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Witnesses believed that the Black Death and subsequent fourteenth-century plagues threatened profound social change. However, Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400) does not appear to accord the plague a place of any importance in his works. This is especially surprising in the case of the Canterbury Tales , which presents a complex portrait of plague-era society. Chaucer's silence on the plague is reinforced by critical positions that deemphasize the effects of the plague and emphasize Chaucer's supposed lack of interest in his world. This thesis contends that the plague is in fact present in the Canterbury Tales in the guise of the changes that it threatened. By situating the Canterbury Tales in a network of literary and non-literary responses to the plague, I demonstrate that Chaucer participated in a discourse that attempted to restore order to a world that was seen to have been disordered---morally, socially, and physically---by the plague.

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Inaug.-Diss.--Würzburg. / Lebenslauf. "Literaturverzeichnis": p. [i]-iv.

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The diploma thesis offers a philological analysis of František Vrba's translation into Czech of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The paper is composed of three major parts: "Theoretical background", "Hypothesis and Method", and "Analysis". The analysis addresses matters of lexical, syntactic, stylistic, metrical and cultural nature. The analysis focuses on The Knight's Tale, The Miller's Tale, The Nun's Priest's Tale and The Wife of Bath's Tale as convenient manifestations of stylistic variation, cross-generic links and structural correspondences and contrasts in The Canterbury Tales. The aim of this thesis is to analyze and evaluate the quality of František Vrba's Czech translation.

Perhaps due to its seemingly straightforward religious nature, the Second Nun's Cecelia Legend in The Canterbury Tales is often dismissed by scholars and readers alike. However, through analyzing Chaucer's earlier analogues, it becomes apparent that Chaucer has left out key pieces of the Life of Saint Cecelia. These omissions can be explained as attempts to illustrate the humanistic beliefs of both St. Augustine and Christine de Pizan. Further, the etymology of key words which appear in the "Second Nun's Prologue and Tale" help to reinforce the satire which Chaucer creates. Chaucer has deleted the humanism from the Saint Cecelia Legend in order to illustrate the potential for the corruption of female virtue.

An analysis of both the placement and the philosophical connections between The Tale of Melibee and The Parson’s Tale suggests that a highly individual spiritual philosophy is being presented within The Canterbury Tales. This philosophy is exemplified via an analysis of both the role of The Tale of Melibee within the work, and the manner in which it is historically developed. The highest form of individual spirituality is revealed within The Tale of Melibee, through the spiritual developments occurring within the character Melibeus and his wife Prudence. This development serves to unify the exemplified extremes of satire and spirituality presented throughout the work, as well as to illustrate the manner in which the individual human being develops his or her own individual spirituality through an active engagement with life, which in turn promotes a unity of the aforementioned extremes.