Geoffrey Chaucer Research Articles

Þat Ʒet þe wynd & þe weder & þe worlde stynkes: The Sins of Richard II and the Corruption of the Crown

Many writings from late fourteenth century England reflect a popular conception that English society had deteriorated into serious dysfunction. Four literati who discussed this problem are Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland, and the Gawain Poet. All four agreed that somehow King Richard II bore responsibility for the kingdom’s travails. The writers disagreed vis-à-vis which exact sins the king had committed to cause society to degrade, but all did concur that whatever exact sins the king had engaged in, those sins had damaged the construct of the Crown of England, and thereby the realm.

‘Of o toun were they born, that highte Strother’: Dialect and Pasolini in I racconti di Canterbury

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s I racconti di Canterbury (The Canterbury Tales) (1972), a reinterpretation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, is undeniably the most controversial – and perplexing – film in his Trilogy of Life. Marked by a cacophonous filming process, one in which English and Italian actors attempted to retell a collection of stories written in a form of English that has been extinct for centuries, the triumphs of I racconti di Canterbury have seldom been recognized. Pasolini’s reinterpretation of Chaucerian dialect is especially understudied, despite how Chaucer was the first English writer to differentiate his characters through written language. My article first focuses on the dialect in Chaucer’s ‘The Reeve’s Tale’ (c.1400) and then, its reimagination in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film I racconti di Canterbury. My research highlights Pasolini’s commendable fidelity to his source material and his success in replicating Chaucer’s representations of class difference.

Introduction: Touching Troy

Abstract This introduction aims to briefly sketch the theoretical framework for the articles assembled in this special issue on touch within the transmission of the Troy story in western Europe. Starting with the analysis of an important scene involving reading and manuscript culture in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, this introduction provides a context for medieval instances of touching within contemporary thinking about materiality and relationality and within the transmission of the Troy story in late medieval and early modern Europe.

Women in The Canterbury Tales

Known as the “father of English poetry”, Geoffrey Chaucer vividly depicts the abundance and colorfulness of social life in 14th century in his masterpiece work, The Canterbury Tales. In its a large number of stories, different images of women in that age are presented. Starting from a different perspective, this thesis approaches the story in the light of feminism. By giving women their own discourse, or describing their living circumstances, Chaucer shows the entrapment of middle age women in an authentic way. Nevertheless what the social statuses women are, they are classified as the supplement of men. Women suffer a lot of oppression from religion to gender, in the society at that time, they rarely have the right to voice for themselves and have limited opportunity to improve their depth of thought. Therefore, they have no way but to be angle or temptress. In this way a great realistic spirit is embodied in Chaucer’s work that transcends time.

“Turning Others’ Leaves”: The Politics of National Literary Identity in Renaissance England

The origins of the sense in Renaissance England for a distinct English literary identity may be traced back to Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower in the fourteenth century. However, it was with the Elizabethan generation of writers and poets in the second half of the sixteenth century that this sense became a serious concern and constituted the essence of their literary politics at the time. In fact, at a time when political, ideological, cultural, economic, commercial, and colonialist nationalism was on the rise in Renaissance Europe, it would not be unusual for the Elizabethans to pursue radical policies of nationalism in every sphere, including most importantly the formation of a national literary identity. Accordingly, for the literati of the time, especially for the generation of Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and their contemporaries, literary creativity and originality and, consequently, independence from foreign influence were to be prioritized and privileged over imitation and traditionality. Therefore, they increasingly turned away from the imitation of Continental literary norms and explicitly rejected Petrarchan populism; instead, they were involved in a deliberate and focused engagement in a process of theoretical and pragmatic politics for the creation of national literature. The new national literature they envisaged was not only to be authentic and native in identity but also to match up the intellectual standards of Renaissance humanism and literary performance at large. So this article is an analytical and argumentative attempt, with the main focus on Sidney and Spenser, to demonstrate in what ways and by what perceptions the Elizabethans were motivated for the formation of a national literary identity.

