Browse Items (16472 total)

Historical analysis of Chaucer's complete lexicon, arguing that his English is traditional rather than innovative. Chaucer naturalizes French and Latin words in ways similar to those of his English predecessors, often fusing foreign and native forms.…

We remain uncertain about the meaning of Cecily Chaumpaigne's release of Chaucer from a charge of rape, but the topic of rape (and forced marriage) in Chaucer's poetry reflects his sensitivity to the complex "definitional problems" of raptus. Chaucer…

Proposes a Wittgensteinian approach to Chaucer's language that eschews the inherent limitations of linguistic description and stylistic analysis. The poet's works are about language.

Though traditional at root, Chaucer's diction, syntax, and rhetoric are made fresh by the poet's careful combination and articulation of traditional features. Doubleness (as in mixed styles, ambiguity, and irony) is characteristic of his style and a…

Cannon combines Marxist and Hegelian ideas of "form" to argue that "form is that which thought and things have in common" (5), enabling a valuation of form as a record of thinking in and about a culture. Formalist criticism (in this sense) of Middle…

Cannon observes parallels between the "forms of life Chaucer made in his poems" and "what can be reconstructed from his own life from the public record." Suggests that both the textual lives and Chaucer's biography derive "in part from social…

Cannon explores the critique in MilT of the limited Boethianism of KnT. The double plot of MilT and its emphasis on turning harm to joke are more genuinely Boethian than is the tragic emphasis of KnT.

CYT is Chaucer's London tale par excellence; its "craft sounds" evoke both what the city is and what it is not.

Cannon summarizes medieval theories of literary form, including that of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, as adapted by Chaucer in TC. Applies the theories to various works in Middle English.

Surveys the forms, topics, and contexts of Middle English writing, clarifying its construction from various literary traditions set against a number of social, economic, and political conditions. The discussion is divided into five broad categories…

The Wife of Bath and Langland draw on similar "schoolroom texts" such as Matthew of Vendôme's "Tobias."

Explores medieval definitions and aesthetic responses to proverbs by examining "The Proverbs of Alfred" and Mel, exploring how each depends upon "acts of recognition that are produced by the repetition of well-worn truths." Both works are examples of…

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,"…

Reconsiders Laura Hibbard Loomis's method for gauging Chaucer's familiarity with the Auchinleck manuscript--a method based on collocations shared by Auchinleck and Th--arguing that the method does not prove his familiarity with Auchinleck, but does…

Refers to Chaucer throughout, first by supposing what his early education was like, then by addressing the late-medieval relation between Latin and English as evident in HF, NPT, and ManT. Argues that "the work of Chaucer, Langland, and Gower…

Examines the textbook practices of the medieval primary schools--the "grammar schools" or "grammatica"--as underlying the transition from Latin to English as the primary language of "literary" composition in England during the fourteenth century.…

Sketches "the mode of literacy" that "occupies a borderland just beyond the precincts of surviving evidence," exploring "the role of dictation" rather than "a sequence of errors in copying that stands between" versions of such texts as TC and "Piers…

Argues that Mel and Langland's "Piers Plowman" share common features that derive from medieval school texts: axioms and proverbs, recurrent attention to the "Distiches of Cato," and citational and translational practices grounded in school exercises.…

Considers various conditions of and approaches to pronouncing--or not pronouncing--final "-e" in Chaucer's verse, arguing that "Chaucer's final "-es" are a subjective quality of his verse, a series of phonological events structured not by metrical or…

Offers a history of the fable in Middle English poetry, with examples from several poems, including discussing four extant fables. Concludes by showing the importance of the fable to the idea of the CT as a whole.

Gauges the performances of the Canterbury pilgrims by their relative balance between self-will and common will, basing the distinction on patristic notions of pilgrimage and successful progress toward God, as well as Horace's aesthetic criteria of…

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this Spanish translation of CT includes an introduction and bibliography by Maria Teresa Suero Roca and that it is illustrated by Angel Badía Camps; also it was issued with an introduction and…

In a chapter called "Renaissance to Enlightenment, 1300- 1800," includes a section (pp. 68–71) entitled "Turn over the Leef and Chese Another Tale: The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387–1400), Geoffrey Chaucer" that describes CT, its innovations, and…

A social and political history of the "aristocracy of the fourteenth century through the life and times of John of Gaunt." Chapter ten, "Chaucer" (pp. 203-15), summarizes the poet's career, Gaunt's role in his life, and Gaunt's possible reactions to…

Alphabetical dictionary of people, places, institutions, and events of the Middle Ages; the entry on Chaucer (p. 116) summarizes his life and works and comments on his dependence on Boccaccio.