Browse Items (16087 total)

Commends the force and clarity of the passage on old age in RvP (1.3887-98), particularly the images of the wine cask and the tongue, the first familiar to Chaucer as a member of a family in the wine business

Considers the date and thematic unity of HF, suggesting that the eagle is crucial to perceiving both of them, with the astrological sign of the eagle ("Aquila") indicating the date and the Eagle's discourse on sound central to the poem's concern with…

The interpolated story of Midas's wife evokes Ovidian concern with poetic judgment and suggests Chaucer's perspective on the differing attitudes of the hag and the knight toward love and marriage. Complex Ovidian echoes imply the failure of Midas's…

Contrasts WBT with its English analogues and assesses the role of rhetorical dilation, which Chaucer derived from Roman and French traditions. The digressions compel readers to engage WBT dialogically.

Comments on the punning and aural effects of Chaucer's use of "quoniam" in WBP 3.608 and cites similar verbal play in RvT 1.3973-76.

A comprehensive annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical discussion of WBPT, subdivided into the following categories: editions and translations (items 1-82), sources and analogues (items 83-206), the "Marriage Group" (items 207-56),…

In GP, the Wife's "foot-mantel" is not a "skirt," but a set of leggings or riding chaps, pulled up over the feet and legs from the bottom. "Large" refers not to the size of the Wife's hips, but to the loose drapery of the garment. The Wife may be…

Critical views of the Wife, though based on the same Chaucerian texts, vary widely--roughly between realistic approaches and those that ignore or deny realism.

Argues that Dante's siren of "Purgatorio" XIX is analogous to the Wife of Bath and the transformation of the loathly lady of WBT, helping to undercut the Wife's views on female sovereignty and ironically "reasserting the medieval Christian idea of…

In later medieval thought, spinning women represent two often contradictory ideas: rebellion against hierarchical order and, paradoxically, Marian obedience. Citing scripture, Chaucer's Wife fuses both viewpoints in WBP. When Lancastrian mores…

If Jankyn and Alison conspired at the death of the Wife's fourth husband, the books from which Jankyn reads possibly contain lessons to murderesses. Her anger and threat of revelation result in his capitulation and flight, leaving her to purvey her…

Common law, canon law, and contemporary conduct books indicate certain concepts of marriage and the role of the good wife. The Wife of Bath's "good" (arranged) and "bad" (chosen) marriages contrast the ideal with socioeconomic reality. WBT is a…

John Fowles's novel"A Maggot," set in eighteenth-century England, is similar to CT in several ways, from its opening premise to its general structure as a series of "tales" (reconstructions of mysterious events surrounding a death) told by various…

Coverchiefs, while sometimes a sign of mourning, are more often read as a devilish device to "blind men's sight," as Robert Mannyng suggests. The Wife's coverchiefs serve as one of numerous signs that "her life...remains in theological disarray."

An examination of three analogues--"The Marriage of Sir Gawaine," "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell," and Gower's "Tale of Florent"--illuminates Chaucer's handling of Arthurian motifs such as the lady's transformation and the issue of…

Wheel iconography associated with Hugh of Foilloy's treatise, "The Wheel of True and False Religion," may have influenced the plotting of the divided fart in SumT.

Adduces evidence from various sources to show that the Wife of Bath has characteristics of the archetype of the old bawd, itself rooted in the earlier figure of "sorceress-intermediary" and associated with aging, trade, extravagant dress, and…

In most of his poems Chaucer exploits the traditional material to create a double view, one inherent in the material and the other produced by his handling of them. He inherited this technique from Jean de Meun; in BD and the "Roman," for example,…

Connects the lament in WBP 3.614 with the more familiar proverb "Lechery is no sin," recurrently used by traditional "demonic" figures in early literature. The Wife's use is richer with "complex ironies."

Although the Knight's Yeoman may be a "forster" (1.117) before all else, the skills he would possess in that role "would find ready application on military campaign," which helps to explain the Knight's choice of his Yeoman, rather than another…

Explores Chaucer's "literary voice" as a self-conscious reflection of late-fourteenth-century vernacularizing.

Explores vows and vow-breaking in CT, arguing that ManT brings to tragic crescendo a concern with the transgression of marital vows and presents consequences as horrific as any in Greek drama.

Using the image of a volume of collected leaves, Chaucer explores the "twin problems of rivalry and rehearsal" in his sequence of MilP (the narrator's apology), MLP (the Man of Law's comments on Chaucer's writings), and WBPT (the tearing of Jankyn's…

Comparison of Romance vocabulary, direct discourse, the first person (singular or plural), finite verb forms, and other grammatical elements such as independent and dependent clauses inKnT and WBT shows that "Chaucer did indeed use the language of…

(In Japanese).