Bowers, John M.
Chantilly, Va.: The Teaching Company, 2008.
Audio-visual recording of thirty-six lectures by Bowers (on topics ranging from the Bible to Tolkien and postcolonialism), illustrated with occasional still pictures and linguistic examples. One thirty-minute lecture (Lecture 17, "Chaucer--The Father…
D'Arcens addresses Helgeland's film as an entry point for deconstructing medievalist studies. Such studies, she suggests, reflect a latent Platonism that regards the Middle Ages as a stable standard against which to measure texts and contemporary…
Dell contends that Brian Helgeland's film A Knight's Tale offers an alternative to capitalistic perpetual accomplishment, the model of desire that critics associate with the film. This alternative is courtly love, a paradigm drawn from the Lancelot…
Forni lauds the BBC's modernized television adaptation of CT (2003) for its appeal to a wide audience while retaining fidelity to the original texts; for its intertextuality; and for its highlighting of aspects of Chaucer that appeal to contemporary…
Matthews responds to articles about Brian Helgeland's film A Knight's Tale, suggesting that medieval studies should be open to medievalism studies, rather than placing the fields in opposition.
Raffel, Burton, trans.
North Kingston, R.I.: BBC Audiobooks, 2008.
An audio reading of Raffel's translation of the complete CT (New York: Modern Library, 2008); disc 1 includes the general introduction by John Miles Foley and Raffel's translator introduction. Six readers narrate the tales: Bill Wallis, Ric Jerrom,…
Sutherland, John.
Chantilly, Va.: The Teaching Company, 2008.
Audio-visual recording of twelve lectures by Sutherland (from Anglo-Saxon roots to Paradise Lost), illustrated with occasional still pictures and linguistic examples. Two thirty-minute lectures pertain to Chaucer: Lecture 2, "Chaucer--Social…
Trigg identifies two conflicting motivations for the making of Brian Helgeland's film "A Knight's Tale": the desire for academic research to provide legitimacy and the desire to create a new fictional narrative to engage a contemporary audience. This…
Bestul reexamines the relevant evidence and shows that Chaucer lived at 179 Upper Thames Street rather than at 177. The study illuminates the history of scholarly politics and of conflicting "historical paradigms" behind the 1966 "Chaucer…
Grahame, Lucia, and Bob Taylor.
Wheeling, Ill.: Film Ideas, 2008.
Includes biographies of Homer, John Milton, Omar Khayyám, and Chaucer. The latter (approximately seven minutes) comments on Chaucer's life and works, accompanied by visual materials.
Boenig, Robert, and Andrew Taylor, eds.
Buffalo, N.Y.: Broadview Press, 2008. Rev. ed. 2012.
Complete text of CT newly edited from the Ellesmere manuscript, with an introduction (pp. 9-38), brief bibliography, and eleven "background documents" that include selections from sources and historical records. Glosses to the Middle English are…
Cannon, Christopher, intro.
Larry D. Benson, gen. ed. The Riverside Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. iva-ivh.
Foreword to the reissue of the paperback version of The Riverside Chaucer, assessing the legacy of the Riverside text in light of editorial theory and modern computers.
Courtauld, Sarah, Abigail Wheatley, and Susanna Davidson. Illus. Ian Mcnee
London: Usbourne, 2008.
Retellings (in prose, unless otherwise noted) of GP, KnT, MilT, RvT, MLT, WBT, FrT, MerT, SqT, FranT, PardT, Th (in verse), NPT, CYT, ManT, and Ret. The book shortens and bowdlerizes the works for an adolescent / juvenile audience and "tidies up…
Cuddington, Richard, trans.
Brighton: Book Guild, 2008.
Verse retelling of selections from CT (all but Mel, SNPT, CYPT, ManPT, and ParsPT) with reduced plots, simplified rhetoric, and modernized English in ballad stanzas. Cuddington adapts the links to unify the selections, which are arranged in the…
Echard, Siân.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Echard studies the "postmedieval life of medieval texts" as they are embodied in material form, exploring strategies for representing the authenticity of the texts and for reimagining them for new audiences. The book includes chapters on design…
The heavily annotated copy of Thynne held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University shows what a sixteenth-century reader found of interest in Chaucer's story-telling, language, and moral vision.
The prefaces to Spenser's "Shepheardes Calendar" (1579) and to Thomas Speght's "Workes of Chaucer" (1598) share similarities with Lydgate's" Fall of Princes" and thus belie the claims made for a break in continuity with the past in sixteenth-century…
Kuskin, William.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.
Kuskin presents a manifesto on history-of-the-book studies as well as on the need to rethink Chaucerian reception. The volume is divided into three sections: "Capital and Literary Form," "Authorship and the Chaucerian Inheritance," and "Print and…
Maciulewicz, Joanna.
Liliana Sikorska, ed., with the assistance of Joanna Maciulewicz. Medievalisms: The Poetics of Literary Re-Reading (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 113-31.
Maciulewicz examines Neoclassical rewritings of medieval texts, focusing on Dryden's and Pope's reworking of Chaucer (CT and HF). Close readings show that eighteenth-century revisions seek to elevate Chaucer to promote national literature and,…
Translation of TC into modern Spanish, with facing-page copy text reprint of Barry Windeatt's text of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, MS 61. The translation is arranged in stanzas, but without rhyme or regular meter. The introduction…
Summit, Jennifer.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Investigating the period between 1431 and 1631, Summit argues that libraries--particularly the Parker, the Cotton, and the Bodleian--enabled early modern projects of historical and cultural redefinition concurrent with Reformation ideology and…
Annotations by 16th- and 17th-century readers show an ongoing interest in Chaucer as a source of sententiae and a focus of antiquarian interest; they also shed light on the role of women readers and on the household as a reading center. Their net …