In Troilus and Criseyde, a Trojan prince, Troilus falls in love with Criseyde who is a beautiful widow. Pandarus who is Troilus’ friend and Criseyde’s uncle, helps Troilus by making Criseyde fall in love with him by fair means or foul. Troilus and...

‘Qhua wait gif all that Chauceir wrait was trew?/Nor I wait nocht gif this narratioun/Be authoreist’.

In his Testament for Cresseid, inspired by Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Henryson’s narrator presents an almost immediate challenge to the...

In Troilus and Criseyde, a poem which presents tragedy as a necessary component of love, Chaucer explains that fortune, the planets, and free will all control the fall of the protagonist. These forces, none of which lead to his ultimate benefit,...

When reading Geoffrey Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women, readers will notice that none of these good women are granted satisfying lives or happy endings. Nearly all of them meet tragic, even gruesome, ends––these women are betrayed, abandoned,...

Throughout The Book of the Duchess, we are urged to tackle the question of whether the Dreamer or the Man in Black is the more hopeless lover. While both the Man in Black and the Dreamer are hopeless lovers, the Man in Black is closer to...

Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess is a poem largely about what poetry can and cannot do. Poetry, as literature, is inherently removed from life; the written word, for all its power to conjure image and emotion, can never quite be that image or...

But if, Sir Knight, you let me know

The cause of this tremendous ill,

As sure as God gives help, I will,

If power is granted to me, remove it...

"The Book of the Duchess" 548-551

Throughout the study of medieval literature, certain trends define the...

Most of Chaucer's works contain references to famous historical, classical, and mythical figures. This trend holds true in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess. Most strikingly, The Black Knight plays a hefty role in the story. Because of the character's...

"The dream-vision appears personal and private." Discuss

Despite their frequent internal contradictions and their transitive, pseudo-empirical character, dreams can make inexplicably authoritative claims to factuality. Accordingly, the dream-vision...

In Chaucer’s three dream poems, “The Book of the Duchess“, “The Parliament of Fowles” and the unfinished “House of Fame”, universal issues such as love are explored by a narrator recounting a dream. Writing that incorporated dreams was popular in...

Fin amors, or refined loving is a staple within medieval literature. Showcasing the romantic relationships of noblemen, fin amors expresses the struggles and games that are played between a man and woman during courtship. Similar to unrequited...

Allusions to ancient mythology are sprinkled within all genres of writing. Many authors have built upon the ideas of these well-known tales and adapted them into new crafts of literature. One such author if Geoffrey Chaucer. In nearly all his...

The poems in the Ellesmere manuscript facsimile of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales are accompanied by a portrait of the storyteller. Based on the miniatures’ attire, accessories, and horse trappings, the pilgrims can be classified into...

Throughout The Book of the Duchess, we are urged to tackle the question of whether the Dreamer or the Man in Black is the more hopeless lover. While both the Man in Black and the Dreamer are hopeless lovers, the Man in Black is closer to...

In Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules, the dreamer is a lover and a writer of poetry; his dream occurs primarily in a series of images and interactions, left ultimately in a question unanswered by the formel eagle. This is a moment of synecdoche, in...

"The Miller's Tale", a ribald and bawdy fabliaux about the generation gap, youthful lust, aged foolishness, and the selfishness and cruelty of people towards each other, contains a wealth of color terms which add to and expand the meaning of this...

In Chaucer’s three dream poems, “The Book of the Duchess“, “The Parliament of Fowles” and the unfinished “House of Fame”, universal issues such as love are explored by a narrator recounting a dream. Writing that incorporated dreams was popular in...

Geoffrey Chaucer's poem “The Book of the Duchess” was written between the years 1369-1372. The poem is a product of Chaucer’s French period. This work was written for Chaucer's principal patron, John of Gaunt, after the death of his first wife,...

Chaucer, at least on the surface, recreates the commonly perceived stereotype of a vile woman in Alisoun; and as D.W. Robertson in Chaucer’s Exegetes states, “She is but an elaborate iconographic figure designed to show the manifold implications...

Throughout ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue’, Chaucer uses imagery to enhance our understanding of the Wife’s character and principles. Chaucer makes use of simple yet powerful metaphors such as fire and nature to augment our understanding of the Wife...

The plight of the oppressed in medieval England was paramount to the emergence of iconic works of fiction. In turn, the future comprehension of feudal society is dependent upon these works. To rely on monastic chroniclers alone, in understanding...

In both Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’ and Sheridan’s ‘The Rivals’, the question of morality is not a straightforward one, as there is tension surrounding the purpose of marriage and traditional social expectations. However,...

Women in the Middle Ages generally had little opportunity to provide influence either in life or in literature. Little is known of their lives and thoughts because little was written from their viewpoint. Yet in an age and a society dominated by...

In Love Visions, Chaucer uses the medieval tradition of dream exposition to comment on the societal draw toward the love idealized in a subset of medieval literature. Throughout the first three poems, Chaucer deftly parodies societal norms: his...