Browse Items (15427 total)

Recommends showing students how digressive, "extra-narrative passages" in NPT "are the essence of Chaucer's intention, not obstructions." Includes discussion of contrasts between NPT and the Cock and Fox fable of Marie de France, focusing on…

Justifies accepting PF 99-105 as the more likely immediate source of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" 1.4.70-88 than Claudian's "De Sextu Consultat Honorii Augusti," Preface, 3-10, the ultimate source of both English texts.

Offers examples from the "Roman de la Rose" and Deschamps' "Ballade" that the word "bourdan" had the meaning "phallus," showing that the sense would have been familiar to Chaucer when he used "stif burdoun" to describe the Summoner's singing with the…

Explores the events of a single day in the first half of Book 2 of TC, particularly changes Chaucer made to Boccaccio "Filostrato," showing how this section helps to characterize Pandarus and Criseyde. Argues that the "muted contrast" between the…

Suggests that Shakespeare's knot-image may be related to the five fingers of the devil commented upon in ParsT 10.852-60.

Considers "some unnoticed passages" that shed light on Chaucer's references to "Trophee" and the Pillars of Hercules (MkT 7.2117-18), identifying no specific source but showing that parallel information was available in medieval accounts such as the…

Adduces an historical account from 1862 concerning a drinking game that involves turning over cups to suggest that "turne coppes" at RvT 1.3928 may indicate Symkyn caroused in similar fashion.

Suggests that the year-long delay in marriages at the end of Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost" may have been influenced by the similar delay in PF.

Identifies a citation of Chaucer's Friar and confession in Book 5.15 of Samuel Purchas's "Puchas His Pilgrimage" (1613).

Argues that medieval connections between stories of the sieges of Thebes and of Troy make the reference to Thebes at TC 2.83-84 a "masterstroke of supreme irony": directed at both Criseyde and Pandarus, the irony complicates aspects of predestination…

Argues that the Cleopatra legend in LGW is the source of details in Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra." Also argues that Chaucer derived information about Cleopatra's marriage to her brother(s) from Vincent of Beauvais' "Speculum Historiale," not…

Reprints two poems about Chaucer (by e. e. cummings and Henry Wordsworth Longfellow) and fifteen twentieth-century essays or excerpts on CT by various authors, plus one previously unpublished essay: Paul E. Beichner's "Characterization in the…

Locates comic irony in several religious references and allusions in MilT, especially as they help to characterize Alison, Nicholas, and Absolon; the "final irony" is that the Miller is himself unaware of this irony.

Identifies three references in the correspondence and diary of Reverend Stukeley to a portrait (or portraits) of Chaucer and to a proposed edition of the poet's works.

Considers the eagle of HF "in the light of medieval expositions of the soaring eagle as an image of the flight of thought," focusing on the bird as an "intellectual symbol" and its flight as an "act of contemplation" as seen in Gregory's "Moralia in…

Offers evidence that "goddes boteler" was a "conventional epithet for Ganymede" and that the "most probable source" for Chaucer's of the phrase in HF and for his use of "stellifye" in the same context is Petrus Berchorius's moralization of Ovid.

Suggests that the miller's name in RvT, Simkin, puns on Latin "simus," meaning "snub-nosed," offering classical examples of similar wordplay and identifying characters with similar names in classical comedy.

Offers evidence (rhymes and phonetic patterns in English and French) to indicate "Chaucer having pronounced 'iu' in French loanwords, with the stress on the first element of the diphthong." Further this "'iu' coalesced with earlier 'ew', 'iw', and,…

Investigates the "portentous inexplicableness" of the Old Man in PardT, and suggests he is allegorical, even though no specific meaning is clear.

Studies Chaucer's GP description of the Prioress, focusing on how he uses and adapts conventions of romance, style, and detail to produce humor.

Challenges the notion that a documented rental fee paid by Chaucer may be related to the date of his birth.

Edits Jonathan Sidnam's rhyme-royal "paraphrase" of Books 1-3 of TC found in London, British Library, Additional MS 29494, with occasional bottom-of-the-page textual notes and an extensive Introduction (pp. 5-88) that is indexed, although the text is…

Acknowledges the association of "lucre of vileyne" (PrT 7.491) with "turpe lucrum" (filthy lucre) found in the Vulgate 1 Timothy 3.8 and quoted in the Ellemere gloss, but specifies that the phrase, a "technical legal term" of canon law, was a matter…

Compares Chaucer's heroine in MLT with her predecessor in Trevet, arguing that Custance's passivity, her prayers, and her divinely-aided escape from the "renegade knight" combine with other religious features of the tale to make it "a romantic homily…

Defines and illustrates the meanings of "limitour" and "limitacioun" as applied to friars in the late Middle Ages, clarifying licensing, territorial jurisdiction, and the authority to beg, preach, and hear confessions. Focuses on documents of the…