Browse Items (16470 total)

Treats Chaucer's use of and experimentation with conventional gesture as modified by genetic considerations in CT, TC, PF,HF, Anel, LGW, BD, Rom, and minor poems. Includes an appendix of relevant passages.

Ten essays by various authors and a descriptive introduction by Derek Brewer. The papers were originally delivered at the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium at the University of the South in April 2000; the colloquium was devoted to Chaucer's work on the…

Considers the uses of gestures in Chaucer's poetry: "simplistic" uses in HF and PF, broad variety in CT, and the complex characterization of Pandarus in TC. Focuses on expressive movements and postures of body and face, along with laughing, moaning,…

Treats what was new, what traditional, in the period and provides a valuable soruce for the intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic background

Studies the portrayals of alchemy and alchemists in fourteenth-and fifteenth-century English verse, including discussion of Chaucer's negative depiction of alchemy and its practitioners in CYPT, and John Gower's positive view in "Confessio Amantis."

Surveys medieval and early modern study of alchemy and writing about alchemy, with particular attention to its obscurities of language and limited potential for progress. A section called "Playing with Obscurity: Chaucer's Manipulation of the 'Tabula…

A biography of Blake, "William Blake, ein ausgezeichneter Künstler, Dichter und Narr," mentions his work on his "Canterbury Pilgrims" and his troubled relationships with Thomas Stothard and Robert Cromek.

Challenges several claims made by Alice Miskimin in "The Illustrated Eighteenth-Century Chaucer," Modern Philology 77 (1979): 26-55.

Maintains that the details and description of astrology in MilT along with its foreshadowing imagery establish a theme of Boethian determinism in the Tale. Accordingly, the character of each of the three male actors determines his unforeseen fate and…

Benton contrasts SqT and the work of the "Gawain"-poet with popular romances as a way of understanding how romances employ descriptive passages as an essential "formal and conceptual" element.

Exploring the relationship between gender identity and book production at the turn of the twentieth century, Benton assesses the format and typography of the Kelmscott Chaucer (1896) and Eric Gill's illustrations to The Canterbury Tales (1930). Also…

Contains an account of the organization and work of the Chaucer Society (1868-1912) founded by Furnivall.

Focuses on the "Chaucerian tree catalogue[s]" in Philip Sidney's "Old Arcadia" and Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene," tracing the device as a "subtype of epic catalogue" in classical tradition and in KnT and PF, exploring its narrative,…

Historical survey of the relations between literary texts in English and material presentation, from oral and dramatic performance through manuscripts and books, to audio, visual, and digital forms. Includes a section on key terms, a timeline, and an…

In KnT, Chaucer manipulates devices of genre and rhetoric to achieve a highly sophisticated subtext of opacity and of perversion of order.

Interprets SqT and FranT as "expressions of their tellers," with the latter being an "instructive modification" of the "Squire's attitude toward life." Contrasts the uses of rhetorical devices in SqT and KnT in order to show the Squire's youthful,…

Report of radiocarbon dating and dendrochronological analysis of the oak panel of the UCLA Chaucer portrait, indicating a date of about 1400. This makes it likely that the portrait "represents a close likeness of the poet" at the end of his life.

The entry on Chaucer (pp. 213-15, written by Paul Bacquet) summarizes the poet's life and comments on his language, his prosody, and the importance of CT.

Treats WBPT as an analogue to Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew," observing shared "allusions, rhetorical formulas, [and] character presentations" as well as the theme of the "problems of marriage." The two works share "many common…

Bergeson explores the semantic and dramatic range of Middle English "reden"--advise, counsel, read, interpret--as it is used and enacted in BD, HF, PF, and TC.

Contrary to received opinion, the Wife of Bath argues implicitly for equality in marriage; she and the loathly lady in her tale gain dominance only to relinquish it. On the other hand, the Clerk, Merchant, and Franklin present views of women which…

Facing-page translation (Middle English verse/German prose) of selections from the CT, with introductions, commentaries, and bibliographies. Includes GP, KnT, MilT, WBPT, FranT, PardPT, and NPT. Translations by Bergner, Waltraud Böttcher, Günter…

FranT mirrors contemporary contradictory beliefs about marriage, criticizing standards and legal constraints that force paradoxical and confusing demands on married partners,and exposing the predicament of three moral characters who fall short with…

Describes the genre of the fabliau and discusses "Dame Sirith," MilT, RvT, SumT, MerT, and ShT as examples in Middle English.

As in the worlds of Sidney's "Arcadia" and Milton's "Paradise Lost," the fictive world of TC is grounded in a key ethical concept. According to Bergquist, "Kynde or nature is the making and undoing of both Criseyde and the fiction that contains her."