Browse Items (15427 total)

Chaucer's presentation of himself as a reader of literature is a metaphor for our own reading of his work, an acknowledgement of his concern with the reciprocal relationship between the reader's mind and the text.

The Italian city-state of Lombardy and the life and death of Bernabo, its most famous tyrant, provides inspiration for the fictional realm of "Lumbardye," which functions in Chaucer's works as a spatial metaphor for tyranny.

The characters of individual pilgrims are revealed through their speech, which often serves to underline their philosophical viewpoints. Chaucer's awareness of language and its creative powers reflects a general skepticism regarding the…

The various fictional levels in CT result in a dialectic relationship between voice and genre, especially pronounced in Fragment D.

An illustrated analysis of moral and aesthetic issues raised by Chaucer. The rocks, garden, and study that form the loci of FranT carry iconographic meaning suggesting a true poetics of illusion.

Chaucer's use of the name "Eglentyne" in the description of the Prioress in GP and in a scene of KnT emphasizes the disparity between reality and the courtly love tradition.

The theory that "words can reveal to the inner eye of understanding the invisible forms behind visible shapes" is rejected through repeated examples of "the complicity of sight in the tragedy of love."

This collection of essays by various authors addresses the rivalry and tension among characters, themes, styles, and genres in CT.
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Rebels and Rivals under Alternative Title.

Several references to Chesterton's "Chaucer" but no direct references to Chaucer or his poetry.

In ABC, BD, and HF, uncertainty and duality-producing irony emerge as basic patterns that may be applied to all of Chaucer's poetry.

Sees Chaucer the Pilgrim and his inverted doubles--the female image of the Wife of Bath and the male image of the Host--as three parts of Chaucer's personality. Similar unity can be found among WBT, Th, and Mel.

To Chaucer's audience, the name "Eglentyne" suggested the lost clerk-knight debate "Hueline and Aiglantine." While Alice of Bath must have been the second lady of the debate, the other pilgrims stand for the qualities and defects of clerks and…

The anti-Semitism of PrT is not Chaucer's, and the tale is less about it than about the divine power of Mary to destroy the enemies of the Christian faith.

Discusses the conflict between the letter and the spirit in NPT, providing a short survey of the history of literal interpretation. Chaucer freely accepts the letter as literature without excluding the morality. The Priest makes us turn away from…

In TC, Chaucer is both a translator and a creator. He combines the model of ancient authors with a mythological world and a symbolic construction.

In the Voir dit, La prison amoureuse, and TC, different genres are different ways of producing meaning and possess different forms of fictionality.

Troilus's illicit love causes his involvement with the Seven Deadly Sins.

Discusses the sociomoral and aesthetic qualities that constitute courtly speech, including social attitude, voice quality, brevity, plainness of speech, and sensitivity and understanding. Based on passages spoken "curteisly" in Chaucer, Burnley's…

Includes nine Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lectures delivered since 1950, and one on Scots delivered in 1942. Reprints Dorothy Everett's "Some Reflections on Chaucer's Art Poetical" (1950), Derek Brewer's "Towards a Chaucerian Poetic" (1974), and…

Disagrees with modern critical arguments that CkT, SqT, HF, and LGW are intentionally open-ended. Surveys the textual history and continuations of these poems to show that recent opinions probably result from post-Romantic "taste for the…

Surveys the historical, literary, and rhetorical development of the Middle English verse love epistle, tracing its precursors in Latin and Continental traditions, the roles of TC and Gower's Cinkante Balades, and the flowering of the genre in the…

Traces the history and theory of vernacular translation to its roots in Latin tradition, exploring classical translation theory as a product of the academic struggle between rhetoric and grammar (or hermeneutics). Medieval translation, a kind of…

Introduction to Piers Plowman as a lively mirror of fourteenth-century English society, directed to a nonspecialist audience. Includes a synopsis, derives Langland's biography from the poem, and reads it in light of contemporary social and religious…

Argues that "Chaucer--drawing on a long tradition of Biblical commentary--is well aware of the sexual dimensions of word choice, even of the double meaning of 'man'." He "plays on the relationship between naming and sexual differentiation";explores…

The controversy regarding "the moral intelligence of the narrator" of FranT maps the "poetic terrain" of the tale., i.e., rhyme, meter, poetic structure, and complex literary plan. Gaylord examines the tale by two complementary and yet contradictory…