Browse Items (16376 total)

Chaucer's work as commissioner in the marshes between Greenwich and Woolwich may have suggested images for RvT. Fellow commissioners may have influenced GP portraits.

The three anonymous stanzas that Wynkyn printed at the end of his 1517 edition of the poem suggest that neither the sympathy for Criseyde felt by moderns nor the poet's view of TC as a religious work would have been found in an early reader. Wynkyn…

Studies based uncritically upon the Robinson text may have produced questionable readings in CT: KnT, ParsT and Prol, ClT, ShT, GP, RvT, MilT, NPT. The Hengwrt MS, currently being used for the "Variorum Chaucer" and by Blake, is the earliest…

Most if not all early scribes used Hg, which avoided editorial tampering--i. e., introduction of new tales and links, revision of order of tales, "corrections" of lines, words, spellings. "The best an editor can do is follow Hg closely."

Nothing in the textual tradition of the three MSS of BD supports a thesis of differing exemplars. The lines of BD that are found in Thynne's edition but not in the MSS--lines 31-96, 288,480, 886--should be considered spurious until convincingly…

Emends three readings of the Corpus ms. of TC (1.502, 1.458, 1.89) and notes that evidence does not support the theory of extensive authorial revisions.

CT glosses often act as commentary and provide source of quotation; they are not mere insertions by scribes or mere source reference.

British Libreary NMS Additional 12524 was owned successively by Samuel Smith, Ralph Thoresby, and Horace Walpole. British Library MS Additional 9832, owned by Morell Thurston and them by Joseph Haselwood, was used by Urry for his edition. Both…

Previous investigators of the sixteen extant TC MSS assumed three "parent" forms, presumed to represent Chaucer's recensions. Two MSS before 1400 may be the work of Chaucer's scribe.

The punctuation of medieval texts, including Chaucer's, imperfectly shows relationships between parts of the sentence. Standardized punctuation adopted in early Chaucer reprints often confuses meaning.

"The Works," edited by Speght (1598), sold in 1848 as part of Charles Lamb's library may be the same volume to which Keats refers in his letter of May 3(!), 1818. The copy at Lily Library of the University of Indiana is likely the one owned by Keats…

"The Meroure of Wisdom" (1490), by John of Ireland, contains a previously overlooked allusion to TC and ParsT. This work is followed in the manuscript by "Oracio Galfridi Chaucer," written by Hoccleve but possibly attributed to Chaucer because of…

In his translation of KnT, Dryden imposed a number of pictorial effects--colors, emblems, icons, static scenes, and landscapes--to transform Chaucer into a seventeenth-century gentleman.

Chaucer developed a poetic idiom of ubiquitous equivocal effects and prevarication both in the comments of his persona and in the voices of his speakers. Poems touched on include TC, PardT, NPT, MerT, and LGW.

"Chaucer's ME pentameter (if that is what it was) had become lost by the beginning of the 16th century and had to be reinvented."

Concentrates on "colloquialism" in Chaucer's syntax in the context of popular romance and poetry, including some examples from Old English, finding that "discontinuous patterns of word-order" and "negative forms of emphatic expression" contribute to…

Reviews the work of Earle Birney (1930s, 1940s) on Chaucerian irony: dramatic, verbal, structural.

The words "sodeny(ly)" and "proces" are keys to Chaucer's narrative skill. In both his serious and his comical narratives there are sudden changes in events, sudden shifts in emotions. He usually makes the sudden seem humorous, ridiculous, or…

Chaucer at times uses French constructions in his English, as is shown by examples in RvT, KnT, TC, PardT, and GP (portrait of the Prioress).

The historical present and perfect tenses in KnT could be said to function mainly to express vividness, which is closely related to the nature of orally delivered poetry.

The nine surviving Anglo-Norman fabliaux (three translated from manuscripts are appended) differ from their seven English counterparts (five in CT) in depicting higher social ranks, incorporating less violence, and introducing less antifeminism. …

A comparison of the medieval descriptions of idealized feminine beauty with depiction of women in medieval and modern Japanese literature points up characteristic Japanese aesthetics and philosophy of beauty.

The Host's use of "tredefowel" in MkT and NPE suggests that he may have been aware of "cock" as an obscenity (as well as a symbol for priest), a meaning supported by evidence from other languages, literature, and iconography.

By endowing ParsP with a number of rhetorical and dramatic devices, Chaucer gives the tale a significance that sets it apart and precludes an ironic or perspectivist reading.

The problems Chaucer faced in describing the construction and use of the astrolabe were similar to today's problems in technical communication.