Browse Items (16087 total)

By endowing ParsP with a number of rhetorical and dramatic devices, Chaucer gives the tale a significance that sets it apart and precludes an ironic or perspectivist reading.

ParsT makes use of a tradition of penitential mediation (cf. ParsP 55 and 69) on the virtues and vices. In the plan of CT, ParsT abandons the emotive fiction and fables of the earlier tales for the solid ground of meditation, transforming an earthly…

By assigning his English translation of Raymund of Pennaforte's "orthodox" yet "contritionist" "Summa de poenitentia" to the Parson, Chaucer subtly resists the emphasis on oral confession to priests that characterized the doctrine of penance of his…

Offers in parallel columns passages from ParsT, the "Moralium Dogma Philosophorum," and the French translation of the Latin text to argue that the "Moralium" is the ultimate source of portions of ParsT (especially the "Remedia" of the vices), even…

ParsPT and the GP description of the Parson reflect "concerns over the limits of late-medieval pastoral language." While the GP Parson suggests Wycliffite emphasis on Scripture, one finds a more orthodox view in ParsPT, with its focus on…

Chaucer changed the order of the five steps to sin of Peraldus's "Summa de vitiis" and followed Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (10.343-44) instead. Glowka speculates on implications of change.

Argues that ParsT fits its teller. Seen in relation to its sources, the Tale reflects a particular and individualized kind of spirituality--a spirituality averse to physical pleasure, critical of inappropriate taxation, and ambivalent about…

In GP the Parson and the Plowman are polysemic figures that emerge from the expression of conflicting, dialogic voices--not idealized role models. Free indirect speech in the Parson's description allows the audience to suspect that he is a whitened…

Assesses the Parson in the context of historical records and medieval handbooks for priests, showing him to be a success of the system of patronage, education, and benefice. Identifies the social and economic advantages of his status and summarizes…

Explores the life of Edmund Gonville--cleric, shrewd land agent, and man of affairs--and Chaucer's depiction of the Parson. Despite his considerable financial successes, Gonville was like the Parson in that he did not rent out his benefice.

Supports a reading of "complyn" (variant "coupling") at RvT 1.4171, identifying parodic echoes of the prayer from the Holy Office in the language and action of the end of the Tale. The parody "brightens" the comic irony and morality of the Tale.

Treats parody as a technique that expresses the inadequacies of a given topic but also evokes its ideals, exemplifying how Chaucer achieves this dual perspective in BD, PF, TC, and Part 1 of CT.

Examines how dialectal evidence can shed light on the textual affiliation of PF in MS Tanner 346.

Considers how editorial and critical assumptions have retroactively made the manuscript records of PF conform to post-print expectations about narrative poetry.

Suggests that Jerome's "Ad Rusticum Monachum" (125:11) is the ultimate source of the linking of "baskettes" and the apostles in PardP 6.444-47, and aligns the Pardoner with the Wife of Bath through their shared anti-asceticism.

A comprehensive annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical discussion of The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale, subdivided into the following categories: editions (126 items); bibliographies, indexes, and textual studies (56 items); sources,…

Matches Augustine's "("De mendacio") moral distinctions among kinds of utterance with Anselm's logical distinctions among kinds of predication; discovers that Augustine refuses to recognize the possibility of "beneficent lying." Argues that Chaucer…

Explores the implications of reading the Pardoner as a cross-dressing female, arguing that Chaucer leaves "her" characterization ambiguous, plays on "cultural associations of cross-dressing," and "legitimiz[es] the rhetorical power of female…

Chaucer's Pardoner is the ultimate "confidence man," a mask layered over the persona of the character and the authorial voice. Yet, his very distance from the other pilgrims provides him a kind of opennes. For purposes of contrast, and to emphasize…

An automaton "who is both theologically and in ordinary human terms...dead," the Pardoner, whose sexuality emphasizes his deadness, may yet be redeemed in the words of the Old Man.

Psychoanalyzes the oral imagery in PardPT (food, drink, swearing, the Eucharist, "taking in," aggressive speech, phallic tongues, kissing), arguing that it indicates the Pardoner's unconscious search for pardon.

Summarizes some medieval semantic theories that are helpful as an approach to the literature and suggests that the Pardoner by his transgressions calls attention both to the semiotics and to the ethics of truth-making processes in fourteenth-century…

The Pardoner should be read not as a real person but as an allegorical figure. Modern discussions overemphasize the Pardoner's sexuality and distort the fact that hints about his sexuality prepare for the more important concern with his…

Follows W. C. Curry (1926) in understanding the Pardoner to be a eunuch, and explores the Biblical and exegetical implications of this characterization, reinforced by animal imagery, and associated with the Pauline "vetus homo" (Old Man), arguing…

Friedman argues that French comic "trade" literature is source material for PardP, identifying parallels in details and in the hucksterish rhetoric of the works. He suggests that the Pardoner's sexuality may have been influenced by discussion of the…