Browse Items (15427 total)

Examines HF as a literary satire, a comic send-up of the love vision genre, evident in the naiveté of the narrator and his failure to attain love or information about it. The poem's "central structural idea" is "comic disillusionment," underscored by…

Textbook anthology of "theories and examples of the comic" that includes John Dryden's adaptation of NPT under the title "The Cock and the Fox or, The Tale of the Nun's Priest," attributing it to Chaucer.

Considering grammar, context, and manuscript evidence, argues that "hors" is singular in the GP description of the Knight (GP 1.74).

Suggests that "Philosophre" at ParsT 10.536 refers to Seneca and his "De Ira."

Offers historical, onomastic, and contextualizing evidence to support the argument that Philippa Paon (or "Panetto," abbreviated "Pan⸱" in the documents) married Chaucer, tracing their affiliations with English royalty, particularly Queen Philippa;…

Comments on previous scholarship that seeks to clarify the GP description of the Guildsmen (1.361-78) and describes the possible political, economic, and religious affiliations among individuals of such professions as Chaucer assigns to them. Shows…

Provides historical background to the characterization of the Squire in GP 1.85-88, focusing on the economics, politics, and tactics of the so-called "Crusade of 1383" (or "Despenser's Crusade"), the implications of the word "chivachie," and ways…

Surveys the intellectual and social backgrounds of medieval understandings of nobility and "gentilesse," and analyzes noble birth and noble action in TC and CT, especially the ironies of failed "noble potential" in TC, the framing noble ideals of the…

Surveys critical opinion about the relation of the palinode in TC to the body of the poem, and then focuses on the characters' various views of love and the narrator's "ironic mask." In contrast with the "pragmatic limitations" of Pandarus's view of…

Considers aspects of Th that are "burlesque," commenting on diction, meter, details, various rhetorical figures, and rhymes that convey irony and comedy. Poses many of these examples in contrast with parallels elsewhere in CT.

Reinforces studies of structural and thematic order in KnT, identifying a threefold pattern of ordering principles: a backdrop natural order of cycles, rituals, folk customs; the noble social ordering of chivalry and tournament; and the universal,…

Explores the range and depth of Chaucer's familiarity with the "Liber Catonis," its commentaries and glosses, and the likelihood that he memorized portions as a schoolboy. Identifies verbal echoes of "Catoniana" in Chaucer's works; then focuses on…

Offers in parallel columns passages from ParsT, the "Moralium Dogma Philosophorum," and the French translation of the Latin text to argue that the "Moralium" is the ultimate source of portions of ParsT (especially the "Remedia" of the vices), even…

Describes the "ironic associations" of the summoner's oaths in FrT, particularly those that invoke St. James and St, Anne.

Reviews medieval ideas of degrees or grades of perfection, particularly as related to virginity as the "highest form of chastity" and marriage, a compromise even when admirable as in FranT. PhyT and SNT, both of which may follow FranT in the order of…

Challenges the universal applicability of the "organic" ideal (form equating to content) of New Criticism, arguing that it is applicable to modern novels but not earlier narratives. Explores Chaucer's and his audience's "lively consciousness of his…

Observes in MerT several commonplaces of the "aube" in the description of January and May's wedding-night, suggesting that they help "to point up the bitterly comic incongruities in January's marriage," and echo details of RvT and TC.

Suggests that Chaucer's self-characterization in Pr-ThL 7.695-97 derives from Dante's "Purgatorio" 19.52 and that the one follows the other in using the "dual first-person singular" and in separating Poet and Pilgrim as a narrative technique.

Traces from Jerome to Frère Lorens's "Somme le Roi" the legacy of commentary on Isaiah 40 which links spiritual ascent and contempt for the world, discussing Lorens's "Somme" as the source for the rise of Arcite in Boccaccio's "Teseida" and as a…

Argues that Daniel 13.20 is a source of or influence on details of MerT 5.2138-48, and suggests that pictorial representations of Susannah and the Elders and details from the alliterative poem "Susannah" reveal ironic dimensions in Chaucer's scene of…

Quotes PrT 7.684-86 at the beginning of a report about a "new version" of the information plaque at the tomb of Hugh at Lincoln Cathedral, one that castigates "Trumped up stories of 'ritual murders' of Christian boys by Jewish communities."

A chronological and thematic anthology of literary parodies that opens with Pr-ThL, Th, and a section of Th-MelL in Middle English as examples of parody of romance, followed by an "Imitation of Chaucer" by Alexander Pope and "A Clerk Ther Was of…

Argues that "to see Chaucer the pilgrim as anyone other than a marvelously alert, ironic, facetious master of every situation is to misread" CT. Particularly in his views of churchmen and uses of superlatives, the narrator is best understood as "a…

Acknowledging NPT to be "a rhetorical tour de force," assesses implications of its status as a "fable," surveying medieval commentaries on the genre, particularly its ability to teach and/or delight, and commenting on the morality the Nun's Priest…

Describes and assesses Chaucer's depictions of the expressions and psychology of love in TC, attending to diction, tone, style, and various uses and developments of the conventions of French and Italian love poetry. Focuses on the poet's successful…