Browse Items (16089 total)

Considers Chaucer's modifications in Troilus's letter (TC 5.1317-1421) of Boccaccio's original in "Filostrato" and of Beauvau's French translation in "Roman de Troyle et de Criseida," arguing that the changes reflect late-medieval English…

Assesses ManT in light of its sources and analogues to reveal a "tissue of comic devices--of controlled incongruities, of hyperbole, of antiphrasis, of equivocations, allusions, and purposeful distortions" that "produce a parodic version of the…

Asks why Chaucer uses a "Latin masculine name of the month to refer to his very feminine heroine" in MerT, answering that it contributes to the theme of healing in the Tale, much as does Damyan's association with St. Damian, patron saint of healing.

Argues that the "organization and success" of MilT depends upon the "dramatic irony" of tensions between its courtly and common, sacred and profane, and realistic and fantastic elements, exploring such tensions in the signifying names of the…

Explores MkT as a revelation of its narrator, positing a structural arrangement among the individual tragedies and their various depictions of Fortune and interpreting this arrangement as a reflection of the Monk's character and psychology: he…

Describes how GP reflects "Chaucer's fascination" with social diversity and "bodily variety," and reads MkT as a "verse anthology of disability narratives," using various approaches drawn from disability studies to examine several of the Monk's…

Explores the tension between "solaas" and "sentence" in three features of NPT (its representations of humans and non-humans, its reference to the Uprising of 1381, and its gender politics), investigating the importance of the rhetoric of the Tale in…

Explores parallels of plot and detail found in "Pamphilus de Amore" (or "Pamphilus and Galatee"), "aspects" of the "Roman de la Rose," "parts" of Juan Ruiz's "Libro de Buen Amor," and the first three books of TC, demonstrating that the "'Pamphilus'…

Introduces Japanese analogues of PardT dating from the seventeenth or eighteenth century, and compares them with their Chinese and Indian ancestors, in order both to hypothesize the genealogies and to trace the change of motifs through transmission.…

Investigates the extent to which ParsT as a manual of confession can be seen to encourage the process of "individualization" theorized by Michel Foucault and to subvert the "immense control that the Church had over medieval lives" and aligning with…

A new verse translation of "Pearl" with original Middle English text and modern English version on facing pages. Contains a brief preface and longer introduction, which discusses current scholarship and criticism.

Provides "definitive texts and exhaustive variorum commentary" with facing-page translations, introduction, and appendices.

Assesses the five uses of "place" as a locational noun in the description of the tournament in KnT, arguing that it has a "precise technical meaning," i.e., the "grassy ground of the arena within the lists." This meaning is also found in Middle…

Argues that the use of Dante's "Paradiso" 53 in the initial presentation of faith in PrT reflects Chaucer's sophisticated engagement with the ways humans try to articulate transcendent truth.

Assesses parallels between the "greyn" of PrT 7.662 and the three grains of legend that Seth laid upon the tongue of Adam when the latter was buried; suggests that the ambiguities of Chaucer's presentation indicate his artistic purpose.

Explores the relations between emotion and identity in PrPT, observing that the presence of Jews "amps up its emotional charge," particularly how it "provokes--and coopts--a huge range of emotions in the service of Christian piety." Considers the…

Characterizes Oswald the Reeve as a guiler beguiled and a "judge who unwittingly judges himself by his own principles," examining aspects of GP (Miller and Reeve), MilPY, and RvPT for the ways that Oswald's retributive assault on Robin lacks…

Traces "the afterlife of the 'Romance of the Rose' in fourteenth-century England, arguing that the RR "exercised its influence on fourteenth-century English literature in two principal ways": 1) "the development of a self-reflexive focus on how…

Frames Rom "in a lineage of narrative fiction going back to the twelfth-century predecessors of the two authors [Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun] and attempts to describe their respective innovations." Includes and interprets various texts…

Provides textual evidence to confirm that the three portions of the Middle English Rom--A, B, and C--derive from different manuscript groupings of their French source, the "Roman de la Rose," corroborating arguments that the three portions were…

Approaches SNPT as translations of source materials, assessing Chaucer's assignment of his early life of St. Cecilia to the Second Nun as narrator, the implications of rhyme royal, and the thematic and formal concerns of transformation, idleness, and…

Objects to Robert L. Chapman's argument that the ShT was originally intended for the Shipman, not the Wife Bath, comparing Chaucer's tale with Boccaccio's "Decameron" 8.1 as examples of the "Lover's Gift Regained" motif, and showing that Chaucer's…

Challenges claims that the first-person feminine pronouns of ShT 7.11-19 indicate that the tale was originally intended to be told by the Wife of Bath, reading the lines as if they were presented in a "miming male" voice, and suggesting that the tale…

Encourages readers to keep track of the money in ShT, assessing the coded actions of gifting, receiving, and reciprocating in the Tale, analyzing the merchant's response to Don John's request for 100 franks (7.281-96), and suggesting that the readers…

Identifies "Boethian sentiments" in an eight-line stanza appended to TC in St. John's, Cambridge, MS L.1, fol. 119v.