Browse Items (15542 total)

In BD, Chaucer combines a series of sustained unconventional allusions to the Narcissus exemplum from the "Roman de la Rose" with the narrative of Ceyx and Alcyone from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" to produce a "moral lesson against suicide" with a…

The conversion of all to "mercantile exchange" underlies a comic displacement of roles in ShT. The merchant and the monk switch roles, and the wife paradoxically gains a sense of self-worth, a comic transformation of her economic and sexual…

Describes the historical evolution of figurative language, especially metaphors, identifying patterns of development. Metaphors depend on images in the past; new metaphors are created through linkage to core concepts or "underlying conceptual…

Four essays by Pizzorno on Chaucer's epistemological uses of metaphor, exempla, and allegory, with an appendix (pp. 111-31) on figurative thinking in classical and medieval tradition and in modern theory. Chapter one (pp. 5-29) was previously…

Adopts a "grounded approach to cognition" that combines awareness of embodiment, physical environment, and sociocultural situatedness. Discusses "selected cognitive-cultural aspects of diagrammatic iconicity" that structure ParsT and constitute a…

Collection of essays on classical Persian literature. Includes an article by F. D. Lewis, "One Chaste Muslim Maiden and a Persian in a Pear Tree: Analogues of Boccaccio and Chaucer in Four Earlier Arabic and Persian Tales" that links linking Arabic…

Argues that exempla should be regarded as essentially metaphorical rather than didactic, and reads NPT as an exemplary tale that parodies the uses of exempla in the other tales of fragment 7, especially MkT.

For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Métamorphoses under Alternative Title.

Explores how some poststructuralist contributions to the theory of narrative enable a feminist rereading of two of the tales and suggests that Chaucer presents a bleak view of male-female relations.

Contrasts TC and ManT as examples of metafiction, showing that in each the narrative persona is not a character in any traditional sense but a voicing of the author's concerns with language and fiction. ManT overtly declares the instability of…

The Middle Ages had developed a sophisticated semiotic theory. The legend of Troy permitted poets to explore language as the living expression of the social order. The principal sphere of action of TC is words, not swordblows or even kisses.

That "the major thread of coherence in medieval culture was its sustained reflection...upon language as a semiotic system--more broadly, upon the nature, the functions and the limitations of the verbal sign as a mediator of human understanding" is…

The fourteenth-century "Antiovidianus," a satire on Ovidian art, provides a convenient way to view Chaucer's CYPT. The works share chemical, theological, and scatological imagery,illuminating Chaucer's constant exploration of the "tension between…

Ovid and the Ovidian tradition provided Chaucer with a poetic ranging from the "game" of Ars Amatoria to the "ernest" of Tristia. Chaucer uses rhetoric to various ends with the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, and the Canon. In Ret, however, Chaucer…

The appearance of Mercury in Arcite's dream is usually thought to be derived from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', I. A more probable source, however, is Virgil's 'Aeneid', IV, where Mercury commands the hero to hasten on to Italy, just as in Chaucer Arcite…

Reinforces previous arguments that the immediate source of Chaucer's description of "Mercury the slayer of Argus" in KnT is Ovid's "Metamorphoses" 1.671-72, adding that, like Argus, Arcite finds death by listening to the "persuasive and deceitful…

Examining erotic elements, "identifications of the pear tree and the garden," and Mercury's role and attributes, Smarr analyzes similarities between Chaucer's and Boccaccio's handling of the pear-tree tale--similarities greater than those found in…

Throughout his works, Chaucer employs "mercurial figures" who appear as "emblematic escorts, to lead readers safely past narrative fissures." In BD, these figures appear not only as Mercury himself but also as the whelp (d-o-g for g-o-d), who…

In light of Gerald Brun's investigations into historical hermeneutic theories, Chaucer may be seen as employing messenger figures throughout his oeuvre, from BD to CT. This role applies especially to Alys of Bath (despite her claims on Venus and…

Score of musical setting for MercB, with text in Middle English, and an introductory note by Michael Kennedy. The score was published originally in 1922.

Score for a selection from MercB in modernized English.

Recording of MercB set to music, performed by the Vasari Singers, "Recorded 2016 February 12–14 Church of St. Judeon-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden, London."

Clerical anti-mercantile views gradually shifted as a "guardedly pro-trade ideology" emerged. Such attitudes also appear in estates satire found in CT, Gower's "Miroir de l'Omme," "Piers Plowman," Margery Kempe, the York cycle plays, and various…

Item not seen; reported by WorldCat, with abstract: argues that in MerT, Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes," and Lydgate's "Fall of Princes" merchants are "used to model kingly virtues. By mapping monarchical characteristics onto merchants, these late…

Although critics often criticize the monk and wife of ShT for their lack of morals, the merchant's own dealings are not without blame. His bill of exchange may be illegal, and it parallels the arrangement between monk and wife. All three characters…