Browse Items (16537 total)

Surveys the influence on Chaucer's works (mostly TC and CT) of the writings of the Church Fathers, especially Jerome and Augustine, focusing in separate chapters on shared notions of "the treatment of marriage and virginity," divine and profane love,…

Emphasizes the role of Harry Bailly in Chaucer's characterization of the Nun's Priest, reading "broad irony" in NPE, despite its limited manuscript support. Addresses many of Harry's comments throughout Part 7, focusing on how the Host's displeasure…

Assesses the sequence and nuances of the terms used to justify Henry IV's claim to the English throne--election, inheritance, and conquest--in Chaucer's Purse and John Gower's "Cronica Tripertita," comparing them with historical documents that…

Quotes from published letters of Theodore Roosevelt (8 Volumes, 1951–1954) which express his opinions about Chaucer (e.g., SumT is "filthy") and Chaucer studies, especially that of Thomas R. Lounsbury (1892).

Quotes two allusions to Chaucer in letters by Robert Browning from 1845 and 1846.

Assesses "various appearances of the narrator" in CT to "determine how far the narrator can be taken as a contribution to our knowledge of Geoffrey Chaucer." Comments most extensively on GP and ThP, with attention to first-person pronouns, and on…

Locates precedent for the Parson's claim about the growth of sin among humans in Richard de Wetheringsett's "Summa de Officio Sacerdotis"--specifically, its reference to the "Canticum Exodi" in Exodus 15.9. Suggests more broadly that an "English…

Confirms that the friar's kiss of Thomas' wife in SumT is unseemly, adducing passages from Gower's "Vox Clamantis" and the "Regimen Animarum" that express concern about dangers of clerical kissing.

Explicates the claim about debt in the description of the Merchant (GP 1.280), arguing on logical and metrical grounds--and using comparable lines from elsewhere in Chaucer (especially TC 3.267-70)--that the Merchant was not "insolvent," i.e., "he…

Claims that Aurelius prays to Apollo for assistance in FranT 5.1031ff. because he "seeks to violate the heroine's [Dorigen's] chastity."

Compares and contrasts the GP descriptions of the Prioress and the Second Nun and the style and details of PrPT and the SNPT. Argues that genuine humility and "restraint" evokes "the truer religious character" of the Second Nun, casting into relief…

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Suggests that the repeated emphasis on the motive of covetousness in PardP is intended as the "revenge of irony" by the Pardoner, a response to the other pilgrims' negative opinion of him.

Rejects arguments that references to "Sittingbourne" at WBT (3.847), "towne" in SumT (3.2294), and "Rouchestre" (7.1926) are inconsistent with the order of CT found in the Ellesmere manuscript, claiming that "towne" is a "tag-word" that does not…

Identifies an overlooked resource for the study of the sources and analogues of SNT: H. Delehaye's 1936 "Etude sur le legendier romain, les saints de Novembre et de Decembre" (Bruxelles, 1936).

Assesses various possible analogues to details in the naval battle depicted in LGW (648-49; Cleopatra)--the use of "pesen"(peas) and "lyme" (lime)--suggesting that the closest analogue is in a 1572 masque by George Gascoigne. Also suggests that…

Identifies ways in which Chaucer's adaptation of Virgil’s story of Aeneas in HF "follows the arrangement of the 'Ilias' of Simon Aurea Capra, or Chevre d'Or" and "bears a resemblance especially" to an expanded version of that twelfth-century Latin…

Glosses the image of the Friar's girth in GP 1.263 as "rounded as a bell out of a 'mould,'" and suggests that it may derive from Chaucer's first-hand familiarity with bell-casting located near his residence at Aldgate, documenting that "bell-founders…

Analyzes Chaucer's use of the "narrative technique" of "self-conscious abbreviation"--when "the poet informs the reader that abbreviation is taking place." Clarifies statistically that Chaucer signals his abbreviations more often than do…

In light of patristic and iconographical traditions of scriptural commentary, bestiaries, and sermons, reads the rooster "Chauntecleer as any holy man" and the fox "Daun Russell as heretic and devil." Argues that NPT is a "sermon on alertness to…

Lists and quotes five allusions to Chaucer produced between 1670 and 1698: two by William Penn, and one each by L. P., William Nicolson, and Sir Henry Spelman.

Argues on textual and thematic grounds that Mel, NPT, and ClT "antedate the conception of a Marriage Group," Chaucer linking them to it as an "afterthought." Also traces a "fairly extensive ordering and linking operation, resulting in the…

Quotes a seven-line, unsigned poem from "The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure" (June 1747) that alludes to Chaucer's "Purse," without acknowledgement.

Suggests that Chaucer "modeled the narrative in the first part of" SqT "upon the narrative in the first part" of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Identifies nine "points of agreement between the two romances"--similarities in "order of events," the…

Suggests that Chaucer's recurrent use of the number twelve in BD carries with it "overtones of fulfillment, completion, finality," serving as a "unifying thread." Adducing "the medieval practice of time-keeping," development of the mechanical…