Browse Items (16381 total)

Treats Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" as a sequel to TC, examining how its attitude and tone differ from Chaucer's work, largely as a result of differing styles, techniques, opinions, and points of view. Henryson's style and tone are harsher, and…

Ridley views certain aspects of hermeneutic study of Chaucer, in company with certain modes of classical rhetoric, to "help us better to understand both 'how' the poet crafted his poetry and 'why' as a medieval writer he did so."

In Japanese.

Chaucer's audience influenced his familiar material and subjects to convey his points. Their ability to evaluate and judge must have figured in his manipulation of truth and seeming in the stories. We must use their intended presence in responding…

Revisits the "authorship question" of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," exploring not what was composed by Shakespeare or by Fletcher, but rather the social tensions between characters found in KnT, the play's source, and those nameless ones of the "Jailer's…

Study guide to MilPT, designed for adolescents, with Middle English text and facing translation in modern verse and a variety of background materials: GP descriptions of Miller, Wife, of Bath, and Pardoner; an introduction to Chaucer's life and…

An anthology of previously published materials, including selections from Boccaccio (on the Black Death) and Froissart (on the Peasants' Revolt), essays on cultural backgrounds to the fourteenth century (imagination, technology, science, courtly…

Reprints the 8th edition (1950) of Coulton's 1908 critical biography of Chaucer, with a new bibliography by Craik (pp. 277-79).

Chaucer shares literary conventions with the writers of his age. Both he and Gower use framed stories, Chaucer exploiting to the fullest both frame and story. Langland and Chaucer share the use of symbols, but Chaucer's are more expansive. Chaucer…

Chaucer was influenced by his English contemporaries, particularly John Gower, William Langland, Thomas Chester, and the Gawain poet; yet he chose to seek new literary directions. Chaucer was on a pilgrimage of self-discovery and a quest for…

The "formes fixes" lyrics of Middle French, especially the ballade, are almost as influential for Chaucer's works as was the "Roman de la Rose." The "formes fixes"--ballade, rondeau, and virelay--were highly musical and connected with dancing.

A comprehensive analysis of the contemporary French influence on Chaucer, exploring lyric rather than narrative features and concentrating on the impact of "formes fixes." Wimsatt devotes individual chapters to Chaucer's literary relations with Jean…

Rebinding and rearrangement of John Dart's biography of Chaucer in one of the six seventeenth- and eighteenth-century editions of his work held in Paris, effectively reframe it as having been modeled "culturally and linguistically from French…

Argues that Chaucer adapts his first-person narrators throughout his career in order to explore aspects of the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. Chaucer achieves a greatest sense of objectivity when his subjective narrator is most…

Examines Chaucer's reception in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and its relation to the historical development of poetic identity. In their responses to and depictions of Chaucer, such writers as Lydgate, Clanvowe, James I, Hawes, and…

Briefly surveys Chaucer's use of the medieval "art poetical," which he learned from his predecessors and realized in his own poems.

The significance of the known facts about Chaucer's life is elucidated in the context of the political, social, intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic background. The volume is handsomely illustrated, and includes readings of Chaucer's works.

A biography of Chaucer, illustrated with numerous b&w photographs of objects from late-medieval life. Includes discussion of Chaucer's major poetry, linking his works with events and attitudes of his age, and exploring how Chaucer responded to such…

Introductory summary of Chaucer's life and social context, illustrated with numerous b&w photographs of objects from the late fourteenth century: buildings, coins, artifacts, manuscripts, etc. Draws examples of social, political, and religious life…

Surveys Chaucers references to and possible knowledge of Homer, emphasizing mediating sources, especially Boccaccio.

Explores various kinds of game or play in TC: rhetorical games, war games, courtly games, and the games of life. Suggests Troilus may be seen as homo ludens (man playing).

Challenges the limitations of traditional source-and-analogue study, exploring resonances between SqT and the "Kitab al-Manazir" of Ibn al-Haytham /Alhacen to which it alludes (see SqT, 232–45), including discussion of mediating sources in Latin…

Charts "specific astronomical references" that are datable in Chaucer's works against other known events of the poet's life. Although the references may not help us date the poems in which they occur, they do indicate Chaucer's active interest in…

Chaucer's writing of BD in English is not evidence of English nationalism but is "the triumph of internationalism." He adopted "both theory and precedent for the creation of high-prestige vernacular literature" to produce in English the kind of…

Suggests that several details of the Wife of Bath's chiding of her elder husbands (WBP 3.257-62) derive, ultimately, from Isidore of Saville's "Etymologiarum."