Browse Items (16376 total)

Comments on forerunners of ecocritical thinking in medieval literature, and explores the connotations of "green" (often in contrast with "blue") in Wom Unc, SqT, FrT, WBT, and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," arguing that medieval usage reflects a…

Describes the "the provenance, codicology, sources, and performance possibilities" of the early modern Welsh play "Troelus a Chresyd," exploring its relations with TC, Robert Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," and Renaissance dramatic versions of…

Analyzes Chaucer's presentation of speech and thought in TC and seeks to show the way the "conceptual blending" of different subjects occurs in it.

Closely compares the opening portion of Rom with its French source and points out that Chaucer's translations of verb tenses are faithful to the original French text. Suggests Chaucer may have attempted to express a combination of the preterit and…

Focuses on how ClT differs from its two sources, Petrarch's "Historia Griseldis" and its anonymous French translation "Le livre Griseldis," and argues that Chaucer adds his original expression of the characters' emotion so as to encourage the…

Discusses adjectives employed to modify knightly characters in TC, GP, KnT, Th, BD, and Anel.

Investigates the difference in use and function between the "be" + "lief" and the "have" + "lief" constructions, and between these constructions and "like" and "list" in Chaucer's works.

Contains essays on Chaucer's use of language, speech, and tone. For essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for The Pleasure of English Language and Literature under Alternative Title.

A textbook history of the "phonological structure" of English, i.e., "the history of individual sounds and their representation, the history of syllable structure and word stress." The comprehensive Subject Index lists numerous references to Chaucer…

Discusses the use of the past perfect forms in GP and Mel. In Japanese with English abstract.

Examines words and expressions that generate the "'emotive' or 'lyrical' mood" in Chaucer's works, especially those in TC.

Addresses the status of Chaucer's language in the development of a standard written English, explores grammatical differences between his dialect and "present-day" English, and clarifies the difficulties of understanding the innovativeness of his…

Examines the word "cunning," omission of its sexual connotations in the MED, and the ways in which Chaucer puns on the word in previously unconsidered sexual contexts.

Revises and expands De Gaynesford's essay "Speech Acts, Responsibility, and Commitment in Poetry" (2013), which identifies a type of poetic performative speech-act that he labels the "Chaucer-type," explaining it by reference to the poet's dedication…

Argues that "gnof" (MilT 1.3188) is Chaucer's neologism, clarifying the trouble his scribes had with the word, detailing its later use in English (especially in association with Kett's Rebellion of 1575), and establishing the likelihood that Chaucer…

Cites and quotes a portion of Dorigen's "song" in FranT 4.857-94 as an early, pre-Romantic lyrical example of the "'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' effect" in poetry, a trope by which reference to a physical space links the inner concerns of multiple…

Compares Katherine Mansfield's and Virginia Woolf's uses of personifications of Nature as a feature of their modernism, derived from their familiarity with medieval and Renaissance depictions of Nature as a goddess, including Chaucer's Nature in PF.…

Asserts without explanation that a reference to Chaucer in "To Mr. Creech on His Translation of Lucretius" by "J. A." derives from RvT 1.3992 and that it may help to clarify a crux in Alexander Pope's "Dunciad" Variorum.

Identifies a "pray for Chaucer" trope in fifteenth-century commentary on the poet, observing a "metaphor of literary history" that is based in "guild-like community," underpinned by notions of purgatory, intercession, and friendship. Rooted in Thomad…

Argues that in "Life of Our Lady" and "Life of Saint Margaret" John Lydgate uses the "paradoxical image" of the virginal and fecund "sanctified female body" to distance himself "from the patriarchal Chaucerian poetic model" and assert that his…

Argues that Shakespeare and John Fletcher's adaptation of KnT in "The Two Noble Kinsmen" emphasizes the failure of same-sex friendship, darkens tone, and approaches tragic pessimism--in contrast with Chaucer's "cautiously optimistic philosophical…

Contends that William Baldwin's "Mirror for Magistrates" (1559) was previously seen as linking the medieval literature of Chaucer and Boccaccio with the early moderns.

Argues that FranT provided the "raw material and structures of dramatic feeling" for Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," encouraging critics to adopt a more expansive view of source relations, and observing how and where the tale and the play illuminate each…

Reinforces connections between the prologue to Lydgate's "Siege of Thebes" and CT. Claims Lydgate responds to Chaucer's caricature of the Monk in defense of monasticism; alludes to the Monk's portrait and the person of the Host in GP; borrows…

Suggests that in "Cymbeline," "The Tempest," and "The Taming of the Shrew," Shakespeare sets his work in conversation with the dream visions BD and HF, thereby allowing Shakespeare to claim a place in the Chaucerian line of English canon and to…