Browse Items (16471 total)

The Renaissance elicited mixed responses to machinery. Wolfe discusses reactions to Italian thought by Gabriel Harvey (including the effect on his reading of Chaucer), George Chapman, and Edmund Spenser.

Compares paired samples of Langland's and Chaucer's verse to argue that Langland's are superior in both sound and sense.

Compares authorial and scribal versions of passages from Hoccleve's verse, focusing on scribal omission of monosyllabic words, spelling variants, and terminal -e. Assesses what Hoccleve's practice might tell us about Gower's practice, and how the two…

Although many assume that Chaucer and Langland felt compelled to revise their works to avoid anti-Wycliffite censorship, such censorship was restricted to clerical writing. Chaucer drew on Wycliffite translation techniques to improve his skill, as…

Prints fourteen pieces, ranging historically from Thomas Tyrwhitt and George Saintsbury to recent commentary, including new essays by Richard Osberg, Emerson Brown, and Winthrop Wetherbee. Includes an introduction that summarizes the contributions…

Surveys the relationship between song and poetry in English tradition, identifying the tenacity of the association until the end of the nineteenth century as evident in poetry and in the statuary of London's Albert Memorial. Cites evidence from TC…

Compares punctuation in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts with that of other manuscripts to argue that Chaucer's punctuation survives in the virgules of Hengwrt and Ellesmere, related to his development of the iambic pentameter line.

Stockwell and Minkova argue that Chaucer's prosodic innovation is rooted in his familiarity with the "Romance decasyllabic model." The article focuses on duple and triple rhythmic units, suggesting that Chaucer imposed native iambic rhythm on romance…

The realism of fabliaux (and some drama) makes them valuable in studying the history of colloquial language, especially sexual colloquialisms. Blake draws examples from "Dame Sirith," MilT, RvT, WBP, and MerT, remarking on Chaucer's…

Traces the development of "anon" from Middle English to Early Modern English, using evidence drawn from TC and elsewhere. A revised version of chaper two of Brinton's Pragmatic Markers in English (Berlin and New York: Gruyter, 1996).

Challenges "over-simple dichotomies" between English and French in late-medieval England and illustrates the "pragmatic complexity" of the use of Anglo-French texts. Assesses grammar, style, "speaker attitudes" (with reference to CT and TC), and…

Cites examples from Chaucer and others to show the demise of the "(slight) person split" evident in earlier English impersonal constuctions.

Reviewing the traditional narrative of the Great Vowel Shift, with its recognition by Chaucer's early editors that major changes in prosody were underway, Giancarlo suggests revision of the monolithic GVS model in the direction of a more localized…

Morse comments on how the Canterbury Tales Project may reinvigorate textual questions thought to have been answered by the Manly-Rickert edition and latent in the Variorum project. Explores such issues as tale order, tale revision, and manuscript…

Names written in manuscripts of CT indicate associations between these manuscripts and a number of Austin friars who were scribes; they also indicate that exemplars of some manuscripts were at Clare Priory. Friars may have copied the manuscripts…

Analyzes the "structural sections" of the Hengwrt manuscript (Hg) to describe the complex process of its copying and construction, concentrating on such matters as hands, inks, running titles, quiring, and the abrupt ending of CkT, and suggesting…

Argues that de Worde's text of MkT results from collation of Caxton's second edition with a manuscript probably of the Hengwrt group. There is no sign of editing beyond the evident desire to produce a complete text of MkT.

Contrasts the parliaments or courts of love in PF and LGWP with those in Lydgate's Temple of Glas and the anonymous Assembly of Ladies. The later poems present "idealizing fantasies of social assimilation or integration."

Transmission of ancient Greek and Roman culture through Ovid to later tradition affected romance and shaped attitudes in popular literature. Heyworth discusses works by Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Chaucer (with emphasis on politics in the…

Critical reception of Lydgate has been prejudiced by negative comparisons with Chaucer. Fuller appreciation of Lydgate's poetry depends on recognizing that, while moral and political issues in Chaucer are largely exemplary, Lydgate writes to effect…

A three-stanza poem in praise of the Virgin Mary--from a single leaf inserted after Lydgate's Life of Our Lady in Bodleian Library MS Bodley 120--alludes to or echoes SqT (5.347) and TC (5.1670).

The treatment of horses and horsemanship helps to contrast the "secular lightheartedness" of Thomas Stothard's 1809 painting of the Canterbury pilgrims and the "heartfelt religious fervor" William Blake sought to convey in his 1807 engraving.

Echoing Chaucer's poetry while portraying non-Christian, racialized others, the Middle English romance "The Sultan of Babylon" invokes a "Saracen Chaucer" whose status as national poet depends on such markers of difference.

Chaucer's representations of the child as pathetic and passive (in Th and PrT) contrasts with images of children in romance ("Havelock the Dane") and miracle tales ("Child Slain by Jews" and "The Jewish Boy"). Chaucer "canonizes" this negative view…

Assesses the genre, fictional self-consciousness, and religious elements of "Pericles," suggesting that Chaucer influenced Shakespeare's decision to include the character Gower onstage throughout the play, an aspect of its literary…