THE FIRST ENGLISH SONNET AND ITS PARODIC ESSENCE

The article is devoted to the consideration of questions about which sonnet was the first example of a national genre form in English poetry, and about the relationship between its text and previous traditions and specific monuments. The research material was a fragment of the chivalric romance “Amoryus and Cleopes” by John Metham. Topicality of the study is due to the lack of knowledge of this text. The form of graphic organisation of the selected fragment is analysed against the background of comparisons with various ways of setting up classical Italian sonnets, then the meaningful motifs and the integral plot of the fragment are correlated with the content of Francesco Petrarch’s book “De remediis utriusque fortunae” and in more detail with the plot of Geoffrey Chaucer’s early poem “The Book of the Duchess”. The general A.M. Severinus Boethius’s theme of the Wheel of Fortune is noted, and the movement of the plot in Chaucer and Metham and both figures of their complaining knights, as well as the causes of their suffering, are assessed. In the process of analysis, it is possible to establish that a fragment of the novel, designed by the author on the model of Italian sonnets, yet containing an original rhyme scheme, which will become known as the rhyme of an English sonnet, exhibits a parodic character in relation to the texts of Petrarch and Chaucer.

‘Going through all these things twice’: the repeated phrase and the refrain in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde

Geoffrey Chaucer’s (1343–1400) repeated phrases are a conundrum. Nancy Mason Bradbury has referred to them as ‘formulas’; Derek Brewer has described Chaucer’s poems as having a ‘traditional formulaic style’. But why would a literate poet make use of a device that tends to be associated with orality? This paper offers an alternative comparandum for Chaucer’s repeated phrases: the refrain. As well as writing narrative poetry, Chaucer acknowledges at the end of The Canterbury tales that during his career he has written ‘many a song and many a leccherous lay’ (‘many a song and many a lascivious ditty’). Few of these songs survive, but one in particular—a ballade known as ‘To Rosemounde’—shows Chaucer to have a keen facility with the paradoxical potential of the refrain. ‘To Rosemounde’ survives in only one manuscript copy, paired with Chaucer’s narrative poem Troilus and Criseyde. This manuscript pairing, and Chaucer’s frequent presentation of Troilus and Criseyde itself as a ‘song’, invites a comparison of the poem’s repeated phrases to the refrains of a song lyric. In Troilus, phrases that are repeated at crucial moments—such as ‘I can no more’ and ‘without more’—emulate refrains by holding repetition and closure in an unstable synthesis.

Prosochê and the Transformation of the Self in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Poetry

Prosochê and the Transformation of the Self in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Poetry

“Angry as a pissemyre”: Churlish Anger in Chaucer’s The Summoner’s Tale

Although The Summoner’s Tale currently tends to be read as anti-fraternal satire that gives the last laugh to aristocratic characters, this study argues that Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1400) included another layer of irony that appealed to members of his own social station serving as courtiers to England’s volatile aristocracy. Guided by the study of medieval obscene comedy, it is attentive to how lower-status characters express criticism of the social order and power relationships between other social stations. This study reconsiders the anger of Thomas the “churl” as a model for those who must resist their superiors passive aggressively and dissemble their anger. Thomas is characterized with anti-peasant stereotypes, including animal metaphors, that warn against provoking seemingly docile subordinates. These stereotypes reflect subordinated people’s tactics for hiding their indignation from those who deny their agency. Scholastic analysis the emotions and pastoral discourse about the vices help explain how indignation can be expressed sometimes as sadness and other times as anger. Friar John’s sermon against Wrath brings the discussion to the level of Chaucer’s peers by considering the options available to the courtiers of tyrants. Although the friar’s advice is to placate the powerful instead of correcting them, both Thomas and Jankyn know how to resist overbearing masters while appearing to give in to their unreasonable demands. Thomas’s fart is a form of scatological resistance that is on the boundary between agency and reflex. Subjects expose the folly of their superiors’ unreasonable demands by dissembling indignation and artfully concealing correction as compliance.

‘The Franklin’s Prologue and Tale’: The Idea of Change

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written in 1387, chronicles the transformations that the travelers experience. These modifications can come in a wide range of forms and shapes. Among these travelers is the Franklin, whose account includes a list of certain alterations that may be tracked down and examined. ....

