Gutierrez Arranz, Jose M.
Margarita Gimenez Bon and Vickie Olsen, eds. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Dpto. Filologæa Inglesa, 1997), 140-45.
Examines "epistolary discourse" in ClP, PrP, NPP, SqT, and PardP in terms of style, using Isidore of Seville's recommendations about decorum.
Li, Xingzhong.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1997): 3948A
Surveys the history of approaches to Chaucer's meter and critiques individual approaches. Proposes principles of Chaucer's tetrameter and pentameter, focusing on syntactic inversions and phrase boundaries. Chaucer's verse developed from rough…
Phillips, Betty S.
College Language Association Journal 61 (1997): 93-103.
Comparison of Romance vocabulary, direct discourse, the first person (singular or plural), finite verb forms, and other grammatical elements such as independent and dependent clauses inKnT and WBT shows that "Chaucer did indeed use the language of…
Blake, N. F.
Terttu Nevalainen and Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, eds. To Explain the Present: Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen(Helsinki: Sociłtł Nłophilologique, 1997), pp. 3-24.
Computer-assisted analysis of forms of Chancery English in manuscripts of WBP indicates a drift toward standardizaiton, most striking in the change from "swich" to "such." Yet, the pull to the Chancery Standard is not always clear.
Burnley, J. D.
Stewart Gregory and D. A. Trotter, eds. De mot en mot: Aspects of Medieval Linguistics. Essays in Honour of William Rothwell (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, with the Modern Humanities Research Association, 1997), pp. 1-15.
The use of "thise" plus a noun (e.g., "thise clerkes," "thise men"), rarely found in Old English, is "particularly common" in Chaucer and Gower; it probably developed in early clerical discourse and, encouraged by some French parallels,spread to…
Fisiak, Jacek, ed.
Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997
Twenty-six essays by various authors, exploring issues of syntax, lexicon, phonology, and morphology. Chaucerian materials are cited as data throughout, and for four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Studies in Middle English Linguistic…
Green, Richard Firth.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 179-202.
Documents the medieval legal understanding of "trouthe" as an aspect of personal "oathworthiness" rather than of verifiability of facts; argues that this early sense obtains in MLT 2.630 even though it was fast becoming an archaic sense.
Harris, Martha Janet.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1997): 4753A
Lollard insistence on plain speech brought about a split between plain and literary language that persisted into the sixteenth century. Harris considers the "Pearl" poet and the fifteenth-century reception of Chaucer.
Louis, Cameron.
Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 14 (1997): 173-85.
The first English citations for the word "proverb" come from Chaucer's works, in which the word appears twenty-six times. Chaucer uses the word primarily in its modern and most common sense of "traditional folk sayings"; however, he also uses it with…
Molencki, Rafał.
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 31 (1997): 163-77.
Traces the history of the phrase "al be it" from its late-medieval "heyday" through its reduction to a single-word conjunction to its current status as a marker of "concessivity" or contradiction. Most medieval instances are cited from Chaucer.
Molencki, Rafał.
Jacek Fisiak, ed. Studies in Middle English Linguistics (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), pp. 351-71.
Anatomizes concessive clauses (those beginning with "yet," "although," "nevertheless," etc.), exploring their syntactic variety and semantic use. The subjunctive mood dominates, although instances of the indicative prefigure Modern English.
Peitsara, Kristi.
Terttu Nevalainen and Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, eds. To Explain the Present: Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen (Helsinki: Sociłtł Nłophilologique, 1997), pp. 163-83.
Assesses the distribution of the two forms "enough" and "enow," using Chaucer's works in the database. In Chaucer, "enow" is generally a "poetic non-plural variant" useful for rhyme, while "inowe"/"ynowe" is the plural (with exceptions). …
Taavitsainen, Irma.
Jacek Fisiak, ed. Studies in Middle English Linguistics (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), pp. 573-607.
Statistical analysis of Middle English exclamations in several literary modes and genres. Exclamations are a marker of fiction, and interjections are "particularly frequent" in Chaucer's works.
Alamichel, Marie-Francoiseand Derek Brewer,eds.
Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1997.
Eleven essays study the influence and impact of the Middle Ages on Western life and culture from the sixteenth century to the present. The essays cover a wide range of topics--literature, stylistics, lexicography, art, the cinema, philosophy,…
Alexander, Jonathan J. G.
Studies in Iconography 18 (1997): 51-66.
Shifts within the related fields of art history, literary history, and the study of illuminated manuscripts have led to greater emphasis on interdisciplinary scholarship; Chaucer studies (particularly those concerning the Ellesmere manuscript) are a…
Allen, Elizabeth Gage.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1997): 1699A.
Examines how late-medieval changes in audience and breadth of subject transformed responses to exemplary literature, exploring "Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry," Caxton's translation of it, and works of Gower, Chaucer (PhyT, PardT,and TC), and…
Andersen, Jennifer Lotte.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1997): 4747A.
Though the printing press and the Reformation have long been assumed to have altered radically the concepts of reader and writing, the persistence of the architectural trope in literature indicates that technology was less important than…
Chaucer draws on a variety of sources--Boccaccio, Ovid, French dawn-songs, popular dawn-song traditions, courtly dawn-songs, and (perhaps) popular poetry--for the dawn-songs in RvT, MerT, Mars, and TC. He uses these sources in a variety of…
Documents a formal "profeminine"--though not "feminist"--tradition in medieval literature, exploring its origins and sustaining arguments. Rooted in the apocryphal biblical book of Esdras, the tradition developed in the high Middle Ages in works…
Bodi, Russell John.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1997): 234A.
Literary uses of play and game both subvert and reinforce social order while encouraging readers to become involved. Medieval works tend to relate chivalry and war to game and play, while Platonism questions their value. Considers TC among works…
