Browse Items (16376 total)

KnT, MilT, MerT,and FranT share the same plot--the story of the girl with two lovers--and show striking interrelations and variations of episodes, conventions, images, and ideas.

The manuscripts and internal evidence of CT indicate that those who "put the various examplars of the tales, links, and fragments in order for Ellesmere did not have any manuscript consensus to work from, and indeed, they have helped create such…

An advance first chapter of a proposed revision of Bryan and Dempster's 'Sources and Analogues' (1941), in process under the editorship of Robert Correale and Mary Hamel. Cooper evaluates the relation of CT to other medieval storytelling…

Comments on Harry Mileham's painting of the Canterbury pilgrims, depicted in a tavern during the telling of PardPT. Mileham is sensitive to literary and historical detail, derived especially from GP and the Ellesmere illustrations. The painting…

Describes the problems of editing Chaucer's works (especially CT), observing that modern editions tend to ignore them.

Renaissance dramatic adaptations of Chaucer's works often resolve tensions left reverberating in his narratives (e.g.,John Fletcher's "Women Pleased" and WBT; Fletcher's "Four Plays" and FranT). But Fletcher and Shakespeare's "Two Noble Kinsmen"…

Assesses Chaucer's relation to Dante as one of "palpable disbelief" in the Italian's claims for authority about the afterlife and God's judgments. In MkT and HF, Chaucer adapts Dante to establish a more worldly and more skeptical sense of poetry.…

Critical response to essays on MkT by Ann W. Astell, Terry Jones, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Stephen Knight, and Richard Neuse.

Cooper surveys Chaucer's linguistic and poetic innovations, emphasizing that his rewritings of classical, French, and Italian models were "far from being acts of homage." Chaucer may have thought of himself as a literary heir, but he was an…

Joyce was re-reading CT while revising Ulysses. Chaucerian influence extends beyond allusion to parallels of linguistic conception, encyclopedic reference, and form. The works share elements of tone, a sense of place among the great works of…

Chaucer's "doubleness" in critical tradition results from combinations of self-deprecation and extravagant claims to poetic authority in his works. In 1592, Robert Greene depicted Chaucer as short, whereas the frontispiece of Speght's 1598 edition…

Month-by-month (April to March) commentary on the significance of dates and months in Chaucer's life and works, with occasional quotations. Initial version posted April 2001. An addendum includes the transcript of a "Question and Answer Session" with…

Surveys the evolution of critical appropriations and pictorial representations of Chaucer from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries, suggesting that oversimplifications of Chaucer recur because he is so deeply concerned with the generative…

Comments on Chaucer as a translator (especially his adaptations of Dante in HF and MkT) and on the reception of his works over time as a legacy of translating and adapting him. Cooper details Chaucer's influence and adaptations of his works in the…

The Anglo-French duality of Chaucer's literary roots underlies the complexity of his representations of the self and others. In this light, HF should likely be dated later than it traditionally is.

The motifs of medieval romances continued to be familiar in Tudor-Stuart England, although their meanings and the ways they were understood changed in time. Cooper traces a broad variety of romance motifs--quest, pilgrimage, encounters with fairies,…

Examines manuscript variants in KnT 1.2616-17 in relation to Chaucer's awareness of alliterative tradition and its lexicon, suggesting that "hurtleth" is preferable to "hurteth" at 2616 and that "born" (D Group) for "hurt" at 2617 may have been…

An introduction to Chaucer and his works, with attention to his sources and influences. Includes a brief bibliography.

Explores the continuities of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, emphasizing the inventiveness of the Middle Ages and the rootedness of the Renaissance in medieval traditions, focusing on drama and on Shakespeare in particular. Recurrent references to…

Before TC and KnT, most romances in England were Anglo-Norman and largely uninfluenced by the conventions of courtly love and the Petrarchan tradition. The reputation of Chaucer's works overshadows that of these other works and their more practical…

Cooper discusses the poetic confraternities called "puys," devoted to competitive writing of poetry. An edition and translation of Renaud de Hoiland's "Si tost c'amis" serves as an example of the kind of civil performance being rejected by the…

Cooper argues that, despite his own skepticism about fame, Chaucer was the "model of fame" in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England. Comments on Chaucer's appeal to humanists, to Protestants, and to Catholics and on Chaucer's role as "father" of…

Analyzes the influence of medieval culture and Chaucer on Shakespeare. Reveals how Shakespeare relied on Chaucer's language and verse forms for "The Two Noble Kinsmen."

Surveys Chaucer's works and literary importance.

Addresses the importance of storytelling, and the "sheer power of narrative" in CT. In particular, argues that CT is "not an allegory," and that Chaucer plays with time by putting ParsT and Ret at the end, which reinforces the fact that "there is…