Browse Items (16330 total)

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

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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."

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…

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…

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.

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.

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…

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…

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

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…

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…

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,…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…