Browse Items (16376 total)

Interrogates Chaucer's diminishment or elimination of Scottish, Irish, and especially Welsh aspects of his narrative materials in WBT, FranT, and MLT, arguing that he associated the Celtic fairy world with death, as it is also associated in "Sir…

An extended essay in "thinking beyond anthropocentrality" by appreciating "lithic" ontology and "geophilia" ("geology without dispassion"), an example of posthumanist, object-oriented consideration that seeks to dislodge assumptions about…

Discusses space and Chaucer's connections to Britain, suggesting first that FranT is central to "Chaucer's relation to Britain," which "can be discerned in a throwaway
line" from the tale. Surveys the landscape of Chaucer's Britain through readings…

Eighteen essays by various authors and an introduction on topics ranging from Old English penitentials to Sir David Lindsey. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Becoming Male in the Middle Ages under Alternative Title.

Surveys the historical understanding and application of Gen. 1.28, tracing its "career" in Scripture, its interpretations in Hebrew and Christian traditions, and its roles in such literature as Bernard Silvestris's "Cosmographia," Alain de Lille's…

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…

Presents a collection of essays to support teaching of "Piers Plowman." For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for The Cambridge Companion to Piers Plowman under Alternative Title.

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…

Explores how Chaucer's prologue to Astr engaged "new models of English translation" from the 1380s, including Wycliffite translations. Traditionally, critics have focused on Chaucer's continental models of translation.

Post-Wycliffite writing has a different character from that which preceded it. Writers of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, including Chaucer, produced works with this novel character, often defined as heretical. Cole connects…

Examines the ways in which Gower and Chaucer use their source material differently. Gower uses Ovid to emphasize morality while Chaucer uses Ovid to explore both the courtly and the romantic.

Argues that Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" is fundamentally Boethian in its castigation of "inconstant Venereal love," and suggests that Henryson links his poem to TC in order to "underscore the Boethian view of love."

Cole contends that metrical groupings of works from the "Alliterative Revival" are faulty and that these groupings reflect inappropriate application of phonology common in the "poetic dialects" of Chaucer and Gower.

Questions the idea that Chaucer's relationship with the alliterative verse of his contemporaries, such as the "Gawain"-poet and Langland, was antagonistic. Instead, suggests that the alliterative and the London poets participate in a shared metrical…

Cole examines the "intricate relationship between sex, money, and power" in WBP, particularly as reflected in the sequence in which the Wife recalls her husbands.

English culture was shaped by widespread literacy, English nationalism and political unity, a common language and traditions, schools, study of Latin, biblical commentary, knowledge of the classics, the humanistic movement, travel, and foreign…

Deals with verse and prose in Middle English, Latin, and Anglo-Norman as literary evidence of the rise of literacy and social mobility. Most literary works aimed at reform and edification in Christian ethical behavior rather than at entertainment. …

Presents a two-part re-enactment of TC 2.78-119 in Middle English, with modern English sub-titles and production notes. Part I dramatizes the scene; Part II "recreates how medieval audiences would have experienced Chaucer's poem." Available on…

Interdisciplinary anthology focusing on interplay of social and political interactions and medieval French and English illuminated manuscripts produced between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. For one essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for…

Argues that aural reading--the reading aloud of a written text--lasted much longer in English tradition than is normally assumed.

Internal evidence in Chaucer's works indicates that he expected his works to be read aloud--both by himself and to an immediate, first audience and by prelectors to later audiences. Chaucer's references to the reception of his work, his references…

Argues that public reading was popular because people enjoyed listening to books in company. Aural audiences included literate upper-middle-class and upper-class readers well into the Renaissance, when aural reading changed. Elite audiences…

Challenges the blunt opposition between orality and literacy, arguing from evidence in Chaucer and Langland that transitional terms are needed. Borrowing from the linguistic terms "exophoric" and "endophoric," Coleman argues that the Wife of Bath's…

Constructs a model for the reception of Gower's "Confessio Amantis" that accommodates its combination of English, marginal Latin glosses, and very difficult Latin prefatory verses. Clerk-prelectors probably studied the work before performing…

Coleman surveys the betrothals, marriage, and literary patronage of Philippa of Lancaster, suggesting that she may have given Chaucer a copy of Deschamps's "Ballade 765," which may have helped to inspire Chaucer's interest in flower and leaf debates…