Browse Items (15544 total)

Argues that Chaucer seeks to persuade the audience of ShT to "use money wisely" by exposing the fallacy of equating wisdom and wealth and by following St. Augustine's arguments about wealth (that are also echoed in Mel and ParsT). This helps to…

In the Christian Middle Ages, epidemics were perceived as punishment for spiritual sin, though bubonic plague became so widespread as to seem apocalyptic. Grigsby treats "Pricke of Conscience," "Amis and Amiloun," the York Cycle "Moses and Pharaoh,"…

In LGWP, PF, and HF, Chaucer absorbs several conventions and concerns from the commentaries that he used as sources, thereby suggesting that his audience was familiar not only with traditional texts but also with the commentaries on them.

TC exhibits a notable conflict between gift and not-gift economics--between ideal giving and practical commodity exchange. The rules of courtly love, ostensibly designed to ennoble the lover and enable "true" love, in practice disallow unconditional…

Criseyde is the "fullest subjectivity" in TC. Her resistance to Troilus's fantasy demonstrates the "constructed nature of masculinity" as shifting and dependent posturing. Koppelman explores Criseyde's confrontations with the "opaque network" of…

While the Wife of Bath's character is proto-feminist, the rape of the maiden and the submission of the woman at the end of WBT point to a dominate patriarchal attitude. By embedding Arthurian myth into WBT and presenting the Wife as a fictional…

Argues that internal evidence (meter, repetitiveness, exaggeration, etc.) is sufficient to establish that "The Fair Maid of Ribblesdale" is a parody, comparing examples drawn from the poem to similar ones in Chaucer's MercB, MilT, and, especially,…

Thought to be the work of Chaucer until the 1870s and long read largely for its style, "The Floure and the Leafe" is an ironic allegory warning readers not to "succumb to the deceptions that have befallen both the Flower and the Leaf." The details…

Surveys the use of the vocative, "thou" and "you" forms, and other "unadorned" forms of address in Chaucer's works to argue that in FranT Arveragus adopts an authoritative tone in sending Dorigen to meet Aurelius to fulfill her promise.

FranT line 5(F).1204 equals "The Tempest" 4.1, "our revels now are ended."

Dorigen and Arveragus of FranT "demonstrate . . . deficiency in the cognitive skills inculcated by the medieval trivium," making them "vulnerable to the Orleans clerk's corruptions of the quadrivium." Weak critical thinking undermines their ability…

At first lacking in "gentillesse," Aurelius knows how to insist u0pon his rights, but in the latter half of FranT, he is transformed into a gentle squire.

In spite of an appearance as a tragedy, the tale by the sanguine Franklin quickly arrives at the conclusion of a happy exemplum. It is the narrator himself who most keenly enjoys the tale.

Chaucer moves away from the Catholic concept of love, which abhors adultery. FranT is a happy tale in spite of the serious unanswered questions about God and life and love.

Folklorists describe liminal tales as experiences that are part of a rite of passage from one realm of experience to another. Viewed thus, FrT assumes new complexities: it reflects the total pilgrimage experience of CT.

FrT is a tale warning Chaucer's audience about the stupidity of sin. The Friar tells a story of a foolish summoner who gives in to at least three of the deadly sins. Stupidity, not wickedness, leads the Summoner to hell.

ParsT ends CT but does not bring transcendent closure to the work. In various ways--including several verb forms and other variations from Pennaforte's "Summa"--ParsPT reaffirm temporality rather than asserting eternality; they focus attention not on…

The movement of "Gatsby" was compared to that of TC by Nancy Hoffman in 1971. However, the differences are as significant as the similarities. Fitzgerald's story reflects different preoccupations, a different age. Chaucer created something poised…

Treating HF as a performance piece enablies us to better recognize its humor.

Argues that in HF Chaucer achieves "symbolic cohesion" and unity by combining the narrator's Virgilian epiphany of a "higher sense of duty" (his response to the Aeneas/Dido exemplum) with the Boethian imagery of philosophical ascent (effected by the…

Examines various uses and stylistic effects of "and" in HF.

The favored manuscript reading "Prison, stewe, of gret distress" appears in CX1 and TH "Pryson, stryfe, or grete dystress." "Stryfe" was often spelled "striue," and "stewe" can be derived from abbreviated "striue" and not vice versa. The sense of…

Steadman suggests "a possible connection between the fictional date of the poet's dream, its tripartite structure, the feast of Saint Lucy, and the Dantesque associations of Chaucer's eagle," discussing major images and motifs of the poem.

Assesses the Chaucer portraits in the Ellesmere manuscript and in Hoccleve's Regement of Princes as evidence in the study of the development of individual identity. Considers literary portraits of John Locke, John Milton, John Donne, and Chaucer,…

"The Kingis Quair" has been interpreted as autobiographical and Boethian. If, however, James I understood Boethius as Chaucer did, both interpretations are incorrect. James discredits his narrator persona by using the Chaucerian Boethius as a…