Browse Items (16089 total)

That the passage describing the Prioress's habit of wiping her mouth clean (GP, 133-36) has been misunderstood is shown in the translations by all modern translators, except Coghill, of "hir" in the phrase "hir coppe: (133) as "her" when it should be…

Facing-page translation of GP into modern English iambic decasyllables; features illustrations of the pilgrims--reproductions of Caxton's woodcuts paired with original woodcut portraits--and an extensive glossary.

Suggests that collected "vidas," or "lives," of the troubadours may have served as Chaucer's model for the "portraits" of the pilgrims in GP. Individual "vidas" open anthologies of troubadour verse in some fourteenth-century manuscripts, and Chaucer…

Suggests that GP 198-200 alludes to Matthew 6.16-18 and helps to characterize the Monk as "contemptuous of fasting."

Considers the Wife of Bath's "colloquial, conversational idiom as a key to her character," examining details of diction, syntax, and imagery, and comparing her with Alison of MilT.

Chaucer employs traditional garden topoi (locus amoenus, hortus conclusus, and paradys d'amours) to draw attention to precursors, to create discrepancy between CT context and tradition, to individualize narrators, and to show literary indebtedness in…

Examines gardens in Chaucer's narratives as a means to show how literary and social conventions impose constraints and provide opportunities for the poet and characters alike to react to conventions. Surveys literary and historical gardens with…

The discrepancy between the vice of the teller and the moral of his tale requires the pilgrim audience to revise and postpone its judgment and thus to contribute to the meaning of the exemplum.

Disputes Lowe's interpretation of KnT 1534-39. Arcite's sudden changes of mood, that of Chauntecleer (on a Friday) in NPT, the meaning of "gere" (a wild or changeful mood), and the first Adam's fall on the sixth day all suggest that Friday is not…

Reads the noun "swan" as "swain" in the rhyming comparison with "Jovinyan" in SumT 3.1930, adducing logic, consistency of imagery, and source material.

Explores ecclesiastical connotations of the word "rente" in the GP description of the Friar, in SumT, and elsewhere in medieval usage.

Reads the widow of FrT as a figural "type of the Church" that contributes to the "comic irony" of the Tale and deepens the guilt of the summoner by "playing off" of the biblical story of Rebecca.

Portrays the symbolic and naturalistic use of the cat and applies these concepts to SumT and its critique of the mendicant orders.

Justifies various differences between FrT and its analogues by attributing them to the literal mindedness of the narrator, "one who takes distinctions seriously."

Identifies associations of the name "Huberd" (Hubert) with the Man in the Moon, the magpie, Cain, and theft, arguing that Chaucer's use of it for his Friar (GP 1.269) reveals the character's "inherently evil nature" and the "incongruity" of Chaucer's…

Shows that the legend of St. Nicholas may be a source of the detail about the marrying young women in Chaucer's description of the Friar in GP 1.212-13.

The Friar's name alludes to St. Hubert, patron saint of hunters. Thiel investigates Chaucer's knowledge of the saint and invites comparison with St. Thomas.

The Friar's varied activities are recounted in terms that have both commercial and non-materialistic applications. Ambigous diction points toward deeper questions about the use of wealth and, together with the sexual innuendoes and the enumeration…

Viewed in both historical and literary contexts, the Friar's "typet" (probably a shoulder cape with a deep hood) and his "semycope" (a short cloak) show that he is breaking sumptuary laws for his fraternal order. That he also dresses in the finest…

Explores the relation between language and psychology, arguing that Chaucer's increasing use of French loan-words throughout his poetic career reflects a growth in conceptual richness, a microcosm of the growth of English, culturally and…

Examines four principles in Chaucer's translations: redistribution, themes from works, syntactic symmetry, and homonym translation. Relates these principles to medieval practices of reading, writing, and translation, showing that the distinction…

Examines Chaucer's engagement with his French contemporaries (e.g., Machaut, Froissart, Deschamps), suggesting that Chaucer may have adapted elements from those writers such as voice and form in establishing his own poetic authority.

The similarity in "rhythmic structure and characteristic variations" of Chaucer's iambic pentameter in TC to Machaut's French "decasyllabe" in "Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne" has "implications for wider issues" in criticism. Using Parkes-Salter…

Part of a larger sociolinguistic project on the status of French in fourteenth-century England, Dor's study examines the uses, distribution, and frequency of words of French origin in the conversational sections of CT.

Clarifies the bilingualism through Chaucer's use of French loanwords in CT.