Browse Items (16443 total)

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate the score was "reproduced from composer's manuscript," with "texts taken from Chaucer, Joyce, Shakespeare, and Dylan Thomas among others." Variously numbered as opus 44, opus 45, and opus 47.

Adapts PardT as a verse drama for seven roles: three rioters, three barmaids, and the Old Man who is revealed to be Death himself at the end of the rioters' quest.

A discursive review of Chaucerian scholarship and research published in 1958.

Part 2 (pp. 225-379) prints the entire GP, based on the text of Manly and Rickert (1940), with phonetic transcription of lines 1-78; introductory commentary on its meter, stress patterns, syllabification, and rhyme techniques; and a comprehensive…

Limited art edition (200 copies printed) of MerPT, translated by Nevill Coghill (1960), illustrated by Derek Cousins, and designed by Thomas Simmonds. Coghill's translation is interleaved for comparison with the text from the Ellesmere manuscript,…

Compares and contrasts details of the illustrative portraits of the Canterbury pilgrims--illuminations from the Ellesmere manuscript and woodcuts from Richard Pynson's edition of 1491/92, here inaccurately called the "first printed edition." Comments…

Explores a variety of sources, analogues, and backgrounds to WBPT and to the characterization of the Wife of Bath: the Bible (including St. Paul), St. Jerome, Philippe de Meziere's "Presentation Play," the tradition of the Ovidian "vetula" and La…

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this spoken-word recording includes "Beowulf's speech to Hrothgar, the Dragon Flight and the Funeral of Beowulf" in Old English (20.02 min.) and GP and PardT in Middle English (29.16 min.).

Comments on Aurelius's prayer to Apollo (FranT 5.1031ff.) and the clerk's astronomical calculations (1261ff.), clarifying details and terminology.

Examines Chaucer's use of first-person narration, "traditional themes," "rhetorical principles," and "artistic structure" in GP, exploring the pilgrimage and spring motifs, the chain of being, and connections between this chain, the serial…

Argues that for readers sensitive to literary tradition and genre expectations KnT is a "delightful satire" of courtly love and the metrical romance genre, along with the "chivalric code implicit in them."

Summarizes and comments on HF, with particular attention to previous scholarly opinions, unity and structural balance, whether or not the dreamer learns anything, the nature of the man of great authority, and the possibility that the poem is "a…

Challenges the theory that ShT was originally intended to be narrated by the Wife of Bath, and suggests a major emendation: moving lines 7.5-19 (which include first-person feminine pronouns) later in the tale and having them spoken by the merchant's…

Focuses on Chaucer's selection and arrangement of exempla drawn from Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum" to argue that Dorigen's complaint (4.1367-456) is a "carefully shaped and molded passage of rhetoric designed to illuminate the character of Dorigen,…

Describes medieval coins referred to in Chaucer and other Middle English literature, particularly the florin, noble, 'écu' or shield, 'mouton d'or,' and ducat. Comments on the designs, values, and usage of these coins and corrects several…

Suggests that "traditions of witchcraft" are "the source of some of the language and . . . part of the motivation of the dispute" between the Friar and the Summoner, adducing late-medieval associations of friars and sorcery and the Summoner's diction…

Explores the symbolic value of the gems, their colors, and their settings (rings and brooch) in TC, discussing the moral implications referred to in medieval lapidaries.

Offers evidence that "embosed" in BD 352-53 means that the deer "had well concealed itself in a thicket and was not easy to find" and that the meaning of "double worstede" (Friar's cloak; GP 1.262) is worsted fabric of "considerable width."

Challenges L. G. Evans' suggestion that TC 4.1585 alludes to Matthew 10.39 (MLN, vol. 74), Baugh arguing that the phrasing is the same as in a common proverb, and Donaldson that the emendation underlying Evans' suggestion ("lyf" for "lief") is…

Describes Chaucer's metrical line as a "series of five iambs" and the beginning of "modern English verse," and provides examples from across Chaucer's corpus of dominant practices, variations in feet and line-lengths, rhyme patterns, and stanzas.…

Describes how the quarrel between the Friar and Summoner in WBP sets up the vituperative exchange of FrT and SumT, commenting on audience expectations and the motives and techniques of the two narrators, but focusing particularly on the cleverness of…

Assesses previous explanations of the "greyn" placed on the clergeon's tongue in PrT (7.662ff.), including comments on analogues, and suggests that it is best understood as a "grain of paradise," i.e., the seed capsule of Aframomum melegueta…

Explores the "stylistic rationale" for Chaucer's uses of the historical present tense, identifying the fundamental "connotation of continuing action" of the grammatical form, and assessing its rhetorical, semantic, and tonal effects in various…

Explores the unity of HF evident in the "evolution of the narrator, Geffrey," arguing that the poem "is essentially a humorous and all-embracing review of man's frantic quest for fame, learning, and love" that follows the educating of [a] drudging…

Interprets details of FrT in light of contemporaneous social commentaries to clarify nuances of irony, sarcasm, and criticism of the Summoner.