Browse Items (16089 total)

Adduces evidence of the influence of Boccaccio's "Decameron" on CT by collecting all available indications of similarity--instances of borrowing and less specific parallel details.

Suggests that Chaucer deployed the tradition of grammatical "correction" as a metaphor for moral reform, finding examples in CT, TC, and Adam.

Shows how close is the "bond between literary culture and the ideology and practice of domination enshrined in judicial controls" in late-medieval England after the Black Death. Summarizes statues of labor, taxation, and responses to the Uprising of…

A full-size, full-color facsimile of the Ellesmere manuscript of CT, published in three forms and 250 copies. Copies 1-50 are bound in oak boards fully covered by tawed calf; copies 51-150, in boards and quarter brown leather; and copies 151-250,…

A preface and five essays describe the goals and methods of the "Canterbury Tales" Project, an endeavor to replace Manly and Rickert's textual analysis of CT (Chicago, 1940). Long-range goals include facsimile reproduction of portions of the…

Introduces "Chaucer's allegorical tales as poetic play and playful poetry." In CT, Chaucer questions the nature of reality and the function of language in a complex interplay of realistic, grotesque, and sublime. Chapters deal with historical…

Questions Germaine Dempster's 1948 suggestions about the production of "manuscripts postulated as heads of genetic groups" and lines of descent for CT witnesses, offering several alternative explanations. Includes attention to the change of ink in…

Explores in MilT the comic and thematic potential of allusions to the biblical Song of Songs and its exegetical commentaries. Details of Absolon's address to Alisoun at the window, the descriptions of the two characters, and other details of the Tale…

Explores unanswered questions about Chaucer's knowledge of Petrarch and use of Petrarchan material in TC 1.400-420 and in ClT, focusing on close reading of Chaucer's "deviations" from Petrarch's Sonnet 132 in his translation of it in TC, with…

Offers perspective on affiliations of Elizabeth and Alice Chaucer with Barking Abbey; comments on cats in late-medieval literature (CT, "Piers Plowman," and more); identifies "Gyb" as a conventional name for a cat; and explores international versions…

Offers evidence that the "Chaucerian" astrolabe in the British Museum was constructed in the early fifteenth century, perhaps for Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, and provides "a scenario whereby . . . Chaucer would be exposed to astrolabes with…

Judges ClT to be "more successful than it has been thought" because it is a tale of "idealized obedience" in which Griselda's submissiveness is an "imitation" of Christ's Passion and Resurrection and a demonstration that the human will can achieve…

Interprets Pandarus's reference to "corones tweyne" (TC 2.1735) as "a highly complex symbol of the two main pillars of mediaeval law and authority--the spiritual and temporal powers of the church and the state," forbidding Criseyde from killing…

Surveys arguments that seek to identify sources and analogues to the claim in KnT 1.1625-26 that neither love nor lordship "likes competition with another of its kind," citing similarities with TC 2.755-56, FranT 5.764-67, and others, and arguing…

Offers the image of unholy clerics as rusted gold in Robert Grosseteste's "Epistolae" as a possible source of the use of the image by Chaucer's Parson in GP 1.500.

Reads the rocks of FranT as a representation of natural evil, only apparently avoided in the plot, and an opportunity for the operations of both "gentilesse" and unearned providential grace.

Introduces the field of "critical animal studies" and assesses the degree to which characters and animals in FrT can be considered to have agency. Designed for pedagogical use, includes several questions for discussion and suggestions for further…

Makes clear the anti-clericalism, overt and implicit, in the works of the "Gawain"-poet ("Cleanness," "Patience," "Pearl," and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"), examining the theme in light of contemporaneous polemics. Includes several references…

Surveys approaches to reception and interpretation of GP. Reappraises GP's incompleteness as a symbol for the incompleteness of memory, establishing the beginning of CT as a kind of machinery that "set[s] the roadside drama in motion once again."

Explores the "conflict and friction" of GP as a stand-alone tale, also reading it forward to the following tales and backward from them. Designed for pedagogical use, includes several questions for discussion.

Suggests that the "greyn" placed on the clergeon's tongue in PrT 7.662 is, ironically, a "breath sweetener," one of several satiric details observed in the Tale.

Explores the epic elements of KnT and its sources, arguing that in placing love at the thematic center of his poem (replacing traditional political concerns), Chaucer was "attempting to make something entirely new" out of his material. By emphasizing…

Argues that the KnT is "especially suitable for the beginning of the pilgrimage" in CT because it "presents the continual subversion of noble efforts to bring order out of disorder" and because, in comparison with its sources," it poses a "pagan…

Describes the "basic historical method" of KnT as consistent with the "contemporary aristocratic chronicle," showing how Chaucer uses Statius's "Thebaid" to archaize the plot drawn from Boccaccio's "Teseida" and create a world "believable" for his…

Defines and illustrates the meanings of "limitour" and "limitacioun" as applied to friars in the late Middle Ages, clarifying licensing, territorial jurisdiction, and the authority to beg, preach, and hear confessions. Focuses on documents of the…