Browse Items (15150 total)

Explores the range and depth of Chaucer's familiarity with the "Liber Catonis," its commentaries and glosses, and the likelihood that he memorized portions as a schoolboy. Identifies verbal echoes of "Catoniana" in Chaucer's works; then focuses on…

Offers in parallel columns passages from ParsT, the "Moralium Dogma Philosophorum," and the French translation of the Latin text to argue that the "Moralium" is the ultimate source of portions of ParsT (especially the "Remedia" of the vices), even…

Describes the "ironic associations" of the summoner's oaths in FrT, particularly those that invoke St. James and St, Anne.

Reviews medieval ideas of degrees or grades of perfection, particularly as related to virginity as the "highest form of chastity" and marriage, a compromise even when admirable as in FranT. PhyT and SNT, both of which may follow FranT in the order of…

Challenges the universal applicability of the "organic" ideal (form equating to content) of New Criticism, arguing that it is applicable to modern novels but not earlier narratives. Explores Chaucer's and his audience's "lively consciousness of his…

Observes in MerT several commonplaces of the "aube" in the description of January and May's wedding-night, suggesting that they help "to point up the bitterly comic incongruities in January's marriage," and echo details of RvT and TC.

Suggests that Chaucer's self-characterization in Pr-ThL 7.695-97 derives from Dante's "Purgatorio" 19.52 and that the one follows the other in using the "dual first-person singular" and in separating Poet and Pilgrim as a narrative technique.

Traces from Jerome to Frère Lorens's "Somme le Roi" the legacy of commentary on Isaiah 40 which links spiritual ascent and contempt for the world, discussing Lorens's "Somme" as the source for the rise of Arcite in Boccaccio's "Teseida" and as a…

Argues that Daniel 13.20 is a source of or influence on details of MerT 5.2138-48, and suggests that pictorial representations of Susannah and the Elders and details from the alliterative poem "Susannah" reveal ironic dimensions in Chaucer's scene of…

Quotes PrT 7.684-86 at the beginning of a report about a "new version" of the information plaque at the tomb of Hugh at Lincoln Cathedral, one that castigates "Trumped up stories of 'ritual murders' of Christian boys by Jewish communities."

A chronological and thematic anthology of literary parodies that opens with Pr-ThL, Th, and a section of Th-MelL in Middle English as examples of parody of romance, followed by an "Imitation of Chaucer" by Alexander Pope and "A Clerk Ther Was of…

Argues that "to see Chaucer the pilgrim as anyone other than a marvelously alert, ironic, facetious master of every situation is to misread" CT. Particularly in his views of churchmen and uses of superlatives, the narrator is best understood as "a…

Acknowledging NPT to be "a rhetorical tour de force," assesses implications of its status as a "fable," surveying medieval commentaries on the genre, particularly its ability to teach and/or delight, and commenting on the morality the Nun's Priest…

Describes and assesses Chaucer's depictions of the expressions and psychology of love in TC, attending to diction, tone, style, and various uses and developments of the conventions of French and Italian love poetry. Focuses on the poet's successful…

Recommends showing students how digressive, "extra-narrative passages" in NPT "are the essence of Chaucer's intention, not obstructions." Includes discussion of contrasts between NPT and the Cock and Fox fable of Marie de France, focusing on…

Justifies accepting PF 99-105 as the more likely immediate source of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" 1.4.70-88 than Claudian's "De Sextu Consultat Honorii Augusti," Preface, 3-10, the ultimate source of both English texts.

Offers examples from the "Roman de la Rose" and Deschamps' "Ballade" that the word "bourdan" had the meaning "phallus," showing that the sense would have been familiar to Chaucer when he used "stif burdoun" to describe the Summoner's singing with the…

Explores the events of a single day in the first half of Book 2 of TC, particularly changes Chaucer made to Boccaccio "Filostrato," showing how this section helps to characterize Pandarus and Criseyde. Argues that the "muted contrast" between the…

Suggests that Shakespeare's knot-image may be related to the five fingers of the devil commented upon in ParsT 10.852-60.

Considers "some unnoticed passages" that shed light on Chaucer's references to "Trophee" and the Pillars of Hercules (MkT 7.2117-18), identifying no specific source but showing that parallel information was available in medieval accounts such as the…

Adduces an historical account from 1862 concerning a drinking game that involves turning over cups to suggest that "turne coppes" at RvT 1.3928 may indicate Symkyn caroused in similar fashion.

Suggests that the year-long delay in marriages at the end of Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost" may have been influenced by the similar delay in PF.

Identifies a citation of Chaucer's Friar and confession in Book 5.15 of Samuel Purchas's "Puchas His Pilgrimage" (1613).

Argues that medieval connections between stories of the sieges of Thebes and of Troy make the reference to Thebes at TC 2.83-84 a "masterstroke of supreme irony": directed at both Criseyde and Pandarus, the irony complicates aspects of predestination…

Argues that the Cleopatra legend in LGW is the source of details in Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra." Also argues that Chaucer derived information about Cleopatra's marriage to her brother(s) from Vincent of Beauvais' "Speculum Historiale," not…