Browse Items (15544 total)

Adduces precedents in French for Chaucer's punning in ShT on "cosyn" and its derivatives to mean "harlot" as well as "prospective victim," part of a larger pattern of "mocking irony" in his various uses of the words.

Argues that the differing treatments of Morpheus in BD and Machaut's "Fonteinne amoureuse" "reflect on the advantages and limitations of 'imitatio' as a tool for authorial self-promotion." Underlying this reflection are contrasting strategies for…

Discusses kitsch as a "counter aesthetic" that results from a "failed dialectic of beauty and ugliness," and explores the Nazis' "Anti-Kitsch Law," Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory, the Prioress's "countrefete cheere" and sentimentality, the gore…

Reconsiders the role of the clerks' northern dialect in RvT as well as the Reeve's Norfolk dialect, paying particular attention to the fading of the former within the tale.

Includes Middle English texts by Chaucer (with glossary appended at end of document) in nine parts: I Proem (PF 1-4); II Pastorale (19 lines selected from LGWP-F 35ff.; III Pleynte (TC 1.400-20); IV Invocation I (TC 3.1-14); V Invocation II (TC…

Assesses the syntax and meanings of "derring-do" or "dorynge-do" in John Lydgate's "Troy Book," which follows in the first instance Chaucer's uses of the phrase to describe Troilus in TC 5.837-40.

Suggests that "don thyn hood" in TC 3.954 may have the literal meaning of "put on your nightcap" or, more likely, the figurative meaning of "restrain yourself," the latter drawn from the practice of hooding a hawk.

Argues that not just TC but also Anel has an important function in Henryson's "Testament." Echoes of this poem affect judgment of Cresseid and Troilus, and the question of what constitutes "truth," for lover, narrator, or reader. The notion of…

Surveys scholarship concerning Chaucer's word-play, describes the place of "double-entendre" in rhetorical tradition, and explicates 204 of Chaucer's word-plays in CT, concluding that there is some correlation between punning and the bawdy tales.

Explores "the role of the imagination" in KnT, with attention also to MilT and RvT, focusing on the "cerebral process" in the "amorous desire" of the characters, especially Arcite, whose lovers' malady results from his "lack of imaginative control."…

Reads the description of the temple of Venus in HF in light of its literary sources and late medieval church ambulation, investigating how ideas of physical, aesthetic, and spiritual motion underlie the narrator's moving gaze. Includes five b&w…

Addresses the "bifurcation of philosophy and theology intervening between Dante and Chaucer," arguing that Chaucer "never demonstrated any confidence that poetry could in any way represent the reality of the divine." Assesses the "empiricism" of LGW,…

Connects the complicated relationship among FranT's three main characters and the political relationship of England, France, and Brittany. Asserts that each character symbolizes one of these places and shows how the dynamics of love and sex merge…

Examines Horatian influence on works ranging from the Exeter Book to Langland, Gower, and Fragments VIII and IX of CT.

Argues that the repetition of the word "entente" in FrT affects the Tale's "characterization, plotting, and pervasive irony," and indicates "one of the fundamental theological dimensions of the piece"--disguised evil.

Discusses "erotic desire and the motif of going on pilgrimage" in the opening of GP and in Shakespeare's Sonnets, reading Chaucer's lines 1–18 closely as a kind of sonnet and observing numerological patterns that reinforce a transition from erotic…

Challenges scribal and editorial choices to use "swyve" at ManT, 256, where the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts (and two others) have some form of "et cetera," arguing that the latter is "likely an example of authorial play." Gauges the meanings,…

Studies shifting perspectives on love, marriage, and honor in FranT and WBT.

Concentrates on Damian in MerT to show how the tale links critique of hierarchical marriage to critique of medieval estates theory. Contends that the tale counters
problems with vertical governance through horizontal governance.

Analyzes how May in MerT and the wife in ShT "evade the oppressions" of marriage and "subvert their subjugation through negotiating and challenging the mercantile narration." Each female protagonist "generates her own meanings and pleasure."

Reads "The Isle of Ladies" for its "covert feminine resistance," arguing that such resistance is evident through the "divided, ambivalent lens" of the half-asleep dream vision of a city of ladies--perhaps influenced by Christine de Pizan's "Le livre…

Notes that Chaucer's treatment of the daisy in LGW differs from his typical use of flower imagery. Recognizes parallels between the daisy in LGW and its narrator Geffrey, notes differences between the narrator(s) of the F prologue and the G prologue,…

Focuses on how Chaucer influenced the writings of Cotton Mather, Anne Bradstreet, and Nathaniel Ward in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century New England.

Extends discussions of ClT as a "political fable," focusing on the theme of common profit and on the Clerk as a philosopher, assessing both in light of Bo as an "account of the philosopher's duty to the common profit." Rejects the "Griseldean values…

Argues that Cicero's "Somnium Scipionis" "had a much greater impact" on BD, PF, and especially HF than is usually acknowledged, showing that Cicero's themes and imagery permeate Chaucer's works and dominate his literary imagination for "some ten…