Presença de São Tomás de Aquino na construção da narrativa medieval sobre o dinheiro

ABSTRACT As a reverse effect of constraining interpretation and limiting itself to the moral ordering of commerce defended by Aquinas, the Summa Theologica both motivated the enrichment of the Christian imaginary in narratives like Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and Geoffrey Chaucer’s work, The Canterbury Tales. In the case of the Divine Comedy, it expanded the reflection on the categories of sinners related to money, and as regards The Canterbury Tales, it provided support for the construction of anti-models in some of the framed narrative types of misers, simoniacs, and fraudsters. This article aims to present Aquinas’ instructions regarding the uses of money, juxtaposing, at times, with literary texts. For this purpose, biblical passages, commentators of the Catholic tradition Bible, and texts from economists are brought in as the Summa Theologica is analyzed. Theoretical thinkers of Christian thought, such as Augustine and Boethius, and economic thought, such as Molina and Robbins, have been used.

Ранняя поэма Чосера «Книга о Герцогине»: особенности топики

The article discusses the meaning of the poem The Book of the Duchess by Geoffrey Chaucer, which is considered as a multi-layered structure. Traditionally popular topics in Chaucerian studies related to this work are those that involve discussion of questions about the validity of the publishers’ choice of one of the surviving titles for the poem, about the correlation of the images of the main characters, including the Dreamer, in the plot and narrative, about the motivation for the two-part type of composition (The Proemium and The Dream) and the function of using in the plot of the retelling from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (the story of Ceyx and Alcyone), and finally, about the connection of this retelling with the “Boethian” poems of Guillaume de Machaut. The author of the article consistently touches on the essence of the listed issues, in order to finally present his own concept of the form and meaning of Chaucer’s early poem. In particular, the primacy of the image of the lady lost by the knight is questioned. The author of the article proposes to consider the structure of the work as a voluminous, multi-layered object, under the outer layer of which (the praising of the queen stolen by Fortune, whose prototype was Blanche the Duchess of Lancaster) there is a layer with a focus on the complaining knight (and the implicit function inherent in the elements of this layer of praising this knight for his courtliness, education, and qualities of a lover), which, in turn, hides the third layer, the semantic core of which is in the theme of Chaucer’s own competition with Guillaume de Machaut and Ovid in the realm of poetic fantasies.

Коронація Анни Болейн як королеви Англії та церемонія коронації у Великій Британії.

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the coronation of Anne Boleyn as Queen of England, on 1 June 1533. The paper devoted to the coronation of Anne Boleyn as Queen of England. She was the Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 and the second wife of King Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn would come to be one of the stalwarts of the historical drama. Anne Boleyn was one of the most powerful women in the world in the 16th century. She was that rare phenomenon, a self-made woman. The author presents the event of Tudor history: Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession, Anne Boleyn’s coronation, the crown of St. Edward, with which Anne was crowned, the Imperial Crown and the Tudor Crown. The British coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey is a time-honored tradition that has been taking place for over a thousand years. The coronation is steeped in pageantry, religious significance, and symbolism, with many ancient traditions being observed during the ceremony. This paper is explored some of these traditions and their significance. Remembered The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry VIII by Shakespear, coronation music by Thomas Tallis and Handel, Anne Boleyn’s coronation ballad The White Falkon.

Editorial introduction: From Paradise to Padua

This introductory section offers an overview of allusions and references to Padua in Middle English writing, dwelling on Geoffrey Chaucer's allusion to Padua and Petrarch in the Clerk's Prologue as well as on Herod the Great's reference in the Towneley medieval play, highlighting how early on in English imagination Padua became connoted as a faraway, exotic place, as well as a seat of learning. The introduction then continues by presenting the contributions that follow to this special issue on Shakespeare and Padua, and setting them in dialogue with one another.

Driving the Night Away: Early Chapters in the History of Reading

Geoffrey Chaucer, and the scene in the Book of the Duchess when he falls asleep reading a book, is often taken as a case study in the history of reading and the transition to silent, private reading. Moving from Chaucer’s own writing, this talk ventures into the economics of paper, manuscript layout and production, and pastoral education to consider the plausibility of Chaucer’s reading in bed.

