Browse Items (16479 total)

Explores parallels and tensions between earthly and heavenly love in TC, investigating how the theological "doctrine" of grace--inflected by ideas of merit, hope, and despair--is adapted to courtly, earthly conventions in the poem. Focuses on uses of…

Identifies parallels between Browning's "Childe Roland" and HF, evinces Browning's familiarity with Chaucer's poem, and indicates that, thematically, "Roland's quest" represents the "lifelong struggle of a poet in search of lasting fame."

Reads PF as Chaucer's "most voluptuous poem," a love poem with the Garden of Love as its unifying center where Nature and Priapus serve as its "presiding deities." Comments on the poem's range of attitudes toward love and its source materials.

Anthologizes GP, PardPT, PrPT, MilT, WBPT, ClT, FranT, NPT, and Ret., each with a brief introduction and bottom-of-page glosses. Also introduces Chaucer's life, works, literary techniques, and language, with suggestions for further reading.

Suggests on textual and etymological grounds that "verye"/"werye" in MilT 1.3485 be emended to "nerye," reading the line to mean "May the White Pater Noster save (us) from (the perils of the) night."

Distinguishes between Chaucer the poet. and Chaucer the pilgrim-narrator of CT, characterizing the "persona" of the latter as "shy" but "gregarious," one who admires the "values" of high society, the "material prosperity" of the bourgeoisie, and good…

Provides background to Chaucer's "championship of the secular clergy . . . and his satire of the fraternal orders," and considers how this attitude reflects a general, "secular tradition," appreciative of allegorical poetry and found in works by Jean…

Clarifies--etymologically and musicologically--that "cordes" mentioned in HF 696 refers to instrumental strings, not to musical chords. the latter being anachronistic in Chaucer's era.

Chronological anthology of English and American poetry, beginning with selections from Chaucer (Truth, Gent, GP 1-30, and NPT), with bottom-of-page glosses and notes. Text from F. N. Robinson's edition; preceded by a brief "Note on Reading Chaucer's…

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.