Edwards, A. S. G., and Derek Pearsall.
Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall, eds. Book Publishing and Publishing in Britain, 1375-1475. Cambridge Studies in Publishing and Printing History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 257-78.
Describes the "new phase" in English publishing and book production that took place in the "early years" of the fifteenth century--particularly the large increase in the number of books of vernacular poetry, including Chaucer's poetry. Summarizes…
Edwards, A. S. G., and Linne R. Mooney.
Chaucer Review 26 (1991): 31-42.
Equat is not a holograph. The careful preparation of certain aspects of the text indicates a final version, and certain deletions and corrections suggest that the copier did not always understand the material he wrote down. The scribe was likely an…
Edwards, A. S. G., and Ralph Hanna III.
Huntington Library Quarterly 58 (1996): 11-35.
Although Ellesmere ownership in the fifteenth century cannot be proved, a preponderance of evidence indicates association with Bury St. Edmunds and a family circle that included the Pastons, Drurys, and De Veres, suggesting a context within which the…
Treats contents and history of the volume bequeathed to Magdalene College by Samuel Pepys. The first of the two manuscripts in the volume preserves texts of LGW, ABC, HF, Mars, Ven, For, PF, and several non-Chaucerian works.
The introduction treats contents, date, material and structure, ruling, layout and presentation of texts, handwriting, punctuation, correction and annotation, decoration, binding, and the history of the volume bequeathed to Magdalen College by Samuel…
Edwards, A. S. G., Vincent Gillespie, and Ralph Hanna, eds.
London : British Library, 2000.
Thirteen essays on codicology, compilation, and book production in the English late Middle Ages, an introduction, and two memorials honor the work of Jeremy Griffiths. Includes a list of Griffiths's publications, a general index, and an index of…
Edwards, A. S. G.,and Carol M. Meale.
Library, 6th ser., 15 (1993): 95-120.
Traces the careers of Caxton, de Worde, and others to show (amid much else) that their interest in publishing Chaucer and other vernacular writers can be correlated with a "movement from opportunistic diversification...to forms of consolidation and…
Edwards, David L.
London : Darton, Longman, and Todd, 2005.
Appreciative criticism of seven major poets, aware of academic theory (formalist, psychoanalytic, feminist) but addressed to a nonacademic audience. Chapter 1, "Chaucer" (pp. 1-33), considers Chaucer's characterization, moral tolerance, comedy,…
Edwards, Elizabeth B.
Exemplaria 20 (2008): 361-84.
Edwards discusses the rites and purposes of mourning in KnT in relation to the psychological theories of Freud and Derrida. Contrasts the Freudian account with medieval practices of theology and Purgatory. Tthe pagan setting is necessary to…
Assesses payment and revenge in MilT and RvT as economies of sexual exchange following Aristotelian notions of "distributive" justice, reflected in the "poetic" justice of the Tales. Women are the commodity in MilT and RvT, as in KnT and CkT. Edwards…
Reads Chaucer's BD in the context of the material and ritual aspects of Blanche's death, using Freud's concept of the work of mourning to address the public, political, social, and economic work of John of Gaunt's mourning. A revised version of an…
Examines the apocalyptic genre of English short-verse prophecies, which were attributed to authorities such as Merlin, Bede, and Chaucer, who existed safely in the past but often also on the margins of political and religious orthodoxy. Popular from…
Edwards, Robert (R.)
New Literary History 13 (1982): 189-204.
Chaucer's concern is in part with forms of subjective experience, expressed in a dialectic between images and "nothing" in a series of lateral movements of the aesthetic imagination. At the end the poet converts retrospection to anticipation, as he…
Edwards, Robert R.
In John M. Ganim and Shayne Aaron Legassie, eds. Cosmopolitanism and the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 163-80.
Assesses the presence of cosmopolitan thinking in medieval literature, drawing examples from Fulcher of Chartres' "Historia Hierosolymitana," TC, and the medieval Troy story at large. In Chaucer's poem, Criseyde discovers through Diomedes' amorous…
Edwards, Robert R.
Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector, eds. The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 138-53, 272-76 (notes).
LGWP reflects concern with poetic art, especially the notions of translation and transformation, "making" and "enditing." Cupid's accusations against Rom and TC privilege social over artistic meaning although Chaucer and Alceste subvert this "social…
Although the Merchant's voice and attitudes are cynical and misogynistic, the "marriage encomium, Justinus's speeches, and the episode of Pluto and Proserpine" counter them. Tensions between the narrator and the material of MerT represent "competing…
Edwards, Robert R.
R. A. Shoaf, ed. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde: "Subgit to alle Poesye": Essays in Criticism. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, no. 104. Pegasus Paperbacks, no. 10 (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992), pp. 74-87.
Contrasts Chaucer's depictions of desire in TC with source passages in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and with a passage in Dante's "Purgatorio." Chaucer's depiction is based on the "impoverished" view of desire presented in Boethius's "Consolation" and…
Edwards, Robert R.
Robert R. Edwards. Ratio and Invention: A Study of Medieval Lyric and Narrative (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1989), pp. 131-45.
According to literary theorists, writers were able either to rework sources or more easily, to invent new matter. In the former method, the poet had to work the original idea anew, avoiding too close imitation, errors, and confusion. In SqT, the…
Edwards, Robert R.
Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1989.
Analyzes the intricate relationship among literary theory, poetry, and music, with examples from Chaucer and others--specifically, the "strategies of poetic composition" and the "location of invention within the text"--to produce "a literary reading…
Edwards, Robert R.
Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 1989.
Argues that Chaucer's dream visions are concerned with both "mimetic representation" (the narrator's story of his dream) and aesthetic systems. Chapter 1, "The Practice of Theory," discusses Chaucer's study of Latin, Italian, and French writers to…
Edwards, Robert R.
Robert R. Edwards and Vickie Ziegler, eds. Matrons and Marginal Women in Medieval Society (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1995), pp. 111-27.
Examines the encomium on marriage in MerT and the speech on marital values in FranT. In their structural placements and their relations with their sources, the speeches do not so much critique or assert specific views on marriage as represent…
Edwards, Robert R.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 15-41.
ClT maintains a tension between the interpretive multiplicity of Boccaccio's version of the tale and the hermeneutic closure of Petrarch's translation. The integration of Griselda and her heirs into hereditary hierarchy may help explain the…
Edwards, Robert R.
Modern Philology 94 (1996): 141-62.
Although the influence of Boccaccio's "Filocolo" on TC is uncertain, examination of various manuscripts of "Filocolo" suggests that Chaucer uses the love questions of "Filocolo" 4 as a source of FranT. Moreover, translating the culture of Book 4…
Edwards, Robert R.
Studies in Philology 96: 394-416. , 1999.
Discusses the exegetical tradition of the passage in Lamentations that lies behind TC 5.540-53, linking Boccaccio, Dante, and Chaucer with that tradition.
