Browse Items (16328 total)

Intellectual backgrounds to the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, with particular attention to literature, classical, and late-classical influences; the concept of the universe and the earth; human physiology and psychology; and cultural…

Surveys and comments on English poetic translations of Dante's "Commedia" from Chaucer to Laurence Binyon, opening with mention of the Ugolino episode from MkT (based on "Inferno" XXXIII 1-90), followed by quotation of SNP 8.36-56, calling it a…

Discursive bibliography of Chaucer studies (ca. 1930-1960), with five sub-sections: Bibliographies, Editions, and the Chaucer Canon; Chaucer's Life and Times; Chaucer's English; General Critical Works; The Canterbury Tales; and Troilus and Criseyde…

Using evidence from WBPT, challenges D. S. Silvia's argument (N&Q 1967: 8-10; same title) that the Wife of Bath has lost interest in Jankyn and is looking for husband number six.

Identifies John of Trevisa's "Polychronicon" as the likely source for the Monk's use of "pileer" distinct from "boundes" (7.2126-27) in his account of Hercules, a distinction also made by John Lydgate in his "Troy Book." Comments on the uses of…

Characterizes the Host as a "delightful traveling companion," summarizing details of his GP description and of his interactions with the other pilgrims in the links between the tales. He is "sometimes pompous, often impudent, and always forceful," a…

Concentrates on Old English poems and Middle English plays that are analogous to Milton's "Paradise Lost," but includes in an appendix "[s]some relationships with The Canterbury Tales and . . . description of seven Middle English poetic analogues."

Explores "important tensions" in the characterization of the Wife of Bath, interpreting the "larger subject" of WBT as the "grace of God," even though it concludes with the Wife's "irreligious" final curse. In WBP, her "masking is predictable…

Historical analysis of the changes in the English world view preceding and following the Black Death of 1349, with particular attention to the art and literature up to 1385 and its "pessimism and macabre realism." Includes recurrent references to…

Surveys and comments on English poetic translations of Dante's "Commedia" from Chaucer to Laurence Binyon, opening with mention of the Ugolino episode from MkT (based on "Inferno" XXXIII 1-90), followed by quotation of SNP 8.36-56, calling it a…

Offers background and context for various kinds of "unsettling" dreams in literature, mentioning that Pertelote treats Chanticleer's "anxiety dream" in NPT 7.2882ff. "as a cryptic diagnosis [of humoral disorder] which required immediate prescription…

Treats WBT as an "expression of her personality," focusing on the "matter-of-fact" tone of the tale, its humor, and its "tolerant sexual irony." However, Chaucer undercuts "her views and reactions" ironically, particularly in the pillow lecture of…

Argues that "it may well be" that Chaucer's use of the verb "take" in Thopas 7.795 is parodic, meaning "inclination or attraction (towards)" rather than "attach oneself (to)" in a "binding relationship"--the latter sense evidently intended in "Sir…

Identifies nine aphoristic statements in NPT and assesses the extent to which they can be considered the "moralite" referred to by the narrator in 7.3440. Considers analogous fables and claims that Chaucer's version demonstrates "a common Chaucerian…

Explains that Chaucer's source for his account of Lot's incest, followed as it is by reference to Herod and the slaying of John (PardT 7.485-91), is likely to have been Peter Comestor's "Historia Libri Genesis" rather than the biblical account. Also…

Offers a "new look at Chaucer's folktales," distinguishing between written and oral analogues to portions of CT, focusing on oral motifs, and categorizing the tales in accord with the numbering system in the 1961 revised version of Stith Thompson's…

Argues that Dante's siren of "Purgatorio" XIX is analogous to the Wife of Bath and the transformation of the loathly lady of WBT, helping to undercut the Wife's views on female sovereignty and ironically "reasserting the medieval Christian idea of…

Compares the characterizations of Palamon and Arcite in KnT, focusing on the relative intensity of their responses to love and arguing that, rather than fortune, their actions and passions determine their outcomes. Arcite"s fall from his horse is the…

Appreciative character description of the Host as director of the tale-telling contest, literary critic, and tour guide.

Describes various disorders, discomforts, and diseases among the Canterbury pilgrims and in their tales, commenting on medieval and modern understandings of symptoms and causes.

Summary description of CT, with comments on Chaucer's life and language, and appreciative analysis of the characterizations of several pilgrims, the conflicts between their tales, and the "eternal relevance" of the work overall. Recommends cinematic…

Commends the "harmony" of PardT and "its capacities to elicit responses," discussing it as a tale that is "eloquent," intelligent, significantly expressive, unified, and instructive." Includes contrasts with PhyT.

Critical appreciation of PardT as "brilliantly constructed, simultaneously a parody of the very truths it purports to be about and a joke in which we are never quite sure of the butt"; pays particular attention to its "ragged structure" and how it…

Reads "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale" as a poem about the power of love and its effects on its lovesick narrator, at points comparing it with works by Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and others, observing likely derivations.

Identifies two echoes of PF 22-25 in John Hardyng's "English Chronicle in Metre," also mentioning the later use of the PF lines in Speght's 1598 edition of Chaucer's works.