Browse Items (15544 total)

Critiques editorial decisions in punctuating and glossing TC 3.1751-57, comparing the passage with its original in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy."

Identifies bawdy double meaning in Pandarus's use of "al hool" in TC 2.587, signaled by Criseyde's embarrassed laughter and not apparent in Boccaccio's original.

The line reads "Thy pourynge ('vrr.' pouryng, powringe) in wol nowher lat hem dwelle." All evidence--context, lexicographical, manuscript--indicates that it means "peering-in, gazing-in," from ME "pouren"; and not "pouring-in."

The lines of Matteo Frescobaldi's "Canzone XI" provide the nearest analogue for Chaucer's description of Prudence with "eyen thre." As bankers to the crown, the Frescobaldi had direct links with fourteenth-century England, and the verbal parallels…

Comprehensive readings of TC fall into two basic categories: sympathetic/dualistic, and ironic. In the first, the essentially admirable courtly love of Troilus and Criseyde is seen to contrast (in varying degrees) with the orthodox Christian world…

Despite pressures of late-twentieth-century scholarship to make Chaucer's poetry as difficult and allusive as possible,scholars need to distinguish between Chaucer's use of sources that would have been obscure or unobtainable for his…

A comparison of TC 4.897-98 with Boccaccio's Italian suggests that more of the clause is Criseyde's quotation than is usually punctuated as such. Also, "sighte" may be a copying error for "right." The resulting text, corrected and repunctuated,…

Aside from questions of direct borrowings, "Romeo and Juliet" has much in common with TC. Resemblances include handling of characters, attitudes toward love and death, the use of comedy within the tragedy, imagery, and the overall shape of the…

Discusses "Chaucer's feeling for the openness of questions, his distrust of final answers" in TC, NPT, and PF. Chaucer has an "unsettling ability to make every alternative attractive, even clearly sinful ones."

Reads the depiction of Troilus in TC in light of Gower's castigation of knightly love in "Vox Clamantis," arguing that both poets critique immoral love, even though Chaucer's poses ironically a "sentimental" view of his protagonist.

Treats TC and KnT together because each derives from a source by Boccaccio and because each includes Boethian thought; also considers the Shakespearean analogues of each and compares each with opera, Books 1-3 of TC correspond to the "medieval…

Discusses TC's "moral allegory and fictional realism" using a Kantian aesthetic lens. Focuses on the aesthetics of desire, as well as the rhythm, imagery, and mode of the poem.

Examines Chaucer's correlation of translation and love in TC, yoking aesthetics and ethics and exploring the embedded ideas of order and gender; considers the sexuality evident in discussions of translation by Boethius, Alain de Lille, and Dante; and…

Criseyde's love of Troilus could be the cause of her love affair with Diomede. This article corrects, supplements, and reinforces the conclusion of an article by the same name in "Poetica" 29-30 (1989): 39-57.

Chaucer merges earthly love into charity in TC. Criseyde's love of Troilus could be the cause of her love affair with Diomede.

In TC the questions of free will and predestination are analyzed in argumentative patterns which may be related to Strode's "Consequences." Measured against Strode's rules, these patterns reveal that the most valid logic is used by the character…

The alliterative phrase "here and houne," usually related to "hare and hound," may derive from an unattested OE formula meaning "the host and the household," an interpretation consistent with the context.

Although the tree-vine "topos" with which Chaucer describes the embrace of Troilus and Criseyde is a literary commonplace, it usually describes a relationship that is either destructive or supportive. In TC the "topos" is ambiguous and highlights…

Examines Chaucer's narratorial intrusions in TC, arguing that they both lead the reader to assimilliate abrupt shifts in sensibility and perspective and move the reader from objective observation to subjective response.

Echoes of Dante's "Commedia" in TC are not ironic. In each poem, love is religious, even theological, reflected in the characters' Christian references in TC. The poems are distinct not as Christian is distinct from pagan but as comedy is distinct…

Defends the notion that TC presents an ambivalent view of human love, grand yet transitory, arguing that this ambivalence is rooted in Chaucer's treatment of love as mythic material.

Chaucer acknowledged his difficult role in using his "matere" --Boccaccio's "Filostrato"--and asked his reader to accept Criseyde kindly. Chaucer's transformation of the shallow Criseyde of Boccaccio into the complex woman of TC caused his "nervous…

Argues that Chaucer amplifies Boccaccio's "Filostrato" in order "to expand our awareness of both the values and limitations . . . of idealized human love," using brief and long expansions as well as lengthy additions. Complexly presented, the love in…

Describes the two aubades of TC (3.1422-70) as characteristic of the genders of their speakers: The "manliness" of Troilus's aubade "counterpoise[es] the femininity" of Criseyde's. Contrasts the two aubades with W. B. Yeats's "The Parting."

To be part of the courtly love tradition, TC must exist outside the patriarchal feudal order and allow male and female equal power. However, the reality of a hierarchical social order creates ambivalence in the narrator toward his material.