Browse Items (16381 total)

Virtually all aspects of Chaucer's English need further work. Some of these are the poet's idiolect, word-formation, syntax and its adjustment to oral presentation, learned and "lewed" words, social dialect, and polysemy and synonymy. Much…

Bibliographical, linguistic, and aesthetic description of saints' legends in Middle English, with focus on the South England Legendary and the Additional Legends in the Gilte Legend (1438).

Görlach surveys a selection of textual cruxes (Old English to Modern) that reflect the importance of linguistic evidence in editorial decisions, including two from Chaucer ("armee," GP 1.60; "Aueryll," GP 1.1) and one "quasi-Chaucerian" example…

The section entitled "Authentic Languages" includes a sub-section on Chaucer that raises questions about modern ability to gauge the authenticity of the northern literary dialect in RvT.

Confronts the scribal and editorial difficulties of the variants "armee"/"arryue" in GP 1.60, preferring the latter because of parallel usage in a fifteenth-century manuscript of the "Gilte Legende."

Contemplates the personification of Imagination (as in the cases of personified Nature and Reason) from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, with attention to the particulars inherent in the process of characterization. Focuses on "uncertainty of…

Investigates two "networks of meaning" within which to view late medieval English lyrics: the relationships among lyrics in manuscript collections (using "network mapping software") and the relationships between embedded lyrics and "narrative events"…

Considers the speaking birds in ManT and PF for the ways they suggest the "destabilization of human identity," also considering the topic in the late-fourteenth-century tale, "The Woman and the Three Parrots."

Discusses the influence of Boethius and Boccaccio on Chaucer's depiction of the Monk in CT.

Summarizes RvT and explores the characterization and motives of Symkyn's wife, suggesting the possibility that she intentionally hit her husband with the staff.

Reconsiders Harold Bloom's argument that Shakespeare, when creating Iago, was influenced by Chaucer's Pardoner. Goth explores the "dramatic" nature of the Pardoner's character and his relations with Vice figures from late medieval drama as well as…

The energy of WBP derives from the Wife's "awareness of the tension between her centrality as speaker, and her experiential understanding of her marginality as female," since she voices her woman's feelings toward an overwhelming male audience with…

A survey of the organization, theory, and practice of medicine and surgery from the Black Death until the founding of the Royal College of Physicians.

Penitential fictions in Chaucer's LGW and Gower's "Confessio Amantis" critique the amorous code in courtly literature.

Chaucer and Gower distance themselves from French influence in the 1380s and 1390s as a way to criticize Richard's "predilection for French literature" and to train their readers to read and interpret.

Blake's catalogue of his 1809 exhibition describes his famous painting of the Canterbury pilgrims and includes modernized quotations from Chaucer. Blake probably used Speght's 1687 edition.

In the context of the biblical passages alluded to in a couplet evoking "gem-encrusted plows," it is worth noting that in Blake's depiction of the Canterbury Pilgrims, "he represented the Plowman as a medieval version of himself."

Explores the limitations and parameters of word and will in ClT. Chaucer asserts that words must not encumber the will beyond its limited capacity, even in the service of virtue.

Mel interprets and transforms its source. Chaucer's alterations, although slight, tend to undercut the allegorical reading, qualifying Prudence's authority and conclusions. Mel makes explicit concepts that are implicit in the original: the…

Although critics have generally seen Mel as a simple allegory in fairly close translation, the Tale departs from Renaud in significant ways to question the nature of authority (good advice can be wrong; authorities can disagree; motivations can…

Interpretations of "tretys" in MelP have assumed a single referent for both occurrences of the term. But here and elsewhere Chaucer challenges assumptions of consistency between word and meaning. In making the first use of "tretys" refer to Mel and…

Reconsiders the 127 Irish analogues to RvT cited in Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson's "Types of Folktale" and reduces them to four. Comments on the transmission of the various motifs in the Tale, suggesting that Chaucer may have gotten the Tale from…

Presents the 68 Sanctorale sermons, based on British Library Additional 40672 in collation with 25 other manuscripts, with modern punctuation and capitalization, as the second of four volumes on the 294 English Wycliffite sermons.

Essays focus on the medieval idea of the "literary," with particular emphasis on the poetry of Chaucer, Langland, and Gower. For five essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Answerable Style under Alternative Title.

HF recalls "Piers Plowman" in its vocabulary, its apocalyptic pursuit of truth and authority, its dream-vision genre, its signature passages, and its unfinished state. Both poems manipulate conventions and challenge readers' presuppositions in ways…