Browse Items (16041 total)

Reads ManPT, ParsPT, and Ret in light of the Dionysian/Apollonian opposition posed by Nietzsche in "The Birth of Tragedy Out of Music." Whereas Nietzsche treated the two as irreconcilable, Chaucer combines them in "an ethical aesthetics and an…

Includes discussion of the influence of Nigel's "Speculum Stultorum" on NPT, arguing that it is "significant to the final shaping" of Chaucer's poem.

Creates a literary history of the "night side of literature" in London from the Middle Ages to the mid-nineteenth century. Considers Chaucer's "nightwalkers" in MilT, CkT, WBT, and LGW.

A critical bibliography of studies on TC in Japan in five categories: courtly love, tragic nature of the story, idea of fate, character portrayal, meaning of the Epilogue.

Item not seen. Transliteration of title from WorldCat record.

Establishes Nikos Kazantzakis's familiarity with Chaucer, evident in his discussion in "England: A Travel Journal" (1941) of a passage from SumT; then suggests that the Tale may have influenced Kazantakis's depiction of a monk in his novel "The…

Medieval commentaries on the confusion of language introduced through the Tower of Babel (Genesis 10-11) illuminate the motif of linguistic disintegration that runs through SNT, CYT, and ManT. The associations of Nimrod with pride, magic, fire, and…

Modern verse translations of romances in their original verse forms, with individual introductions and notes, a general introduction, and a commentary on the value of modern verse translation. Includes WBT and Th, along with Gower's "Tale of…

In opposition to Robertson's "patristic exegesis," Donaldson models a practice of engaging the autonomy of medieval texts. In the process, he adopts a critical persona that, feminist critiques notwithstanding, "is a decorous fiction which may or may…

Allusions to and echoes of Boethius and Dante reinforce Chaucer's concern with the inevitability of sorrow and its relationship to joy in TC. The structure of the poem collaborates with these devices to convey the transitory nature of worldly joy…

Despite Skeat's allegations of 1897, Usk's work proves to be both substantially original (free of plagiarism from Bo) and stylistically effective.

Examines Chaucer's use of Boccaccio's Teseida as a source for KnT. Also argues that by having the Miller parody the story of Palamon and Arcite, Chaucer transforms his own work, as well as Boccaccio's text, into a fabliau.

The already diffuse mixture of accepted sources for FranT is complemented here with an argument favoring a debt to French fabliaux.

Affiliations between women and Fortune recur throughout MkT, a facile parallel rendered ridiculous by Chaucer's depiction of the Monk and the Monk's tale-telling style.

"The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" recalls WBP and WBT "in a spirit of creative adaptation and emulation," as part of a conscious travesty of this and other sources.

The description of the Friar, the tone of his remarks and his tale, and the response of the Summoner are couched in ambiguities. These are clarified if we are aware of the implicit context in which he operates: a social hierarchy, based on…

Although thought immortal and evil, the Old Man in PardT is mortal in his longing for death, and, furthermore, good, patient, and kind. Chaucer's audience might have seen a parallel with Noah, the incredibly old survivor of a worse "plague," the…

An introduction and eleven essays consider romances of the English tradition written between the late Middle Ages and Spenser, with recurrent concern for relations to the Continental tradition of romance. Topics include Chaucer, the "Gawain" poet,…

Considers representations of noble counselors to royalty in GP (the Knight), MerT, and Mel, among others, arguing that writers such as Chaucer and Langland demonstrate faith in this "traditional institution."

Contends that metaphors of hunting in TC and the alliterative "Morte Arthure" are intended for a noble audience, and in turn, they shape that audience's attention to ideas of love and chivalry.

Discusses the narrative frame of H. G. Wells's "The Time Machine" as part of the "story-within-story narrative model" epitomized by CT, describing features of Chaucer's frame-narrative and arguing that Wells's presentation is unique in that the…

The "polyphonic assemblage of voices" in CT "displaces the teleological-topographical narrative" of movement toward the heavenly city of God. The Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, and the Miller, in particular, embody noise and represent the vox populi…

Explores the correspondences between late-medieval, early modern, and contemporary critical and literary nominalism. For five essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Nominalism and Literary Discourse under Alternative Title.

Chaucer intensifies the voluntarist diction found in sources of ClT, thus urging a reconsideration of the "Tale's" principal characters and of the will of God as it was understood in late-fourteenth-century England.

Although it is common to separate the religious message of ClT from the tale's portrayal of women and marriage, the two are "linked," with the juxtaposition of Griselda and Alison of Bath representing "opposite solutions to the problem of women's…