Browse Items (16470 total)

Challenges the critical "platitude" that love and marriage are incompatible in Chaucer. Identifies a number of instances in Chaucer's works where love and marriage clearly coincide, and argues that TC is only an "apparent exception" in this regard.…

Suggests intertextual connections among Hyginus's "Poetica Astronomica," Boccaccio's "De Genealogia Deorum," and aspects of Chaucer's Mars.

Provides historical background for Chaucer's associations of millers with bagpipes in GP 1.565 and in RvT 1.3927, assessing them as an important characterizing details--vivid, realistic, appropriate, and symbolically suggestive of lechery and…

Suggests that Chaucer's astrological references in FranT and PF, particularly the deterministic "phases of the moon, " the Great Year, and the depiction of Scipio, are likely to have influenced W. B. Yeats' prose treatise, "A Vision" (1925; rev.…

Contrasts lack of commentary on birth control in ParsT with its presence in the letters of Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné, arguing that Chaucer was pre-Malthusian ("prémalthusien") rather than proto-Malthusian ("protomalthusien").…

Anthologizes a selection of works by Chaucer and by Shakespeare, with a brief general introduction to each and bottom-of-page glosses and notes. The selection from Chaucer, edited by Bethurum and based on the text by Walter W. Skeat, includes GP,…

Edits KnT, with an Introduction, bottom-of-page textual notes, end-of-text explanatory notes and glossary, and appendices (by R. T. Davies, reprinted), on Chaucer's language and meter, astrology and astronomy, and suggestions for further reading. The…

Reconsiders possible explanations for the evident inaccuracy of the number of pilgrims given in GP 1.24 as twenty-nine. Suggests two possibilities: the Squire may have been a later addition and/or the addition of the "last five pilgrims" might have…

Examines the imagery, symbols, and themes of BD, HF, PF, and LGW, focusing on the themes of love (courtly and spiritual) and the poet's responsibilities in depicting love, with attention to various aspects of style, form, and structure, and recurrent…

Clarifies the basic meaning and history of the Middle English collocation "look who," meaning "whoever," analyzing the usage at WBT 1113 and discussing similar usages elsewhere in Chaucer, with two instances in Gower. Explains how scribal and…

Provides evidence for the "strongest possibility" that WBT "did not differ from other Arthurian tales but came to Chaucer from Ireland through Wales, Brittany, and France."

Supplements "Verses of Cadence" (1954) to reinforce arguments that Chaucer's prosody was rhythmic, not metrical, and that final -e should not be pronounced in reading Chaucer. Considers the influence on Chaucer's rhythms--in prose as well as…

Theorizes "recursivity"--an alternative to "originality"--as a trope in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English literary history, arguing that much often considered to be "original" or "revolutionary" in modernity is better understood as remaking…

A discursive review of Chaucerian scholarship and research published in 1953.

Translation of TC into Dutch verse, with notes and introduction.

Argues that in "attempting the pen" by telling her own story, the Wife of Bath rebels against patriarchal strictures and escapes suggestions of madness that beset such rebellious women in late medieval England.

Describes the "large scale social mobility" of late medieval England and argues that its modifications of traditional estates categories are reflected in CT. Uses Homi Bhabha's "postcolonial concepts of hybridity, in-betweenness, third space and…

Item not seen. Information derived from WorldCat record.

Tests several theories of humor--especially Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo's "General Theory of Verbal Humor" (1985) and Thomas D. Cooke's "Comic Climax" (1978)--for their value in analyzing Elizabethan jests and medieval fabliaux, parodies,…

Shows how MLT and ClT "prove Chaucer's functional use of rhetoric for purposes of decorum," considering the characterizations of the narrators', their uses of rhetoric, and their intentions. Considers source materials, comments on the Wife of Bath,…

A critical edition of the "Plowman's Tale," with notes, glossary, and extensive critical commentary, including discussion of it as an example of Chaucerian apocrypha. Also includes discussion of its relation to "Piers Plowman," the "Pilgrim's Tale,"…

Explores the sources and meanings of Chaucer's "analogies" between animals and humans, focusing on hares, dogs, horses, wolves, and sheep, arguing that, generally, Chaucer uses them to indicate the need for humans to control their "natural passions."

Describes the hierarchical, mystical, Italianate view of love that emphasizes the gentle heart, epitomized in Dante, exploring its influence on Chaucer in TC, comparing and contrasting Chaucer's lovers with Paolo and Francesca as well as Dante and…

Traces the "shapeshifting motif" in English literature from "Beowulf" to the late-medieval metrical romances, focusing on the latter. Chapter five includes attention to WBT as an example of the "human-to-human type of shapeshift," along with seven…

Assesses Chaucer's uses of various kinds of similes and similetic comparisons--Homeric, epic similes; biblical "similitudes"; proverbial comparisons, Ovidian and Dantean comparisons; and more--demonstrating his variety, borrowings, and adaptations.…