Browse Items (16471 total)

Medieval idealizations of motherhood developed alongside the rising emphasis on the suffering of Christ and the saints. Kuhn discusses works by Jacobus de Voragine, Chaucer (LGW, MLT, ClT, and PrT), Osbern Bokenham, and Margery Kempe. The tradition…

Authorial development from pastoral toward epic provides a universal creative basis, analogous to the human life span and close to nature. Assesses works by Plato, Virgil, Chaucer (BD), Milton, and Vladimir Nabokov (as lepidopterist).

Dream poems by Machaut, Froissart, and Chaucer share not only the dream frame device but also historical-political content communicated in the language of love poetry. Love, war, and politics combined show change and a model of order.

Addressed to high school students. Surveys Chaucer's life and works, with emphasis on CT, emphasizing Chaucer's counterpoint between romance and realism.

Argues that sodomy in medieval literature must be understood as an "unspecified plurality of acts and intentions," which includes women as well as men. Female sodomy occupies the "silent place in the discourse" that must be acknowledged in modern…

Surveys fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English and Middle Scots literature (excluding drama), with individual chapters dedicated to Chaucer, Gower, Langland, the Gawain poet, Lydgate and Hoccleve, the lyric, Middle Scots (James I, Robert Holland,…

Sixteen essays from the Eighth York Manuscript Conference (July 5-7, 1996) on issues in Middle English textual studies: dating, punctuation, meter, scribal practice, and book production, among others. Includes a preface (xi-xii) that celebrates…

Survey's Wurtele's studies of Chaucer, clarifying the critic's consistent concern with characterization and how it relates to critical trends.

Ten essays that pertain to Chaucer, plus a commemorative preface (by M. I. Cameron), an introduction (by David Williams) that summarizes the essays, a bibliography of Wurtele's publications, and a subject index. For individual essays that pertain to…

Orme surveys medieval childhood, from the seventh to the mid-sixteenth century, with emphasis on England. Topics include birth and family life, danger and death, children's literature, learning to read and reading for pleasure, play, children and the…

Assessment of Hammond's contributions to Middle English and Tudor studies, including Chaucer. Includes a bibliography of Hammond's publications.

Pearsall considers a range of medieval visual and verbal landscapes, exploring how they signify "something other" and enable the observer of the landscape to rove freely and "compose its meaning as if afresh." The essay refers to BD, PF, LGW, the…

Originally published in 1988. Designed for examination preparation, this guide poses a series of issues for GP and the individual tales in CT; TC; and the dream poems, especially PF: kind of work, what it is about, characterization, the argument,…

Challenges Tolkien's view that Chaucer aimed at a consistent representation of Northern dialect in RvT. Probably closest to Chaucer's autograph, the Hengwrt manuscript is neither complete nor consistent, while later scribes added Northern features…

Focuses on spelling in the Hengwrt manuscript (Hg) in light of the development of London English (from Type II to III), especially in comparison with spelling in the Ellesmere manuscript (El). Though the two manuscripts are closely related, Hg shows…

Analyzes spelling in the four printed editions of CT issued before 1500. Caxton (1476 and 1482) and Wynken de Worde (1498) responded individually to the perceived authority of the work, while Richard Pynson (1492) attempted to replace the nonstandard…

Words and phrases discussed include "lust," "blynde," "a fewe wordes white," "glosynge," "ambages," "amphibologie," "double," "sophyme," "swete wordes," "plesante wordes," and "peinten."

Focuses on the following: (1) the kind of governing verbs; (2) the ratio of bare infinitives and (for) to-infinitives; and (3) the structure of the infinitive clause, supplementing Kenyon (1909) in many respects.I

Markus examines several features of Chaucer's spelling--digraphs, vowel doubling, "ee" versus "e"--drawing data from ParsT and arguing that inconsistencies in vowel-doubling are related to vowel length's "having lost its former phonemic identity."…

Mazzon demonstrates a "clear correlation between discourse strategies and pronoun use and switching" in CT. You and thou forms indicate "politeness" as well as social status, gender, and characterization.

Rinelli considers Chaucer's uses of "cherl" and "carl" among evidence that distinguishes among regional uses of the terms.

Anglo-Norman should be considered "a coherent, if constantly changing, entity from 1066 to the middle of the fifteenth century" (559), with widely different forms that influenced English in the fifteenth-century, when scribes were working both in…

In Chaucer's England, the legal term "homicide" ("deliberate infliction of death," justified or not) was distinct from "murder," which carried negative moral connotations but had no legal definition. In CT, Chaucer uses the terms precisely and…

"Peple" and "folk" are marked terms in Chaucer's usage. In particular, "peple" is nearly always negative; "folk" is either neutral or positive. In Chaucer's translations (e.g., Bo), "folk" normally translates as "gens" or its cognates, while "peple"…

Describes and compares Chaucer's use of adverbs ending in -e, formed from adjectives, and those ending in -ly/-lice.