Paul Bush's dream vision, "The Extripacion of Ignorancy," was influenced by Chaucerian models and coins the phrase "lycour laureate" to describe Chaucer.
Lerer, Seth.
Seth Lerer, ed. The Yale Companion to Chaucer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 243-94.
Lerer reads CT as a "set of representative performances" that "question literary and social selves" and explore the functions of language, literature, and the imagination. Recurrent concern with clothing and representation, communication and monetary…
Lerer, Seth.
Seth Lerer. Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 70-84.
Characterizes the language of Chaucer's day and emphasizes his range and synthesis of styles, exemplifying features of Middle English and Chaucer's dexterous uses of it in poetry and prose. Comments at length on the opening of GP, on Astr, on uses of…
Lerer, Seth.
Chantilly, Va.: The Teaching Company, 1998.
Lerer's lecture, "Chaucer's English" (Part 1, Lecture 10; 17 minutes) comments on the opening eighteen lines of GP, on diction and etymology, verse form, and linguistic conditions at the time. "Dialect Jokes and Literary Representation" (Part 1,…
Lerer, Seth.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 83-95.
Lerer comments on the recent study of Chaucer reception and exemplifies the "status of Chaucer's authority" in a letter of Alice Paston to her son, a version of Truth in Tottel's "Miscellany," and an allusion to KnT in "The Two Noble Kinsmen." Each…
Lerer, Seth.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp.75-91.
Lerer assesses the mid-sixteenth-century versions of Truth and TC in Tottel's "Miscellany" (among other texts) as evidence of Renaissance reception of medieval literary history.
The stanzas known as "The Tongue" in the Findern manuscript use source material from Lydgate's "Fall of Princes" and Chaucer's TC to create a coherent poem that is consistent with the manuscript's broader themes and is indebted to the literary legacy…
Lerer, Seth.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Investigates the role of "tradition in the literary imagination" and the value of literature, particularly the "value of close and nuanced reading for our understanding of both past and present." Includes discussion of George Orwell's engagement with…
Lerer, Seth.
Catherine Bates and Patrick Cheney, eds. The Oxford History of English Poetry, Volume 4: Sixteenth-Century British Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 19-33.
Surveys the "brilliantly imaginative, formally experimental, and socially self-aware" poetry of early sixteenth-century English, with emphasis on its transitions from Chaucerian tradition and to Shakespearean tradition, the importance of Ovidian…
Lerer,Seth.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Studies the currents and cross-currents of pedagogy, moral didacticism, and entertainment in children's literature, exploring how trends in reading and interpretation recur as the subject matter of the stories and help to define their historical…
Lesler, Rachel.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 13 (2016): 40-47.
Explores the alignment of "trouthe" and freedom in FranT, particularly as they relate to gendered honor, arguing that Dorigen's efforts to honor her marital "trouthe" limit her freedom.
Leslie, Nancy T.
Chaucerian Shakespear (Ann Arbor: Michigan Consortium for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 1983), pp. 25-41.
The Wife of Bath and Falstaff are superb "actors" who use rhetorical tools to triumph on their "stages," citing Scripture, twisting logic, and spouting proverbs for their own purposes.
Lester, G. A.
English Language Notes 27:1 (1989): 25-29.
The "De re militari" of Flavius Vegetius Renatus--translated three times into Middle English-condemns poorly kept armor. This passage supports the argument of Terry Jones ("Chaucer's Knight" SAC 5 (1983), no.137) that the physical deterioration of…
Lester, G. A.
Notes and Queries 226 (1981): 200-202.
Similarities between Chaucer's description of the knight and the descriptions in "Warwick Pageant," a fifteenth-century complimentary biography of the Earl of Warwick, indicate that Chaucer's description contains not irony but praise.
Twenty essays by various authors, plus a forward (pp. 13-25) by Lester that describes the career and lists the publications of Norman Blake. The essays consider Middle English language, literature, editing, and publishing, with eleven essays…
Study guide to PardPT and to the GP description of the Pardoner that first summarizes Chaucer's biography, his language (including a list of "difficult or confusable words") and writings, and his literary context. Includes a summary/commentary on the…
Readings and musical performances of 36 pieces that pertain to cats, including a reading of a brief selection from ManT (9.175-80) in normalized English by Edward Crafts, accompanied by Noel Lester on piano.
Lettau, Lisa.
Dissertation Abstracts International A69.09 (2009): n.p.
As part of an exploration of medieval efforts to understand a physical/spiritual dichotomy, the dissertation sets BD in conversation with Margery Kempe, with an eye toward development of a "unified selfhood."
Levelt, Sjoerd.
Notes and Queries 265 (2020): 14-16.
Examines sources that Boxhorn drew upon for quoting GP and for (mis)identifying its author to show that, contrary to what scholars have believed, this seventeenth-century Dutch professor of history and rhetoric "was acquainted with neither Chaucer…
Surveys the dilemmas experienced by Criseyde, Troilus, Chaucer, and the reader in TC, relating them all to the conflicts between classical beauty and Christian truth.
Lever, Katherine.
The Classical Journal 64 (1969): 216-18.
Looks at multiple examples of reference and allusion to Greek and Roman literature in works by Chaucer and Milton to contemplate ways in which these poets parallel modern classical scholars in their approach to the ancient world.
Levey, David.
UNISA English Studies 25:2 (1987): 1-6.
Levey surveys recent critical articles and reviews relevant to courtly love (as well as "fin'amour" and "fals'amour") and examines the convention as it is used in Rom, exploring the validity of charges that the concept is literary, esoteric, and…
