Browse Items (16012 total)

Considers the Pardoner in PardT as an "exemplary figure" of what Walter Benjamin argues is a defining trait of modernity: the eclipse of religion's sacralizing capacities by capitalism, which, like the Pardoner’s sales pitch, intensifies guilt…

McTurk argues that "Laxdaela Saga" is an analogue to WBPT, although the two derive independently from the Irish tale of the Loathly Lady.

Chaucer "organized his hagiographic play around the 'distinctiones', or normative arrays, giving and revenge, which are exemplified in the narrative clusters derivative of the hagiographics and the dramatic treatment of St. Nicholas and Absalom."

Assesses the inclusion of information from the GP description of the Knight in Richard Hakluyt's "The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation," where Hakluyt presents Chaucer's fiction "as a genuine historical…

Considers the anonymous executioner and the three strokes required to execute Cecilia in SNT.

References to "Lameth" in WBT and SqT comprise links in a sturdy chain connecting the tragic actions of Shakespeare's prince of Denmark to Lamech, a "(pseudo-)biblical figure associated with murder, rage, and vengeance."

Describes the history, procedures, and practices of editing volumes for the Chaucer Library which was created in 1945. Comments on how to select texts, editorial responsibilities, and preparation of typescripts. An appendix provides four pages of…

Eighteen essays by various authors, addressing topics such as confession, medicine, chaste marriage, contraception, homosexuality, lesbianism, cross-dressing, prostitution, castration, and various cultural studies: Jewish, Muslim, Eastern Orthodox,…

Argues that Chaucer "contextualizes virtues through narrative." Provides close study of Chaucer's treatment of virtues and ethics in CT and TC.

Although the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts were both copied by "Scribe B," their differences indicate how a variety of factors affect textual transmission.

Briefly surveys the practice of concordance making and assesses the limitations of Tatlock and Kennedy's concordance to Chaucer (1927) and Oizumi's computer-assisted but conventionally printed one (1991). Some of the limitations of traditional…

In MkP, the Host associates the Monk with a sacristan or cellarer. Norsworthy surveys historical cellarers and the role of the cellarer according to the Rule of St. Benedict, connecting bad cellarers with MkT. The Monk's narratives pertain to tyrants…

John Hardyng borrows TC III.617 for his verse "Chronicle."

Opens a discussion of Harlan Ellison's uses of a "speaking voice" in his fiction by commenting on Chaucer's multiple narrative voices and the depiction of "Chaucer reading aloud" in the Troilus frontispiece (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 61).

An illustrated interview with Harold Bloom, with commentary and contributions by others. The section entitled "Chaucer and the Creation of Character" includes Bloom's suggestion that the Pardoner is a precursor to Shakespeare's Iago and Edmund, and…

Monroe's essay "Chaucer and Langland," published in her journal Poetry in 1915, argued that Chaucer's preference for French forms and rhythms had cut off later English poetry from the true native tradition represented by Langland's alliterative…

Explores how CT reflects Chaucer's "orientation toward life that celebrates 'bisynesse' [business/busyness] and abhors wasteful idleness." Focuses on the importance of the Host and Chaucer's "marking of the time" in CT.

Argues that the Host's oath by the "precious corpus Madrian" in CT (MkP 7.1892) refers to St. Hadrian or Adrian, adducing details from the "Golden Legend" and citing the Host's "untrained ear," as well as parallels with Melibee's wife, Prudence, and…

Reads Th as a "brilliant joke at the Host's expense": not a satire or parody of tail-rhyme romances but a repudiation of the Host's "crude homosocial bantering," his "puerile tastes," and his "pretensions" as a literary critic. Includes comments on…

Comments on the Host's "outrage" and the "silence" of the other pilgrims at the end of PardT, attributing them both to failure to "separate art from reality."

Through Harry Bailly in CT, Chaucer explores the literary tastes of his new audience. Although the Host's interpretations of Chaucer's tales are usually wrong-headed, Chaucer uses the Host to suggest appropriate audience reactions to various…

Characterizes the Host by examining the social history of his profession as an innkeeper and its possible associations with prostitution. In his interactions with other pilgrims,the Host reveals a "desire to be entertained with merry stories" and an…

Argues that the most "tempting objects" in J. K. Rowling's "Deathly Hallows" derive in part from the girdle in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"; the "thirty pieces of silver that persuade" the biblical Judas to betray Jesus; and the "deadly pile of…

Argues that Troilus's wooing and loss of Criseyde in TC influenced the depiction of Wallace's wooing and loss of the Bradefute maiden in Hary's "Wallace."

Chaucer possibly intended for Mel to be a take-it-or-leave-it kind of work. Its storyline was extremely familiar in the fourteenth century, and its very presence within CT made a statement. Mel is a tale to be known rather than read, both by…