Browse Items (16456 total)

Essays examine influence of classical learning, Germanic and Old Norse cultures, and Romance languages on the development of medieval English literature and language. For essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for From Beowulf to Caxton under…

Explores intersections between the "new formalism" and the close study of the formal features of late-medieval manuscripts, surveying recent scholarship and focusing on analyses of Chaucer's Adam and the scribe Adam Pinkhurst. These analyses…

Examines fifteenth-century scribal responses to sexual language in the CT, noting that some manuscripts either replaced obscenities or added to sexual language. Observing that female narrators in the CT are restricted in their use of vernacular…

Pity's "double life" as person and quality "calls attention to the mechanics" of allegory and to one's "ordinary" experience of pity; through word play, pity is both dead to the frustrated lover and alive to others.

MLT engages with ideas found in Latin and French treatises advocating crusade and assesses the rhetoric and practices of crusades, critiquing their mercantile aims, the ignorance of cultural differences dooming efforts to convert Muslims, and poor…

In their attention to language as "an active part of social life," the FranT, NPT, and ManT constitute a language group whose tales are deeply rhetorical in the sense that they look closely at how language works as "an entity, process or phenomenon,"…

Swooning in medieval literature points to a marked cultural contrast between medieval sensibilities and modern ones for which swooning is extreme and exceptional. This broad survey defines swooning as a "loss of consciousness, brought on by…

Chaucer, Lydgate, and Henryson recognized a song's ability to excite and articulate passionate feeling and they invoke the idea of song in their works in ways that call attention "to the formal qualities of song itself." Zeeman inquires into "the…

Examines twenty-five CT mss in which "Gamelyn" appears and makes suggestions about the tale's relationship to the CT, arguing against the notion that early scribes included it on "wholly whimsical grounds." Its inclusion early in the textual…

For six essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature under Alternative Title.

Observes that scribes often used more than one exemplar. In the case of at least one CT manuscript (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 198), the scribe's addition of glosses from an exemplar apparently received late in the copying process resulted in…

Da Rold's study of Cambridge University Library MS Dd.4.24 (a manuscript of CT) suggests that variations in shades of ink helps to disclose scribal habits of copying and emendation as well as the continuity of the exemplars used. Argues for further…

A collection of essays addressing the history of the book, manuscript studies, culture, and history of late medieval England. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Production of Books in England under Alternative Title.

Studies how Chaucer's ClT may have been affected by the Italian textual tradition. The first part of the book concentrates on the Italian texts, particularly the Manelli codex of Boccaccio, "Decameron" X.10. The second part considers how the Hengwrt…

Eleven articles on medieval women and/or literature for them, especially works that are written by women authors. For one essay that pertains to Chaucer, see Piero Boitani, "Marie de France and the Breton Lay in England," (pp. 211-26).

Focuses on Ackroyd's use of Chaucer's "formulism" (Zumthor) and reflects on how successful the accumulation of medieval formulas and sayings really is.

Background of Spirleng, a copyist of CT (Glasgow, Hunterian MS U.1.1).

Proposes that a "computer facilitated re-spelling of a reconstructed archetype" ought to be the basis for future editions of LGW, Anel, HF, PF, and BD because the textual situations of these poems are "precarious." The reconstruction would use the…

Taking its editor's preface as a cue, an examination of this edition, which has heretofore been labeled a reprint of John Bell's 1782 edition, reveals that it is in fact "a considerable re-evaluation of Chaucer's works."

Facing-page poetic translation of GP, KnT, MilPT, RvPT, CkPT, WBPT, ClPT, MerPT, FranPT, PardPT, PrPT, Thop and prologues to Thop and Mel, NPPT, ParsP, and Ret. Follows Chaucer's verse forms. Includes biographical and cultural backgrounds (pp.…

Within the context of an examination of the English Renaissance, submits that the 1598 edition of Chaucer connects manuscripts and print culture, while lending Chaucerian authority and canonicity to print editions.

Chwast's humorous graphic novel of Chaucer's twenty-four tales depicts the pilgrims traveling to Canterbury by motorcycles.

Chaucer rewrites his source in Ovid "Metamaphorses" 6 to show the strong bond between the sisters who provide solace to each other. The same kind of bond is shown among the women who support the raped maiden in the WBT. The meaning of rape in…

Awareness of generic ancestry offers evidence of the palimpsestuous nature of the "true" Middle English Breton lays. Reference is made to Chaucer's FranT among other so-called Breton lays.

Vernacular authors anxious about the fragility of texts due to the impermanence of the medium and scribal transmission called attention in their writing to forms of engraving in stone and wax. As writing habits changed, the depiction of writing…