Pearsall, Derek, ed.
Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1990.
A teaching edition of three works of Chaucerian apocrypha, including individual introductions, notes, marginal glosses,bibliographies, and a brief glossary. The introductions place the poems in the Chaucerian tradition and comment on their genres…
Twelve previously published historicist essays and book chapters by various authors. The volume is a companion to Pearsall's Chaucer to Spenser: An Anthology. Three essays pertain to Chaucer: Mary Carruthers, "The Wife of Bath and the Painting of…
Pearsall, Derek, ed.
Oxford, and Malden, Mass. : Blackwell, 1999.
Selections from "what is best and most representative" in English and Scottish writers from the period. Includes PF, selections from TC and CT (GP, MilPT, WBPT, FranPT, PardPT), and several shorter works (Adam, Truth, Scog, Purse). Also includes…
Pearsall, Derek, ed.
York; and Rochester, N.Y. : York Medieval Press, in association with Boydell and Brewer, 2000.
Thirteen essays by various authors that pertain to the use of manuscripts in understanding medieval texts and/or to the use of computers in manuscript analysis and study. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for New Directions in Later…
Pearsall, Derek, ed.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983
Nine essays, an Introduction, and Response derive from a 1981 Conference at the University of York. For the two essays that include substantial attention to Chaucer, search for Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England under Alternative…
Pearsall, Derek.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990
A selective, annotated bibliography of 614 entries, indexed rather than cross-listed, covering 1900-1988. Entries are arranged under descriptive and topical categories such as Bibliography, Date, Meter, Literary Relationships, Allegory,and Dream…
Pearsall, Derek.
Tim William Machan, ed. Medieval Literature: Texts and Interpretation. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,no. 79. (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1991), pp. 41-57.
Most Chaucer criticism fails to mention that Chaucer's poetry is written in verse. The way we read that verse and respond to its musicality, whether in our heads or when reading aloud, is an important part of our interpretation of and response to…
Pearsall, Derek.
Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1992.
Traces Chaucer's life and the development of his works in relation to court life and the affairs of contemporary London. Divides his life into six periods of professional activity and explores his changing status as a public servant, the growth of…
Pearsall, Derek.
A. J. Minnis and Charlotte Brewer, eds. Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992), pp. 39-48.
Surveys how editions of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and others have banished the notion of authorial revision from their textual methods and replaced it with attention to scribal practice, thereby paralleling deconstructive criticism.
Pearsall, Derek.
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 11-19.
Chaucer's religious tales (Mel, ParsT, ClT, MLT, PrT, SNT, PhyT, MkT) are "predicated upon the assumption that the significance of human life is the transcending of its secular limitation through Christian faith." The only tales in CT not written in…
Pearsall, Derek.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 39-53.
Chaucer gave Lydgate his language, his verse forms, and his poetic style--with the urge to refine and elaborate them into a high medieval art. Lydgate's career is arguably a determined effort to emulate and surpass Chaucer in each of the major…
Judging Chaucer's works, especially NPT, by modern critical and cultural-literary standards deprives us of the "ideas and customs" of Chaucer's age, which are necessary for proper appreciation.
Pearsall, Derek.
Joerg O. Fichte, ed. Chaucer's Frame Tales (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1987): pp. 35-49.
With characters slightly less than human, Chaucer's fabliaux, a sort of "guerrilla warfare on established values," deviate from the classical definition of comedy ridiculing vice and folly to correct deviancy. Fabliaux characters are opposed to the…
Pearsall, Derek.
David Aers, ed. Medieval Literature (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp. 123-47.
Studies the hermeneutical "reflection of contemporary historical actuality" in Chaucer criticism. Although various critical schools--epistemologists, phenomenologists,Marxists and Russian Formalists (Medvedev, Bakhtin), etc.--recognize the…
Pearsall, Derek.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 125-42.
Treats setting, tone, and structure of the six comedies in CT: MilT, RvT, ShT, MerT, FrT, and SumT. Discusses the first four as fabliaux, the last two as "masterpieces of satirical anecdote" that do not deal with sex and marriage.
Pearsall, Derek.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987), pp. 17-29.
Analyzes TC 2.449-62, 3.568-81, and 5.1016-29 to show syntactically "the process by which Criseyde exercises her will, makes a choice, without acknowledging (it)...while preserving her image...as a passive instrument of forces greater than herself"…
Pearsall, Derek.
Jerome J. McGann, ed. Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 95-106.
Use of the Robinson second edition based on the Ellesmere MS has encouraged the neglect of many textual problems in critical studies concerning "unity" or "idea" of CT; Manly and Rickert's monumental edition is virtually ignored. Hengwrt is a vastly…
Pearsall, Derek.
London, Boston, Sydney: George Allen and Unwin 1985.
The manuscripts of the CT attest to the continuous, evolving, and unfinished nature of Chaucer's work on them from 1387 onward. The poet's intent in CT was to stretch the limits of inherited genres and expand the perceptions of his audience. The…
An automaton "who is both theologically and in ordinary human terms...dead," the Pardoner, whose sexuality emphasizes his deadness, may yet be redeemed in the words of the Old Man.
Modern readers must resist the limitations of twentieth-century literary-critical approach and interpret Chaucer in the traditional critical context: studies of manuscript tradition, text, and lexical context.
Pearsall, Derek.
London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977.
Covers the first nine hundred years of English poetry. Includes treatments of Chaucer, his circle of friends, his choice of English as a literary language, his foreign influence.
Pearsall, Derek.
Yearbook of English Studies 7 (1977): 68-74.
The famous "Troilus" Frontispiece has created an image of Chaucer's audience as the royal court with Richard and Ann. But such identification in an unrealistic picture, clearly a presentation-picture variant, is impossible. Chaucer's actual audience…
Surveys problems with critical editions that distort readers' ideas of medieval literature and indicates directions for the scholarly study of manuscripts. The article refers repeatedly to manuscripts of Chaucer and of Langland.
