" and its importance by looking into instances of its use in KnT, SqT, FranT, WBT, ParsT, and Gent. In Japanese.

Examines how Chaucer's characters in CT, particularly the Clerk in ClT and Nicholas in MilT, reveal "intersections of debt and education" and, therefore, are shapedby their participation in "late medieval England's educational economy."

Explores PF as an example of Chaucer's poetic technique, examining the text, sources, structure, and organic unity of the work.

Considers "life" and "death" in BD, examining the role of the dream-vision genre in establishing meanings of the terms.

Challenges the blunt opposition between orality and literacy, arguing from evidence in Chaucer and Langland that transitional terms are needed. Borrowing from the linguistic terms "exophoric" and "endophoric," Coleman argues that the Wife of Bath's…

This introductory essay comments on the first fifty years of Chaucer Review, and looks ahead to future projects.

Carruthers reevaluates Troilus's weeping and lamentation in Book 4 of TC in the context of monastic tradition, including the works of Peter of Celle and Galen, that sees links "among perception, sensation, and rational process."

Law and its applications influence literary audiences, and Chaucer exploits the possibilties variously. In KnT, trial by combat fails to effect closure; Theseus must intervene. Melibee's final verdict acts similarly in Mel. In SumT, however, the…

Eight-line lyric poem that alludes to religion and the telling of tales.

The images associated with mice and rats comically verify Pandarus' taunting speech when Troilus prays before entering Criseyde's chamber.

Explores the religious connotations and associations of Middle English "entente," arguing that it suggests spiritual or moral motivations in FrT.

Dane argues on the basis of two copies of Thynne's edition that one cannot properly speak of them as "corrected" or "uncorrected."

Witalisz explores ambivalent attitudes toward war in Middle English romances, particularly those concerned with Troy or King Arthur. Chaucer's attitude is "only implicit," and the anti-war stance attributed to him is based on "his deliberate silence…