Browse Items (16381 total)

A discursive lexicon of "dirty" language, sexual and scatological, including a brief section (pp. 8-14) on Chaucer's vocabulary, listing sample words and describing several scenes and examples from MilT, WBP, and elsewhere. Reprinted under the title…

A personal travelogue of a walking trip from Canterbury to London following the Pilgrims' Way--interspersed with brief summaries of portions of CT and musings on medieval social history and folk wisdom, the United Kingdom and the United States,…

Explicates the Shipman's knife in GP, and explores how similar details unfold to characterize the Canterbury pilgrims. Details of "aggression and assertion" recur in the descriptions, as do commercial concerns.

Argues that PardPT challenges modern readers' "conventional notions about character and events" and "undermines some fundamental assumptions about social morality." Anonymity, loaded rhymes, and, above all, a consistent lack of decision-making and…

Volume 1 examines various concerns with vacuous, misleading, and/or oblique language in bureaucratic and literary texts produced in London during the reign of Richard II, including discussion of CkT, ManT, and SqT for the ways they depict anxieties…

Twenty-five essays from the Fourth Cardiff Conference on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, 26-29 July 1993. The essays address topics of translation in the Middle Ages and translation of medieval authors. For essays that…

Anthologizes nineteen essays by various authors, with topics ranging from theory of translation to individual translators. Includes two essays that pertain to Chaucer: Barry Windeatt, "Geoffrey Chaucer" (pp. 137-48) and Stephen Medcalf, "Classical…

Examines the "voices" of the narrators of SNT, MerT, and WBP. In understanding voices, it is important to remember two levels: the immediate and the inherited past. The three tales exhibit plain speaking in different ways.

Treats problems of authority and artistic originality encountered by the medieval narrator of a religious story, and the solutions in CT. Parallels between translating and producing the narrative appear in ClT, SNT, PrT, and Mel; subversion of the…

Questions how well Thomas Hoccleve's translation of Christine de Pizan's "Epistre au dieu d'amours" captures the "wit of the original," arguing that the translation was influenced by LGW and by other Chaucerian works and suggesting that Christine's…

An anthology of twelve previously published essays and excerpts from longer works that apply modern critical theory to CT. Ellis's introduction assesses the contributions of the essays to a postmodern understanding of CT.

Thirty-six essays on individual topics, plus an introduction (by Ellis) and a postscript (Julian Wasserman). Part 1 (historical contexts): Chaucer's life (Ruth Evans), society and politics (S. H. Rigby), nationhood (Ardis Butterfield), London (C.…

HF is a satire on Dante's procedures of damnation and on his Virgilianism. LGW and TC should not be read ironically but should be seen as continuations of the damnation debate with Dante that began with HF.

BD should be given Chaucer's own title (LGW 418): "The Death of Blanche." Chaucer's title is more fitting for a poem of anti-consolation that emphasizes "death's power over the loveliest visions of youth and happiness."

W.B. Yeats's early interest in Chaucer as a populist poet gave way to a "more occasional interest in the aristocratic and esoteric elements of Chaucer's works." For only a brief time, after receiving a copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer in 1907, Yeats…

Shows that the steady growth in understanding of the historical context of Chaucer's poetry has coexisted with a tendency, on the part of scholars as well as popularizers, to view Chaucer as the jovial poet of "merrie England."

An introduction to Chaucer that surveys critical issues and concentrates on how oppositions are posed in his poetry rather than resolved. Topics include the following: The Chaucer Business; Life, Works, Reputation; Dream, Text, Truth; Society,…

Surveys twentieth-century manifestations of Chaucer and his works outside of academe, considering the Kelmscott Chaucer and various other reflections of popular perception: occasional essays, translations, audio and visual reproductions of his life…

Virginia Woolf's discussions of Chaucer have "the effect of cutting him down to size." This effect reflects her reaction to High Modernist affection for the Middle Ages and her "subversive and anti-canonical approach to literary history."

Observes the lack of "narratorial interactivity" (teller/tale relations) in the BBC adaptations of CT and explores several other "markedly un-Chaucerian" aspects of the television version of MilT, remarking that the series "does little to promote"…

Investigates the role of Chaucerian apocrypha and adaptations in defining "Chaucerian," a concept "that was as much a product of Chaucer's later editors, adapters, and imitators as it was a product of his contemporaries and predecessors." Considers…

By paying attention to apocryphal texts such as "The Plowman's Tale," readers can understand the appeal of continuations of CT. As CT is an amorphous text, reconsidering medieval writers and readers of apocrypha helps scholars rethink the potential…

Collects twelve essays that provide context and background to the work of Manly, Rickert, and their collaborators as cryptologists, writers, and scholars, including recurrent mention of their work in Chaucer studies. For an essay that pertains to…

BD discursively performs the act of burial. Blanche's death is comparable to Freud's "primal scene"; her "whiteness" traces primordial obliteration; as in Lacan, narrative arises in loss.

Compares the birds of PF to birds in medieval scientific texts, in sources or analogues (especially Alan de Lille's "De planctu Naturae"), and in the observable environment. Chaucer fills PF with birds known in England, classifying them by diet but…