Observes that the "primary fiction" of CT is the narrator's "remembered personal experience," established in the GP and providing "the principle of form" for the entire work: a "pervasive sense of obsolescence, the passing of experience into memory."…
Howard, Donald R.
Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg, eds. Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1970), pp. 173-92.
Explicates a "series of four scenes" in TC (2.596-931) that enable readers to "know what it feels like to 'be' Criseyde," establishing a fundamental empathy with her by, unusual in the age, seeing "into the mind of a woman." Examines the passage as a…
Howard, Donald R.
Massachusetts Review 8 (1967): 442-56.
Contrasts the climactic love scenes in Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato" and in TC, considering details, omissions, emphases, and narrative perspectives to argue that Chaucer makes the scene "emotionally, and indeed sexually, more intense" without being…
Howard, Donald R.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966.
Explores the medieval psychology of temptation and sin, anchored in Scripture and patristic writing--the three-fold lures of gluttony (flesh), avarice (world), and vainglory (devil), resisted, ideally, by "contemptus mundi." Treats TC (pp, 79-160) as…
Traces Chaucer's attention to his own authorial fame, putting it in the context of medieval anonymity, book production, and the "idea of authorship." Compares and contrasts the narrators and attendant "fictive illusion" in his works, especially HF.…
Howard, Donald R.
Modern Philology 57 (1960); 223-32.
Reviews medieval ideas of degrees or grades of perfection, particularly as related to virginity as the "highest form of chastity" and marriage, a compromise even when admirable as in FranT. PhyT and SNT, both of which may follow FranT in the order of…
Howard, Donald R., and James Dean, eds.
New York: New American Library, 1976.
An edition of TC, accompanied by Adam, Ven, Ros, Wom Unc, MercB, Wom Nob, and Scog, an Introduction, textual notes, explanatory notes at the bottom of the page, and a brief glossary at the end of the volume. The Introduction (vi-lvi) includes…
Howard, Donald R., ed., with the assistance of James Dean.
New York : New American Library, 1969.
An annotated edition of selections from CT in Middle English, including KnT, MilT, MLT, ClT, SNT, FrT, NPT, RvT, FranT, WBT, MkT, PardT, PrT, and Mel. Reprinted in 2005 with a new foreward (pp. 7-15) by Frank Grady, and in 2013 with an afterword by…
Howard, Donald.
Robert S. Kinsman, ed. The Darker Vision of the Renaissance: Beyond the Fields of Reason (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 47-76.
Proposes that "purposeful" alienation that was characteristic of humanist thinking between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries: contempt for the world that belies an underlying fascination with it. Assesses the presence of the sentiment in several…
Describes Chaucer's life and works, with an introduction to historical backgrounds, a chronology of events, a summary of critical reception, a bibliography for further reading, and an index. The biography emphasizes dates and events, and the survey…
Howard, H. Wendall.
Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 18.3 (2015): 15-32.
Considers the historicity of St. Cecilia, her association with music, and various accounts of her life and legend, including the "Passio Caeciliae," SNT, an opera by Licinio Refice and Emidio Mucci, John Dryden's "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day,"…
Howard, Margaret, Bernard Palmer, David Bellan, and Martin Souter, readers.
Worton, Oxfordshire: Classical Communications, 2004.
Extracts from GP in modern English translation (J. U. Nicolson, trans.), "intermingled with atmospheric music of the period: songs, dances and instrumental pieces" (cover notes).
Howard, Ronnalie Roper.
Ball State University Forum 8.3 (1967): 40-44.
Argues that each of the major characters in FranT falls "short of an ideal standard," and that, although the Franklin "recognizes excellence," his Tale expresses an "amused recognition of human inability to live up to ideal standards."
Examines LGW as a poetic work that invites criticism as a function of how it is structured. Looks in depth at Alceste and her efforts in the poem, reappraising how she achieves success with the God of Love.
Howes, Laura [L.]
Joyce Salisbury, ed. The Medieval World of Nature: A Book of Essays. Garland Medieval Casebooks, no. 5. (New York and London: Garland, 1993), pp. 187-200.
Examines outdoor space in BD and PF in light of research on medieval constructed gardens, especially the pleasure garden of Elizabeth de Burgh at Clare Castle, Suffolk.
Howes, Laura L.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 1322A.
Chaucer employs traditional garden topoi (locus amoenus, hortus conclusus, and paradys d'amours) to draw attention to precursors, to create discrepancy between CT context and tradition, to individualize narrators, and to show literary indebtedness in…
Howes, Laura L.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997.
Examines gardens in Chaucer's narratives as a means to show how literary and social conventions impose constraints and provide opportunities for the poet and characters alike to react to conventions. Surveys literary and historical gardens with…
Howes explains how walking through landscape ("pedestrian logic") helps to organize many medieval narratives, including "Sir Orfeo," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Chaucer's BD. She illuminates her explanations with comparisons to the layouts…
Howes, Laura L.
Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds. Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 321-43.
Chaucer presents Criseyde as a victim of several betrayals--by Calchas, by the Trojan parliament, by Pandarus, and by the narrator--and prompts the possibility of readers' betrayal of her as well. Obedient to her father but unfaithful to her lover,…
Rather than consider the forests and woods in Chaucer's work symbolically, offers an eco-materialist reading of Chaucer's work as Clerk of the King and as forester of North Petherton. Argues that these positions inform Chaucer's settings and…
Howes, Laura L., ed.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007.
Eleven essays by various authors, with an introduction by the editor and a survey of spatial theory and medieval literature by John M. Ganim. For five essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative under…
A previously uncollected analogue emerges in the form of a joke in Kansas. Structural parallels include the motivating action, the consummation in a tree, and the refusal of the husband to believe the evidence of his own eyes.
Hoy, Michael, and Michael Stevens.
London: Norton Bailey, 1969.
Comprises seven essays (three by Stevens; four by Hoy) that discuss eight portions of CT (GP, KnT, PrT and ClT, CYPT, FranT, PardPT, NPT), with brief notes, bibliography, and an index. Recurrent concern with unity, narrative skill, aesthetic order…