COMPOSITION AND ARCHITECTONICS OF A WORK OF FICTION AS A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE AUTHOR’S STYLE. J. CHAUCER «THE CANTERBURY TALES»

COMPOSITION AND ARCHITECTONICS OF A WORK OF FICTION AS A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE AUTHOR’S STYLE. J. CHAUCER «THE CANTERBURY TALES»

Foreshadowing Palamon’s Triumph and Arcite’s Defeat in Their Rivalry for Emily: An Exploration of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale

This article explores words and actions that foreshadow Palamon’s triumph and Arcite’s defeat in their rivalry for Emily in Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale’. In fact, in accordance with Gustav Freytag’s pyramid about the plot structure, at the second step of the pyramid known as the inciting moment or narrative hook, Chaucer sets in motion the rising action of his story making up suspense. This suspense created by the question the author asks by the end of the first part of the tale in the form of ‘demande d’amour’, leaves free rein to uncertain predictions about the triumph or defeat of Palamon or Arcite involved in a merciless struggle for Emily, Hippolyta’s beautiful younger sister and Theseus’s sister-in-law. Thus, this paper purports to demonstrate that for a scrutineer, Palamon is found to be the winner and Arcite the loser from the outset, since there are words and actions that anticipate their triumph and defeat respectively. To detect those hints of triumph and defeat, a formalist approach is used as it emphasizes the form of a literary work to determine its meaning, focusing on literary elements, such as foreshadowing and back-shadowing, and how they work to create meaning.

On Chaucer, Raptus, and the Physician’s Tale

ABSTRACT This article argues both that the Physician’s Tale explicitly addresses the sexually threatening nature of employment for women, and that it offers a suggestive parallel to the situation as it may have unfolded between Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne, who in 1380 released Chaucer from her raptus: de raptu meo. Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale presents a chance to consider the ways Chaucer envisions both the mind of a rapist and rape culture in general, including especially what feminist philosopher Kate Manne calls “himpathy” and victim-blaming. In this tale, a churl presents a case in which he alleges abduction in order to commit abduction—for the purpose of rape. Chaucer’s many alterations to his sources present Virginia, the victim/protagonist, as what Judith M. Bennett has called a “singlewoman,” a fourteenth-century category of woman especially vulnerable to coercive labor laws under the Statute of Laborers. In this article, then, I show how this tale and its lessons about Chaucer’s own understanding of gendered labor, sexual assault, and discursive power challenge recent conclusions about the legal documents relating to Chaucer and Chaumpaigne.

An Analytical Study of Religious Corruption in The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is written within a narrative framework. It is told by twenty-nine pilgrims who are on their way to visit the shrine of Saint Tomas Becket. The host of the inn decides to go with them, and they tell tales along the way to entertain each other. Although the story is supposed to have twenty-four tales from thirty characters, religion and faith are the most dominant themes in the poem. Corruption of religious men is one of the most important themes in The Canterbury Tales. The characters are corrupted. They are very preoccupied with secular things. They have no time to spend on religious things. This paper aims at investigating the corruption and hypocrisy of characters in The Canterbury Tales. It argues that although some characters in The Canterbury Tales are religious men and women, in fact they are highly corrupted. To test the validity of this proposal, five tales are analyzed.

Teaching Chaucer in Tunisia: An interdisciplinary approach

AbstractPedagogies of the premodern in anglophone contexts face many obstacles, like cultural differences, linguistic remoteness, and stereotypical representations. In EFL learning and teaching settings, student motivation, cultural adequation, and historical imagination are also needed. In Tunisia, this was further complicated after the Jasmine Revolution when newly radicalised students of English resented aspects of premodern literature which they considered inaccurate, uninteresting, or inappropriate. In this paper, the author presents a learning and teaching model developed to help post‐revolutionary Tunisian learners with diverse backgrounds and orientations better understand and appreciate the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Combining elements of cognitive studies, comparative literature, and digital codicology, this bricolage was used in graduate seminars at the University of Sousse to study digitised manuscripts and texts in Arabic, Latin, and (Middle) English. Informed by active pedagogy and enhanced by audio‐visual aids, activities based on this model effectively addressed challenges, helped achieve learning outcomes, and made Tunisians more at home with Chaucer.