Browse Items (16041 total)

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."

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

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 rather…

Text and translation with introduction, notes, and bibliography, including comparative studies of Chaucer and Machaut. Influences on BD, LGW, TC.

A guide to secondary sources on Machaut's life, music, and literature, plus his influence on later traditions. The general index enables users to track discussions of Machaut's influence on Chaucer, both generally and with reference to individual…

Chaucer uses the conventions of Machaut in BD to undermine them, demonstrating to his English readers that the French poetic tradition was two-dimensional, "narrow in scope and appeal, read primarily for diversion and reflection."

Machaut provides the nearest precedents, the most probable chief sources, for all of Chaucer's independent love lyrics printed in Robinson except "The Complaint of Venus," wherein Chaucer follows Graunson, and "A Balade of Complaint," most probably…

In TC, Chaucer gave his Boccaccio material greater depth and emotional significances by borrowing from Machaut. His presentation of the psychological effects of Troilus' passion echoes "Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne." Pandarus' wisdom is often that…

Chaucer's tale of Hypsipyle and Medea (LGW 4) shares verbal features with the "Gest Historyale of the Destruction of Troy" and the "Laud Troy Book." Not derived from one another, they may go back to an earlier Middle English translation.

Suggests how Chaucer may have become familiar with the work of Guido Cavalcanti, and argues that TC records philosophical and poetical perspectives and several poetic devices that are similar to those found in Cavalcanti's "Donna me prega."

Articulates the principles of manuscript transcription for the "Canterbury Tales" Project, theorizing about the potential and limitations of transcribing for machine-readable publication and explaining why "graphemic" transcription (rather than…

Surveys English literature and critical responses to this literature; designed for classroom use. Summarizes historical backgrounds and provides annotated bibliographies, linked with the discussions of individual works, authors, and topics, including…

Traces a tradition of nonsense and humor in English psychedelic rock music, mentioning Chaucer's influence (specifically NPT as a mock epic) and a few allusions to Chaucer in the lyrics of psychedelic songs.

Explores the biological and sociological understanding of childhood and adolescence in late-medieval London, demonstrating that the late Middle Ages "did recognize stages of life that corresponded to childhood and adolescence."

Identifies patterns that indicate Chaucer's "careful planning" of a sequence of groupings of pilgrims in GP, focusing on audience expectations, points of views, tones, satirical targets, and the traditional three estates.

Identifies in medieval medicine a concern with organs and features of the human body that are "grotesquely" able to speak, and associates the concept with Cecilia's neck in SNT and the clergeon's throat in PrT. Through their depictions of human…

Describes Grosseteste's notion of universals and Wyclif's treatment of it; then argues that KnT and MilT are, respectively, philosophically realist and antirealist, focusing on the First Mover speech in KnT as an example of Grosseteste's…

Discusses the meaning of "woe that is in marriage" and the antifeminist attitude of the Clerk in ClT, juxtaposed to the Wife of Bath, and shows that the Clerk preaches skillfully about the abnormal relationship between man and wife.

Explores the fifteenth-century production of German translations of Petrarch's "Griseldis" and audience reception of those translations.

Wallace reviews letters between Boccaccio and Petrarch, suggesting that it is not unreasonable to "consider Petrarch and Boccaccio toiling, sparring, and loving one another in bonds suggestive of matrimony" (210). Aligns events of the Griselda tales…

Explores two folkloric motifs in ClT and "Lay le Freine": the patient wife and twin sisters who are rivals in love. Rooted in the same myth, the stories imagine alternatives to patriarchal culture as well as dramatizing wifely obedience and female…

Chaucer modifies his sources for ClT in a way that emphasizes Griselda's virtue as specifically "feminine" and exclusively "wifely." The reflections of her wifely virtue in the pagan wives of LGW, who "view devotion to their husbands as their highest…

Hernández Pérez explores kinship models implicit in the cultural "memory" of ClT, especially those that involve Walter's sister and the sending of children to a relative's household. Griselda's class and deference may reflect vestiges of marriage…

Demonstrates through word study that Griselda is "the personification of the virtues of meekness, humility, fortitude, and modesty," a figure of medieval love.

Although Griselda is "translated" in three different ways in ClT (language, place,and social class), her labor is constant throughout. Her labors (domestic, wifely, and public) define her essential selfhood and grant her a kind of power that Walter…