Browse Items (16089 total)

Identifies several instances of Chaucer's uses of lists of impossibilities (rhetorical "adynata" or "impossibilia") in "personal laments and exclamations of fidelity and sincerity" (TC, BD, Anel), giving classical precedents in Virgil's "Eclogues"…

HF refutes rumors about Chaucer's libertinism. It raises the question of love's definition through the story of Dido and Aeneas in Book I, the remonstrations of the Eagle in Book II, and the scandals in the houses of Fame and Rumour in Book III.

Shows that Chaucer's depiction of Fame in HF has several parallels with the depiction of her in the French "Ovide moralisé": use of anaphora in amplification of Ovid's original, Fame's role of judge and her "aura of authority," and overt concern…

Analyzes Boccaccio's impact on Chaucer in HF. Presents literary history of Boccaccio's "Amorosa vision" and descriptions of Chaucer's trips to Italy, and claims that "Chaucer tries out an array of Boccaccian approaches to Dantean questions and…

Considers HF to be an occasional poem, perhaps "written for Christmas Revels at the Inner Temple," and reads its three parts an "an allegorical representation of the trivium" that pertains to poetry, "testing the trivium, and rejecting it, and…

Argues that "gnof" (MilT 1.3188) is Chaucer's neologism, clarifying the trouble his scribes had with the word, detailing its later use in English (especially in association with Kett's Rebellion of 1575), and establishing the likelihood that Chaucer…

Explores details, emphases, ironies, and double ironies in the GP description of the Manciple and in ManPT, characterizing him as "shrewd," "smug," and "indiscrete"--a "successful rascal" who aspires to "gentil" status, is "insecure," and overly…

Examines Chaucer's use of first-person narration, "traditional themes," "rhetorical principles," and "artistic structure" in GP, exploring the pilgrimage and spring motifs, the chain of being, and connections between this chain, the serial…

In addition to sections on editions; bibliographies, indexes, and other research tools; general criticism and cultural background; language, metrics, and studies of manuscripts; and the springtime setting, this bibliography of 1,387 entries includes…

Disagrees with editorial explanations of FrT 3.1314, arguing that the subject of the sentence, a "composite sinner," is the recipient of "pecunyal peyne." Offers supporting evidence from several contemporary sources.

Explicates the phrase "withouten coppe" (FranT 5.492) as meaning "outside of the cup," conveying that Aurelius drank his penance to the fullest extent.

Suggests that the portentous oak of PardT 6.765 (no species mentioned in analogues) gains dimension in light of Chaucer having been robbed at a "fowle oak" in Kent in 1390, and also suggests, therefore, that Chaucer must have been written PardT after…

Argues that an analogue (perhaps source) of Chaucer's image of a coin-shaped ("farthing") spot of grease in his GP description of the Prioress (1.134) is "Clef d'amors," line 3236. The play in the French may derive from a punning echo of "speck" and…

Interprets Form Age as a topical, even occasional, poem, rather than as a translation from Boethius, investigating its manuscript contexts, identifying echoes from Tibellius, Ovid, Jean de Meun, Eustace Deschamps, and Sted, and arguing that the poem…

Investigates the reference to the "Judeo-Roman historian Josephus" in HF, 1429–36, exploring how his authority varies in the Middle Ages "depending on the extent to which he is understood as a Christian or a Jew," and showing how, in Chaucer's…

Explores the mythological tradition which "linked Jupiter with the sands of Libya" as well as "Venus' association with the wilderness of Libya," helping to clarify Chaucer's reference to the "desert of Libye" in HF and his use of Virgil's "Aeneid" as…

Addresses connections between Boccaccio's "Decameron" and CT, with particular focus on ShT, MilT, and WBT. Presents a "hermeneutic argument" that explores areas including "alchemy, domestic spaces, economic history, folklore, Irish/English politics,…

Surveys "unreliable" information about Constantine Africanus in scholarly discussions of Chaucer's references to him in GP 1.433 (Doctour of Phisik) and MerT 4.1810-11. Then clarifies Constantinus's importance in the history of medicine, what is and…

Encourages editors to adopt the manuscript variant "his" (rather than "hir") at the end of the Cook's fragment (CkT 1.4422), which would indicate that the wife prostituted herself "not to make her own living, but in order to provide money for her…

Surveys the status of the complaint as a formal genre in classical and in medieval French, Provencal, Italian, and English traditions as background to discussing Chaucer's uses of the genre in BD, TC, Mars, and elsewhere. Focuses on Chaucer's…

Describes Chaucer's use of "Thise" in PardT 6.661 as a marker of stylistic transition--from the "rhetorical tirade" about sins to the "more intimate and often colloquial" tale of the rioters. The usage anticipates modern English.

Challenges psychoanalytic approaches to ClT and rejects the approaches that read the poem either as a Christian parable of authoritarianism or a rejection of authority as a "disease of monarchy." Argues that Chaucer creates the Tale as an expression…

Studies the origin and development of the Griselda story from the fourteenth through the twentieth century.

Verse retelling of selections from CT (all but Mel, SNPT, CYPT, ManPT, and ParsPT) with reduced plots, simplified rhetoric, and modernized English in ballad stanzas. Cuddington adapts the links to unify the selections, which are arranged in the…

Provides background on Chaucer and CT and emphasizes how each tale in CT addresses the particulars of the literary genre to which it is related. In Japanese.