Browse Items (16537 total)

Nowlin, Steele.   Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016.
Examines the process of medieval poetic invention expressed in the poetry of Chaucer and John Gower. Draws on contemporary affect theory to present ways that both poets present "invention as an affective force" in representations of emotional…

Attridge, Derek.   The Experience of Poetry: From Homer's Listener to Shakespeare's Readers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 2285-3.
Examines evidence for the modes of performance and reception of late medieval English poetry, focusing on Chaucer's dream visions, TC, and CT, but also commenting on works by John Gower, other English poets, and continental writers. Considers…

Birns, Nicholas.   Nicholas Birns. Barbarian Memory: The Legacy of Early Medieval History in Early Modern Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 44–59.
Assesses the uses of late Antique historiography in MLT and in Gower's Prologue to his "Confessio Amantis," comparing Gower's depiction of the late Roman empire and that of Otto of Freising's "Chronica," and arguing that the ultimate source of MLT is…

Behrman, Mary Davy.   Dissertation Abstracts International 65 (2005): 2981A.
CT--in part a reaction to Gower's conservative conception of vernacular literature in "Confessio Amantis"--is a text encouraging interpretive autonomy.

Nowlin, Steele.   Dissertation Abstracts International A79.04 (2018): n.p.
Argues that the "creative potential of understanding invention at once as a textual and historical concept . . . receives its fullest treatment in the poetic exchanges of Chaucer and Gower," examining how in MLT and MkT Chaucer undercuts Gower's…

Gray, Douglas.   H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 61 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004): 11: 247-59.
Biography of Chaucer, with brief bibliography. Sub-sections include "Early Life," "Poetry: The Beginnings," "Journeys on the King's Service--Italy," "Chaucer at the Customs House and Aldgate," "Works of the 1370s and early 1380s," "Life in London,…

[Kiser, Lisa J.]   In Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis, eds. The Classical Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2010).
Encyclopedia entry that summarizes Chaucer's debt to classical tradition as source material for his plots, imaginings of the classical past, and "voicings" of classical speakers throughout his corpus. Comments on Chaucer's awareness of mediation and…

Williams, David.   Robert L. Fastiggi, ed. New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement 2011, Vol. 1 (Detroit: Gale/Cengage, 2011), pp. 171–75.
Summarizes Chaucer's life and career, and comments on TC and CT (especially the Pardoner and Wife of Bath) as demonstrations of Chaucer's "commitment to the religious view of life," his "humanist sympathy" with living in a fallen world, and his…

Lawler, Jennifer [L.]   John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg, eds., with Scott D. Westram and Gregory G. Guzman. Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, no. 1899 (New York and London: Garland, 2000), pp. 105-06.
Brief description of Chaucer's travels and of pilgrimage as a frame in CT. Like the pilgrimage report of Felix Fabri (1441/2-1502), CT is important as a historical record.

Gillespie, Stuart.   Shakespeare's Books: A Dictionary of Shakespeare Sources. 2nd ed. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), pp. 70-78.
Synopsizes critical opinion about Chaucer's influence on Shakespeare, especially the impact of TC, KnT, and MerT, with attention to other works. Comments on the knowledge and status of Chaucer in Shakespeare's age and includes a bibliography updated…

Lindahl, Carl.   Mary Ellen Brown and Bruce A. Rosenberg, eds. Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 1998), pp. 114-16.
Summary of Chaucer's life and poetic career, emphasizing his familiarity with a "world of noble and festive pageantry" and the "traditional customs" alluded to in his poetry.

Boyd, David Lorenzo.   Claude J. Summers, ed. The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage: A Reader's Companion to the Writers and Their Works, from Antiquity to the Present. Rev. ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 147-48.
Boyd summarizes the tension in medieval tradition between the promotion of homosocial bonding and the proscription of sodomy. He characterizes Chaucer's treatment of male homosexuality in CT as typically homophobic.

