Foster, Edward E., and David H. Carey.
Aldershot; and Brookfield, Vt. : Ashgate, 2002.
Lists Chaucer's religious, ecclesiastical, and liturgical terms and proper names (about 500), alphabetically arranged by Chaucer's spelling and cross-listed. Many terms are defined at greater length than in a lexical dictionary. Others are lengthier…
Foster, Michael.
Janne Skaffari et al., eds. Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005), pp. 199-213.
Chaucer constructed a self-deprecating narrator in BD and in HF in response to audience expectations. These constructions, in turn, shaped how people in Chaucer's own society regarded Chaucer and how his personality has been recorded historically.
Foster, Michael.
New York and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008.
Foster revisits the question of Chaucer's narrator as a fictional construct, gauging responses that the verisimilitude of Chaucer's narrative might have invited in a contemporary audience. In WBP, Jankyn's actions as a reader comment on Chaucer's…
Through extensive use of "multiple dialogue introducers," Chaucer creates a "mimetic representation of speech" in Mel and thus invites a listening audience to be part of the fictional conversation and, beyond that, to emulate it by taking time to…
Foster, Michael.
Review of English Studies 59 (2008): 185-96.
Reconsiders the traditional dating of BD in light of the evolving relationship between Chaucer and John of Gaunt, as affected by Katherine Swynford. The date influences our reading of the poem.
Foster, Michael.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 18 (2010): 341-60.
It is "anachronistic to assume" that Chaucer distinguished between the "reading and hearing of his literary works." His "style is best understood as a versatile adaptation of language to suit both silent and vocalized readings."
Foster, Michael.
Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Wolfgang Görtschacher, eds. Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' in English Poetry (Heidelberg: Winter, 2009), pp. 51-67.
Argues that Chaucer's use of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" in BD is closer to that of Guillaume de Machaut than that of Jean de Meun, and compares and contrasts Chaucer's version of the Ceyx and Alcyone story with those of Machaut and Ovid.
Foulke, Robert, and Paul Smith, eds.
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.
An anthology of English and American literature arranged by mode (Romance, Tragedy, Comedy, and Irony, with various sub-categories), designed as a textbook for college-level study. Each section is introduced by discussion of constituent features of…
Fowler, Alastair.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Contributes to a history of the "pictorial title page" in English printing, identifying continuities and developments by studying sixteen examples (sixteenth-nineteenth centuries), including the frontispiece to William Thynne's edition of Chaucer's…
Fowler, David C.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984.
Sequel to the author's "The Bible in Early English Literature," this volume surveys literary trends using biblical traditions: examines medieval drama, lyrics, PF, works of the "Pearl" poet, and "Piers Plowman."
Fowler, David C.
David C. Fowler. The Bible in Middle English Literature (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984), pp. 128-70.
Presents an overview of Ambrose's "Hexameron" and argues the informing presence of the hexameral tradition on a deep level--though it scarcely rises to the surface--in the text of PF.
Discusses Chrétien's "Knight of the Cart," including several points of comparison with TC: the poems as command performances, their inclusion of songs of love, and the possibility that the heroes are presented as humorous.
Skelton's "Tunnyng of Elynour Rummynge" mixes "Chaucerian and Langlandian forms," capitalizing on their presentations of female sexuality and economic value. Skelton's Elynour is neither a personification (like Lady Mede) nor realistic (like the…
Fowler, Elizabeth.
Thomas C. Stillinger, ed. Critical Essays on Geoffrey Chaucer (New York: G. K. Hall; London: Prentice Hall International, 1998), pp. 59-81.
In KnT, Chaucer questions force as a basis for government. Conquest "dissolves voluntary social bonds" and fails to produce the consent necessary to a good society. An agent of force, Theseus uses rhetoric to control others, and his final speech is…
Fowler, Elizabeth.
Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace, eds. Medieval Crime and Social Control (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp.124-42.
Reads KnT as an example of Chaucer's "deliberative mode," whereby the reader is compelled to perceive or decide a choice. KnT deliberates whether conquest or consent is the proper source of monarchical dominion. Through pointed occupatio and the…
Fowler, Elizabeth.
Patrick Cheney and Anne Lake Prescott, eds. Approaches to Teaching Shorter Elizabethan Poetry. (New York: Modern Language Association, 2000), pp. 249-55.
Several Chaucerian poems--especially the multiple voices and amatory perspectives of CT and the request for patronage in Purse--helped "later writers invent the social person of 'selfe.'" Fowler suggests comparisons for pedagogical purposes.
Fowler, Elizabeth.
David Aers, ed. Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 55-67.
Reads MLT as a "thought experiment" in which the topos of the ship (familiar in both romance and political/legal philosophy) is used to confront the "conflict of laws" among the various cultures represented: Christian, Islamic, and pagan. With ClT,…
Fowler, Elizabeth.
Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2003.
Fowler explores literary character and characterization as processes of the reader's engagement with "social persons" posited by a given text through various habituated devices and understood in light of various historical contexts-psychological,…
Fowler, Elizabeth.
Cristina Maria Cervone and D. Vance Smith, eds. Readings in Medieval Textuality: Essays in Honour of A. C. Spearing (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016), pp. 15-30.
Considers the hermeneutic value of Spearing's concept of "experientiality" in KnT. Defines "roaming" as "an investigation of the relation between bodily experience and language."
Explores how poets "guide their readers through sequences of feelings, thoughts, and attitudes" by means of verbal depictions of built spaces that orient readers' attention to the use of spaces and spatial objects. Includes discussion of the gate in…
Fowler, Rebekah M.
Dissertation Abstracts International A72.09 (2012): n.p.
Studies "male bereavement in medieval literature," particularly "the authenticity and affective nature of grief among aristocratic males" in Chretién's "Yvain," "Trewe Man," "Sir Orfeo," "Pearl," and BD. In the latter, Chaucer expresses "not…
Fox, Alistair.
Patricia Bruckmann, ed. Essays Presented to Arthur Edward Banker (Ontario: Oberon Press, 1978), pp. 15-24.
In his defense of poetry as an ideal instrument to develop common sense, or "good mother wyt," in the "Dialogue" of 1529, More frequently alludes to Chaucer as a fountainhead of this admirable faculty.
Fox, Allan B.
Language and Style 10 (1977): 27-41.
Although Heywood's comic debates are dismissed as negligible in metrical skill, once we realize that Chaucer's line is a non-pentameter, more dependent on alliterative accentual native verse than most metrists allow, then we can see that the debates…
