Browse Items (16087 total)

Reviews Ian Robinson's book-length study, "Chaucer Prosody: A Study of the Middle English Verse Tradition" (1971).

Chaucer's meters are of mixed Romance and native origin, but the details of scansion--whether the verse is accentual or syllabic and the pronunciation of final "e"--are still in dispute.

Explores ABC as a prayer, especially in its relations with Psalm 118 and 119 and the rosary, and in light of the possibility that it was presented to Duchess Blanche for inclusion in her devotional primer. Quinn confronts several formal features and…

Chaucer's Prioress is said to be a miniature of CT. Just as Madame Eglantine is a religious with fairly secular characters, so CT shows all kinds of people, with their sublime and indecent faces, their beauty, and their ugliness.

Argues that Chaucer's characterization of the Prioress in GP "leaves shadows of doubt" about the Prioress, along with "several kinds of uncertainty" and some "strong implications" for the audience. Further, in PrT, her "own words . . . convict her of…

The Prioress's ambiguous motto--"love conquers all"--is only half of a quotation from Virgil. The remainder--"and we must give in to it"--does not lessen the equivocal nature of the portrait.

Since PrT is set in Islamic "Asia," the anti-Semitism of PrT makes little historical sense, since medieval Muslims accepted Judaism in ways Christianity did not. Chaucer's knowledge of Jews and Muslims has been underestimated, even suppressed, a…

Explores the Augustinian "figurative implications" of PrT, identifying a "clear symbolic pattern" evident in interpreting it Scripturally—the "childishness" of the teller and her protagonist, the literalness of the Jews, echoes of the liturgy of…

Chaucer and his fellow pilgrims saw Madame Eglentyne as the Virgin's handmaiden, reflecting in her foibles and virtues the Queen of Heaven, whose "amor vincit omnia" (love conquers all). Support for the existence of the Marian echoes includes the…

The passage on the Prioress's table manners (GP 127-36), borrowed from Romance of the Rose, contains biblical echoes from Matthew 23.25-27 concerning the "clean cup of salvation" and from Proverbs 30.20 concerning an adulterous woman who wipes her…

The unmistakably sexual connotations of the source passages in "The Romance of the Rose" for the table manners and motto of Chaucer's Prioress help confirm "the impression that there 'is' a deliberate tension directed between the ideal of spiritual…

Describes Chaucer's use of the present participle in progressive constructions, which occur most frequently in CT.

Surveys Chaucer's influence on "Tottel's Miscellany," commenting on various allusions and the inclusion of Chaucer's Truth in the collection (although "deliberately anonymized"), and exploring more thoroughly how he is "strongly resisted," i.e., how…

Changes in literary practice in the late fifteenth century helped modify reception of Chaucer's works. Remembered as a personal figure to be reckoned with by Hoccleve and Lydgate, Chaucer--like his works--was later objectified in the "philological"…

Noting increasing sophistication of Chaucer criticism in the twentieth century, Fisher moves beyond historical criticism toward reader-response theories and the thesis that Chaucer is indeed prescient, a poet for all times as in ClT.

Reads the Knight's interruption of the Monk (7.2767ff.) as evidence of his "anxiety" about the view of Fortune implicit in the fall of princes tradition. The GP description of the Knight indicates his "preference for worldly wealth and fame that…

Argues that Christian and pagan acts of prayer in Chaucer's works are fundamental to understanding his creative piety. Chaucer's literary representations of prayer are collaborative and participatory "scripts" that involve the reader in the sacred…

The pagan prayers of Chaucerian characters are granted twice as often as the Christian ones. Pagan deities function as poetic machinery; the Christian God, as source of divine truth. Throughout his oeuvre, the poet treats prayer in accordance with…

Analyzes how KnT and SqT engage with the Orientalist discourses buttressing contemporary humanist Italian discussions of visual art, especially in terms of the subjects of classicism and of optics.

Tradition relates the sin of simony to leprosy and sodomy, as evidenced by John Wyclif's "Tractatus De Simonia." The physical abnormalities of the Pardoner and Summoner in CT can thus be seen as symbolic of their simony.

Challenges the notion that the descriptions of the pilgrims in GP are drawn from real-life models and compares and contrasts Chaucer's techniques with those of Guillaume de Lorris in "Roman de la Rose" and William Langland's in "Piers Plowman."…

Argues that Chaucer's work "contributed to the birth of English polyphonic verse," a claim supported through discussions of Mikhail Bakhtin and the growth of scholasticism, debate, and music. Connects Chaucer's verse, including BD, HF, TC, and CT, to…

Traces developments in Chaucer's "attitude to love" as reflected in his narrative personae in BD, LGWP, PF, HF, and TC, assessing this attitude in light of the courtly, Chartrian, and neo-Platonic standards of works by Alain de Lille, Jean de Meun,…

Eleven essays about Chaucer and his works that form, in the words of its editors, a "general" rather than a "thematically unified" collection. Threads that run through multiple chapters include rhetoric, ethics, and poetic form. For individual…

Edits the majority of Chaucer's verse (no prose included) in normalized spelling and modern punctuation, with bottom-of-page glosses and occasional brief notes. Omits Book 3 of HF, the legends of LGW (but LGWP-G included), several lyrics, and…