Browse Items (16035 total)

Robertson encourages feminist critics to confront "the complexities of the relationship between women and religion" in Chaucer's religious tales, for "what appear in these tales to be extremes of female suffering and violence against women are…

Chaucer's PrT allows competing psychoanalytic readings from both feminine and masculine points of view, a conflict that mirrors the competition for predominance between male and female figures embedded within the text. These readings may be…

Considerations of the Prioress as a romance heroine have no basis in Chaucer's text; rather they are fantasies of twentieth-century Chaucerians.

Argues that "by studying Chaucer's handling of the story told by Boccaccio we may form a very good idea of the direction in which he modified the received French fabliau (if there was one)." In Boccaccio's tale, there is no individuation of the…

Via reference to and obvious knowledge of St. Augustine's doctrine of spiritual healing through self-punishment and the concept of Christ the Physician, the Pardoner (despite his blatant duplicitous misuse of Church teaching) ascertains his pride and…

When the old man of PardT quotes Leviticus in his reproof of the three rioters, he omits the penultimate clause, "and fear the Lord your God." The omission suggests an Augustinian doctrine that the damned are unmindful of God.

Chaucer's PardT "anticipates, and/or possibly draws on, the techniques and devices of the English moral play." CT is a "play" or game, and PardT is in effect "an early moral play." A "ful 'vicious' man," the Pardoner himself is a vice.

Examines the Host's malapropistic banter in the introduction to PardT and language in PardT and GP that helps delineate the character of the vicious Pardoner. Kanno discusses incongruity between word and deed, appearance and reality.

Religious hypocrisy, so crucially the key to the Pardoner's success, had for a London audience of the 1390s an urgent topicality.

Analyzes how readers respond to PardT, using a theory of "narrative competence" that has its roots in transformational grammar.

After reviewing scholarly opinion of the Pardoner's character,DuBruck turns to the somewhat neglected exemplum of the rioters to analyze narrative speed and style, by which the Pardoner drives his text to an emphatic conclusion. DuBruck then…

Medical and psychological insights confirm alcoholism as the Pardoner's root problem. Heavy long-term indulgence has left him unable to function without drink; he is alienated, impotent, resentful, and eloquent in preaching yet mute under attack. …

The Pardoner ironically depicts his musicians playing the wrong instruments for a successful performance, thereby indicating the inherent (and disastrous) competitive nature of their fellowship.

Discusses the tradition and analogues of the "demande d'amour" of FranT, compares Chaucer's use, and concludes that the young lover Aurelius has the greatest claim to the honor of being "mooste fre," although the question is exceedingly complex.

Comments on the name "Dorigen." which is not a Breton woman's name, and speculates on why the Franklin presents it as a woman's name at all.

Dramatic irony in FranT and FranP results in incongruities between the characters' appearances and their absurdities, also demonstrating the Franklin's ill-claimed eloquence and acquaintance with rhetoric.

The analogies between the Franklin and Dorigen allow Chaucer to relate class to gender and to explore the ways romance imagines the possibilities and the constraints of self-definition.

According to literary theorists, writers were able either to rework sources or more easily, to invent new matter. In the former method, the poet had to work the original idea anew, avoiding too close imitation, errors, and confusion. In SqT, the…

Examining erotic elements, "identifications of the pear tree and the garden," and Mercury's role and attributes, Smarr analyzes similarities between Chaucer's and Boccaccio's handling of the pear-tree tale--similarities greater than those found in…

Relates the marriage theme in MerT to feminism and suggests that January's view of marriage is not defensible in light of medieval Christianity.

An intertextual study of Margery Kempe and May in MerT reveals how language, sex, and money, considered as "media of exchange," affect medieval discourse concerning women and merchants, and especially merchants' wives. All three media are recognized…

Reason's speeches in the "Roman de la Rose" connect lust and avarice with merchants and thus provide a gloss for MerT. Amant, January, and the Merchant are similar moral types; the Merchant and January are dramatically related in that both marry…

Argues that "to achieve some sense of what Petrarch meant to Chaucer we must...recover the historical specificity both of the Petrarchan texts and of Chaucer's reading of them." Petrarch's concern for the preservation of his texts induced him to…

Consistent with Bakhtinian theory, the palinode as textual stratagem has complicated the interpretation of works from the classics through Stampa and Sidney. The Griselda story as told by Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer demonstrates the role of…

Between 1910 and 1952, attitudes toward ClT were overtly hostile. Since 1952, however, criticism has been "apologetic in nature," with teacher-critics constructing "Christian allegorical," philosophical, psychological, and political readings "to…