Browse Items (16470 total)

In the course of "Englishing" certain foreign texts, some early printers used Chaucerian "paratexts," evoking Chaucer's works, allusions, or style in efforts to bridge the gap between one literary period and the next and to express nostalgia for a…

In TC, Criseyde's appeals to Hector for clarification of her status in Troy suggest that Criseyde seeks a romantic response from Hector rather than the official response she receives. This disappointment acts as a catalyst for future behavior in the…

The Anglo-French duality of Chaucer's literary roots underlies the complexity of his representations of the self and others. In this light, HF should likely be dated later than it traditionally is.

Comments on Chaucer as a translator (especially his adaptations of Dante in HF and MkT) and on the reception of his works over time as a legacy of translating and adapting him. Cooper details Chaucer's influence and adaptations of his works in the…

Surveys the evolution of critical appropriations and pictorial representations of Chaucer from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries, suggesting that oversimplifications of Chaucer recur because he is so deeply concerned with the generative…

In NPT, the Nuns' Priest (Nonnes is plural) confesses his own temptations of lust and pride, under the guise of Chauntecleer. The priest is another persona of Chaucer the poet, interested in the same topics (dreams, astronomy, free will, the biter…

The comedy in MerT is produced by May herself, whose "conduct demonstrates that the feminine passivity upon which the masculine performance of agency depends is of course an act." May exposes the ridiculous nature of all claims to masculine…

The arrangement of quires in this early fifteenth-century manuscript indicates that the scribe was working from an unrubricated text, the order of CT was not yet stable, and the scribe may have helped create the Ellesmere ordering.

Wide-ranging discussion of the opposition between evidence (physical materials) and discourse (abstractions covered by the word "text") in bibliographical and literary study, with sustained attention to editions of Chaucer and their methods and…

Dauby examines the transformations from living characters to artifacts and vice versa, the interplay between life and art. A comparative study of "Sir Degrevant," Lancelot, the Tristan legend, and poems by Chaucer leads to a typology of the…

Most of the pilgrims seem to be about the same age, but the problem of age is not ignored: e.g., old and young husbands (WBPT); the relationship between father and son (Knight and Squire, Franklin, Chauntecleer) or daughter (RvT); and the…

Examples from "The Chronicle of Peter Langtoft," "Piers Plowman," and CT (WBP and PardP) indicate how patterns of mixed-language speech reflect the social motivations of the speakers, especially their efforts to construct authority and restrict…

An introduction to CT, including discussion of Chaucer's life, the structure of CT, plots and themes of the tales, analyses of the pilgrims and major characters in their tales, and Chaucer's language and meter. Includes bibliographies for each…

Examines law and literature in the works of Chaucer, Gower, and Langland, focusing on three major topics: marriage, crime, and covenants. An introductory chapter explores the relations between law and literature. Throughout, there is comparison of…

Dinshaw contemplates recent critical trends in medieval studies in light of the events of September 11, 2001, tracing the developments of feminist, queer, and postcolonial approaches to Chaucer's works by focusing on MLT.

Dor links the exhibitionist sheela-na-gig with the widespread Celtic mythological motif of Lady Sovereignty that has been identified with the transformation motif in WBT.

In LGW, Chaucer questions his two major sources--Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Heroides--to express the naked text of the myth and, simultaneously, to assert his own authority. Aeneas is selfish and irresponsible in LGW (Chaucer's third treatment after…

Boffey and Edwards confront several scholarly and critical issues that pertain to LGW: date, occasion, sources and models, patronage, and the relation of the F and G versions of LGWP. The authors emphasize the variety in the legends themselves and…

Revised version of the 1986 original, now with seventeen essays, five of which are new. Revised pieces are "The Social and Literary Scene in England" (Paul Strohm); "Chaucer's Italian Inheritance" (David Wallace); "Old Books Brought to New Life in…

Includes full-color facsimiles of the first and second editions of CT: the Royal copy of the first edition and the Grenville copy of the second, i.e., British Library 167.c.26 and C.21.d.

Bordalejo uses traditional and electronic methods to explore the various orders of the tales in manuscripts of CT, concluding that the order was affected by accident in some cases but by scribal intervention in others.

Wycliffite elements of SumT and of the GP description of the Friar are submerged, but Chaucer sympathized with Wycliffite thought and believed that the Summoner's friar was damned. Borroff surveys anti-fraternal tradition, comments on Fals-Semblant…

Ten essays by the author, three of them published here for the first time. Topics include CT, "Pearl," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Shakespeare's "Hamlet." For two new essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Traditions and Renewals under…

After a short discussion of the genesis of CT, Bourgne successively explores its structure (collection of tales; importance of commerce and exchanges; prologues; labyrinth); shifts between oral and written literatures, or audiences and readerships;…

In BD, the omission of the transformation of Ceyx and Alcyone--included in other versions of the narrative--runs counter to the expectation of readers, thus exacerbating the anti-consolatory element in the adjacent narrator's dream.