Browse Items (16381 total)

Assesses the chest--a significant piece of furniture as both a container and a bench in the Middle Ages--as an image in CT, discussing "possession" and the body-space formed on/in the chest by the act of sitting on it.

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this includes adapted versions of GP and five tales from CT, with texts, notes, and activities designed to improve reading and langauge skills. Released in several languages for English-learning children.

Travelling levels status distinctions and puts the pilgrims at the threshold stage in a rite of passage. Their "ritual elder" is the Host; their enterprise, a restructuring of social conventions: love, rank, "gentillesse", vulgarity, and money. …

BD's central theme is that change is necessary and inevitable and must be graciously accepted. Initially the Black Knight avoids change; by the end of BD he is reconciled with, and embraces, change. In BD, Chaucer succeeds in his portrayal of…

Chaucer may have used prose alone in his "Boece" for clarity and freedom where two speakers face universal dilemmas.

Unlike other recent critics, who have viewed Mel as a "treatise," Kempton sees it as a "tale" with dramatic personages. It is meant not to enforce one didactic point but to teach us to give up the search for authority and to enjoy the play of…

BD is considerably more complex than some critics have believed: it is a "philosophical vision," not a "dream of folly" (Zimbardo); an "autobiography by dream" (Shoaf); a "literary sampler," or a "Boethian apocalypse" (Cherniss). It is not…

The "presentational features" of MS HM 140 (prose format, absence of ClP, reduction of multivoiced discourse) transform its "mode of signification from performance to textuality," suggesting history and truth. This presentation radically alters the…

Examines biographical, textual, and comparative approaches to Th to show how dependent they are on modern notions of author and text. Argues that medieval textuality and authorship pose methodological problems for understanding Th as parody, a genre…

Examines allegorical, typological, eschatological, and pathetic registers and word play in PhyT, showing how Chaucer thematizes violence and cultural forms that would valorize it. Pitcher compares Chaucer-s rendering with that in the "Roman de la…

Surveys opinions about Chaucer's diction from John Lydgate to G. K. Chesterton and explores the French elements in the vocabulary of his love poetry, along the way commenting on relations between Chaucerian and Chancery diction, the "texture of…

Postulates a crucial division in Chaucer's poetic career, separated by a "courteous but thoughtful and decisive rejection of 'fine amour'," reflected in PF, TC, and LGWP. Acknowledges the impact of French and Italian models on Chaucer's changing idea…

Derived from Boethius's Consolation and from the Roman de la Rose, the exemplary image of the caged bird invoked for the audience of ManT and SqT the "natural law" of sexual drive and the requirement that human beings, unlike birds, curb this drive.…

Analyzes evidence of readership found in fifteenth-century copies of LGW, including its placement in anthologies, poems with which it is associated, and evidence of female names in LGW manuscripts. Infrequently excerpted, the poem was seldom mined…

Charts "specific astronomical references" that are datable in Chaucer's works against other known events of the poet's life. Although the references may not help us date the poems in which they occur, they do indicate Chaucer's active interest in…

Surveys instances in which portions of manuscripts of CT were copied from Caxton's first edition of the poem and identifies instances where watermarks show that the paper stock in CT manuscripts is the same as that in Caxton. Such evidence has…

Examines the editorial implications of one metrically unambiguous feature of Chaucer's grammar. Chaucer's final -e has syllabic value when it occurs as the ending of monosyllabic adjectives with unelided weak inflexion followed by nouns with stress…

Surveys evidence-from publications of the Canterbury Tales Project-affirming that the Hengwrt manuscript "has the best text [of the poem], where it has text, but it may not have all the text which Chaucer wrote, nor have it all in the best order, nor…

Pragmatic analysis of linguistic features that produce "personal affect" in several of the CT. Uses features such as exclamations, oaths, and aspects of proximity and reader involvement to describe characterizations of the Knight, the Prioress, the…

Reassesses details of Chaucer's Scog and of Scogan's Moral Balade in light of their historical context, intertextual relations, manuscript variants, and scribal graffiti, arguing that Scogan's poem reflects familiarity with several of Chaucer's…

Examines several glosses to MLT to argue that the "glossator's aim is to show the reader how the narrator manipulates texts," helping us to realize that the Man of Law is too interested in "things of this world and is spiritually lacking."

Examines details from GP (in particular the description of the Friar) and ParsT, arguing that Chaucer held the "orthodox view" that the poor should be protected because they were precious to God. Yet Chaucer also indicates that "there is nothing…

A bibliographical description and analysis of Caxton's edition of Bo. Variants from extant manuscripts of the work indicate errors that can be attributed to expediencies of book production and to reliance on knowledge of the Latin original.

Despite Chaucer's efforts to create a stable "poetic self-fashioning," WBPT takes different forms in its different redactions in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts and in Thynne's 1532 edition.

Chaucerian study has given rise to differing though complementary schools of criticism, as exemplified by Kittredge, Robertson, Donaldson, etc. The relationship of MilT and RvT exhibits Chaucer's power as an innovator.