Brewer, Derek.   Steven R. Serafin and Valerie Grovenor Myer, eds. The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature (New York: Continuum, 2003), pp. 176-78.
Encyclopedia entry that surveys Chaucer's life, language, and works chronologically.

Donaldson, E. Talbot.   Joseph R. Strayer, ed. Volume 3: Cabala-Crimea (NewYork: Scribner, 1983), pp. 279-97.
Describes Chaucer's life and works in chronological sequence, commenting in detail on events and on literary concerns of all of his major works, exploring most extensively characterization in TC and variety of genre in CT. Includes a bibliography.

Jost, Jean E.   Steven H. Gale, ed. Encyclopedia of British Humorists: Geoffrey Chaucer to John Cleese (New York and London: Garland, 1996): vol. 1, pp. 228-43.
Surveys the humor and structural comedy of Chaucer's works, especially CT, examining individual tales and commenting on BD, HF, and PF. Chaucer achieves comic effects through narrative resolution and by manipulating time, place, and circumstances. …

Mehl, Dieter.   Kurt Ranke, ed. Enzyklopadie des Marchens, Vol. 2 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979), cols. 1256-67
Emphasis on Chaucer's sources and narrative patterns in the light of fairy tales and the oral tradition.

Homan, Delmar C.   Kansas English 82:4 (1997): 30-40.
Advocates fusion of high art and popular culture in general-education curricula, commenting on the use of principles of group dynamics to analyze CT.

Blake, N. F.   Takami Matsuda, Richard A. Linenthal, and John Scahill, eds. The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya (Cambridge: Brewer; Tokyo: Yushodo, 2004), pp. 87-98.
Considers the inclusion of Gamelyn in early manuscripts of CT and the relative confidence with which scribes placed the tale. Given the possibility that some manuscripts predate Chaucer's death, he may have experimented with including the tale, even…

Johnston, Andrew James.   Walter Delabar and Jorg Doring, eds. Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) (Berlin: Weidler, 1998), pp. 239-64.
Assesses Brecht's portrayal of Galileo Galilei, comparing it with Chaucer's attitudes to scholastic science and scientific language in SqT and Astr, Lydgate's assessment of Chaucer's scientific writing, Petrarch's view of scholastic philosophy and…

Goldstein, R. James.   Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 145-62.
Offers a Freudian analysis of the antifeminist and political jokes in NPT. The opening frame concerning the widow and the allusion to the rebellion of 1381 suggest that the "repression of the class interests of the exploited" is "a symptom of the…

Wimsatt, James I.   Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 119-31.
From BD at the beginning of his career to Sted at the end, Chaucer made use of Machaut's ballade, "Il m'est avis." He drew on it for the translation of Bo, for MerT, and for For. Its images appear especially in BD and in MerT, its philosophical…

Scanlon, Larry.   Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh, eds. Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the "Canterbury Tales" (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), pp. 45-55.
Suggests that modernity's insistence on a repressive break with the past helps to explain the paucity of screen adaptations of Chaucer's works, commenting on similarities between Chaucer's desert in HF and the "desert of the [R]eal" of Jean…

Blamires, Alcuin.   Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Blamires elucidates ways in which CT and, to a lesser extent, TC engage moral and ethical discourse and shows this discourse at times to be gendered. Grounded in a range of Christian and classical sources, especially Stoic texts, Chaucer's "spectrum…

Conner, Edwin.   Tennessee Philological Bulletin 23 (1986): 21-22 (abstract).
A subgenre of estates portraits, not touched on by Mann, includes "tarocchi," the richly illuminated playing cards of fourteenth- and fifteenth- century Italy that developed into tarot cards and modern playing cards. The four suits represent the…

Pearcy, Roy J.   Arts: The Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association 12 (1984): 35-39.
The line "Aux ignorans de la langue pandras" in Deschamps' ballade to Chaucer refers to the Saxon element in English culture, as opposed to the British or Anglo-Norman elements with which Chaucer is associated. Deschamps dissociates a poet he…
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