Browse Items (15971 total)

Describes and assesses the CT, with chapters on social and intellectual backgrounds, Chaucer’s life, his use of pilgrimage and frame tale conventions, GP, and each of the individual tales, following the Ellesmere order. Discussions of individual…

Records Chaucer's consistent and conventional usage of "ye" and "thou" in FrT, showing how it achieves "irony and humor." Attends to manuscript variants and opines that "that the English language lost something by the abandonment of the singular form…

Reinforces suggestions that the Black Knight's age at BD 455 should be emended to "nine and twenty yer" to coincide with the age of John of Gaunt at Blanche's death, justifiable because of evidence that twenty-nine years was considered to be young in…

Identifies personal opportunities Chaucer had "to learn the special fame" of St. Clare, and suggests that his allusion to her in HF (line 1066) evokes "a contrasting silence" in a "passage descriptive of strident clamor."

Explains the exegetical tradition of associating Noah with astrological prediction of the Flood and suggests that in MilT "Hende Nicolas has built his entire scheme" to dupe John "around the astrological tradition of the Flood," thereby lending comic…

Argues that the astronomical conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in TC 3.624-25 does not allude to a specific event in 1385 (by which the central book of the poem has been dated) but to a more "general tradition" of foreboding, thematically appropriate…

Observes similarities in imagery, diction, and impact of portions of ParsT (Chaucer's interpolation in “lachesse” as a subset of Sloth) and PhyT (digression on governesses), exploring possible sources (especially St. Augustine), possible…

Suggests that the "main source" of TC "may have been" Beauvau's "Le Roman de Troyle et de Criseida," a French prose translation of Boccaccio's "Filostrato." Compares 300+ brief quotations (in all three languages), commenting on verbal and structural…

Provides lexical and grammatical evidence to argue that the verbal form “last” in ClT 4.266 “more than likely” means “extend in space,” a “loan-sense from the French” influenced by development of the similar meaning of “dure.”

Identifies lines 1-4 of the "Speculum Stultorum" of Nigel de Longchamps as a source for the bird cacophony in PF 309-15, observing that Chaucer's "personal familiarity" with the "Speculum" is evident in the reference to "Daun Burnel the Asse" at NPT…

Charts the charactonyms of Lydgate's "Seige of Thebes" with those used in two analogues, possibly sources--the "Roman de Edipus" and the "Ystoire de Thèbes--comparing them with names and spellings used by Chaucer. When Lydgate departs from Chaucer's…

Seeks to illuminate "the kind of order that Chaucer was in the process of imposing" on the CT, focusing on the "definite beginning" and "definite end" rather than the "great middle." Treats GP, where Chaucer sets his topic ("variety of the created…

Argues that complex acrostic anagrams in PF reveal that it was written on the occasion of negotiations for a marriage between Lionel of Clarence and Violanta Visconti; identifies French analogues to this intricate practice, and helping to date…

Offers a "third suggestion" to the discussions of what "seventhe spere" refers to in TC 5.1809, suggesting that Chaucer altered Boccaccio's eighth sphere (also a variant in TC manuscripts) and, counting inwards from the sphere of the fixed stars,…

Compares and contrasts examples of diction in Dryden's translations of CT to explain why Dryden did not translate the low-style fabliaux and to show that Dryden's translations of Chaucer's humorous passages evince metaphysical wit rather than the…

Offers support for the notion that the whelp episode in BD (387-96)—likely derived from Machaut's "Dit dou Lyon"—serves as a "symbol of fidelity," adducing instances of Renaissance "canine symbolism" and the appearance of dogs "on medieval…

Clarifies the implications of the Prioress keeping dogs as pets and feeding them meat (GP 1.146ff.), explaining that such behavior bends or breaks at least four "Benedictine strictures"—ones that restrict pet owning (especially dogs) and eating…

Compares Mars with the "Ovide moralisé" and examines its adaptations of the "aubade, the complaint, the Valentine-tradition (Gower and Graunson), and the conventions of courtly love"--as inflected by Chaucer's own concerns and "personality," and…

Anthologizes (with commentary) a wide variety of ribald texts and excerpts from the "Ancients" to the "Moderns," including among "Renaissance" works MilT, RvT, and WBP in Theodore Morrison's translations.

Locates three references to Chaucer in Stow's 1570 "Summarye," not found in the 1565 edition and not included in Caroline Spurgeon compendium of Chaucer's allusions. Points out that death dates given for Chaucer vary in two of the reference (1400 and…

Links the use of "ferthyng" and the lisping of the Friar in GP 1.255 and 1.264 with the friar of SumT and his use of "ferthyng" (3.1967), suggesting that if that latter had a lisp like the former, his pronunciation may have inspired the "crude…

Provides context for the references to a cope in the GP description of the Friar (1.259-63) and to Elijah and Elisha in SumT 3.2117-7, connecting both with Richard Maidstone's polemical responses to John Ashwardby's attacks on mendicant friars.

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate this edition of ClT includes an introduction and notes by Marjorie M. Barber.

Includes examination of the verbal play on praying and belching in SumT 3.1934, arguing that the pun is effective satire even when manuscripts (including the Ellesmere) substitute "but" for the onomatopoetic "buf." Considers other puns…

Item not seen.