Browse Items (16012 total)

Unpacks allegorical aspects of "domus" (household, community, regulation, tradition, order) and "lingua" (speech, noise, murmuring, poetry, vernacularity) in Gower's "Vox clamantis" and in HF, using Fredric Jameson's notion of "national allegory" to…

The narrator of the dream poems is not a consistent character,as previously thought, but a progressive one, embodying Chaucer's later preoccupation with experience versus authority. The narrator of BD is a doer; that of PF, a reader. Their…

Opening and closing stanzas of TC combine high, epic style with "sermo humilis," creating a rising and sinking pattern of "unlikeness." The verse and rhetoric reflect the meanings, the sublimest points made in simplest statement. The conclusion…

Sato suggests that the narrator involves his audience in the narration and makes them comakers of the story and even narrative agents.

Assesses the point of view of the "Narrator" of TC, particularly the ironic combination of detachment and involvement established in the openings of the five books and in the epilogue of the poem.

Examines the "compassion" of the narrator of TC as his dominant attitude, "paradoxically allied" to his "helplessness" before "inexorable fate," and modified by his didactic intent, "historical perspective," and "ironic detachment."

Resists readings of the CYT that regard the narrator as stupid or unwitting in his self-revelation, contending instead that he is a "newly reformed alchemist" who is, generally, "rational, down-to-earth, and persuasive in his description and…

The narrator of TC, never overtly separated from the author, implicates and disorients the reader by inconsistencies, variations in person and syntax, seeming self-identification now with Troilus's naivete and now with Pandarus's deviousness,…

Analyzes the narrator of TC as a "dramatic" character—one who is known "by what he says rather than what is said about him"--whose shifting perspectives in the poem inflect readers' opinions of the other characters and their actions. The shifts…

Argues that the obtuse narrator's misreading of the Ovidian story of Ceyx and Alcyone in BD misleads him and underlies the poem's general encouragement that people must accept misfortune. The narrator within the dream is not obtuse, but he does not…

The narrator of BD serves a therapeutic role: he helps the Black Knight talk out his grief and in the process purges himself of his own sorrow. In light of recent psychological studies, Chaucer's insights into bereavement are astute. BD warns…

There are several contrasts and incongruities in tone, style, and ideas in Chaucer's PF, as for example the naive narrator vs. condescending Scipio, ideal love vs. natural love, the love garden vs. the discordant parliament held therein, courtly…

Comments on the tripartite structure of PF, its shifting tone and three styles (religious/philosophical, romantic, realistic), the sad plight of the narrator who is left without love, and the predominance of Nature, the poem's "heroine" who fails to…

Considers love in TC in light of medieval understandings of "caritas" and "cupiditas," identifying several specifically Christian details in the poem, and assessing tensions between its Christianity and the "religion" of courtly love. Argues that the…

Examines point of view, presentation, plot, and characterization in ShT, MilT, RvT, SumT, and FrT, comparing and contrasting these techniques with those found in Old French fabliaux, and arguing that Chaucer supersedes his predecessors in complexity,…

Discusses Chaucer's narrative techniques in TC, focusing on two points of view: one intrinsic, in the relationship between the narrator and the story; the other extrinsic, between the narrator and the audience.

Using Michel de Certeau's idea of the tactic, argues that the Monk represents the monastic estate, and that he uses tragedies to attack the Host, representative of the city, and the Knight, representative of the nobility. Explores the Monk's own…

The narrative of MLT depends less on organic structure to develop the story than on exemplary episodic narrative sequence. Lack of descriptive detail is an effect of the narrator's interest in action, and the mode of presentation and the style of…

Explores narrative technique and meaning in PF; shifts in narrative strategies reveal intention.

Pandarus, Antigone, and the nightingale serve as narrative "specula" to influence Chaucer.

Suggests that Froissart's Dit dou bleu chevalier is "a poem so like" BD that it "seems certain one is modeled upon the other" (45).

Argues that Thop can be read as a didactic narrative that breaks off at the "point most effective for developing the theme of salvation" which is brought to conclusion in Mel. The tales share similar concerns with vice and with the world, the flesh,…

Explains various kinds of irony evident in TC, and argues that the character of Criseyde is not ironic; she is consistent with Chaucer's sources, but "controlled by the manners and ideals of courtly love" even though these ideals are shown to be…

Attributes the aesthetic success of the three-rioters account in PardT to Chaucer's suggestive "economy" of characterization and narrative and to the double perspective ("drunken fantasy" and "sober calculation") that irrevocably leads to death,…

Reviews various theories about the overall design of CT, warning that individual tales can be ignored, though CT is greater than the sum of its parts, and that Chaucer's final intentions concerning the order of the tales are unknown. In an analysis…