Browse Items (15544 total)

Surveys the dilemmas experienced by Criseyde, Troilus, Chaucer, and the reader in TC, relating them all to the conflicts between classical beauty and Christian truth.

Identifies a variety of tones in NPT, identifying interplay among the voice of the "rhetor," a "sermonizing" voice, and the outlook of a "sophisticated fabulist," exploring the "quality of their combination" by observing their relations with…

Commends Thomas Warton for his appreciation of Chaucer in his "History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to the Close of the Sixteenth Century" (1774-81), acknowledging that the critic largely ignored Old English, denigrated much Middle English…

Reviews D. W. Robertson's "A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives" (1962), providing a brief survey of the "prevailing criticism" that challenges the exegetical, patristic, or historicist criticism that Robertson champions, and…

Reads MerT as a composite of "various comic attitudes toward lust and marriage," not as the bitter vituperation of an angry narrator, arguing that the latter, conventional view results from seeking to impose "organic unity" on four "strikingly…

Interprets BD and PF as allegories, offering "An Approach to Medieval Poetry" (pp. 3-31) as an introduction to exegetical or patristic criticism and a justification of the method. Explores the imagery, structures, ironic juxtapositions, and meanings…

Describes various motifs in MLT, observing that it "includes features common to the early form of the 'märchen' combined with relatively late developments," and claiming that Chaucer's "most important addition to his source," Trevet's "Cronicle," is…

Argues that in Chaucer's three uses of "brotel" and its derivatives in MerT (4. 1279, 2061, and 2241), the poet plays punningly on sexual implications of the term in addition to the primary meaning, "brittle" or "fragile."

Assesses ManT in light of its sources and analogues to reveal a "tissue of comic devices—of controlled incongruities, of hyperbole, of antiphrasis, of equivocations, allusions, and purposeful distortions" that "produce a parodic version of the…

Shows that the phrase "secree of secrees" in CYT 8.1447, cast as a "superlative genitive," suggests a "whole class of alchemical expressions identical in form" and thereby "sharply emphasizes Chaucer's ironical denunciation of the oracular…

Investigates the "dynamic relationship" between Fortuna and Natura in Chaucer's works, focusing on the depictions in ClT, PhyT, and KnT

Adduces medieval and modern medicine to argue that the Summoner's disease described in GP 1.623-66 can best be diagnosed as "a rosacea-like secondary syphiloderm with meningeal neurosyphilitic involvement, with chronic alcoholism playing an important…

Treats Chaucer's use of rhetorical lists or catalogs as an indication of his growth as a poet, from BD and its use of lists as "pure amplification" to PF where listing is "occasionally but not always subjected to the artistic needs of the entire…

Identifies references in Chaucer's works to "natural law," or "law of kynde," describing its status in medieval legal theory and philosophy, including Boethius, and exploring Chaucer's possible experiences with the practices of "law merchant" and…

Explores the "literary value" of Chaucer's "pretended inferiority complex on the subject of poetry," commenting on the "modesty convention" (or humility topos) in the GP description of the Prioress, the moralization of NPT, the question of Providence…

Anthologizes 187 English lyric poems and lyrical excerpts from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, arranged in chronological order, with an Introduction (pp. 13-49), on-page glosses, end-of-text notes, an appendix of Types and Titles of the…

Reads George Meredith's novel "The Tragic Comedians" as "a modern version" of TC, an "adaptation of Princess Helen von Racowitza's 'Autobiography,' overshadowed by Chaucer's great work," particularly influenced by his characterization of Criseyde.

Assesses the transitions in BD as devices Chaucer uses to "direct the reader toward the hard statements [the poem] makes about deprivation, consolation, the hazards of fortune and the consequences of decision." Divisions in the conversation between…

Compares TC with Boccaccio's "Filostrato," and explores Chaucer's "controlled use of the gods and the Christian God" as they "function ambiguously and symbolically" in contributing to the "ultimate meaning of the poem."

Clarifies references to St. Neot, St. Frideswide, and St. Thomas in MilT; provides historical and topographical information about Oseney Abbey and Oxford as setting for the tale; and explores Absolon's habit of not wearing a tonsure, despite the…

Summarizes the "antagonistic and contradictory views on women" held by the medieval Church, and explores Chaucer's views of women by examining his uses of the motifs of sovereignty and obedience in marriage from BD through CT, focusing on three…

Argues that the "artistic unity" of NPT is evident in "light of the [Nun's] Priest's personality," a man who is dissatisfied with "his position in life as a servant to a group of women." Differences between NPT and its source in the "Renart"…

Compares and contrasts John of MilT with January of MerT as "ridiculous figures" and "gulls of courtly love," the first "senex amans" naïve, the second lascivious. Both men violate "an existing societal order" and the ideals of "sexual propriety and…

Comments on the ambiguity of the phrase "a finch eek koude he pulle," a detail in the GP description of the Summoner (CT 1.652).

Examines the statement about alliterative verse in ParsP 10.42-46, arguing that the "rum, ram, ruf" sequence has its source in French and helps to constitute a "meaningful . . . and technically adroit comment on alliterative poetry."