Browse Items (16472 total)

Explains Root's dependence on William Symington McCormick's theory of Chaucer's seriatim revisions of TC, and castigates the "illogical rationalism" of Root's editorial methods, especially his treatment of scribal error. Root's "longing for an…

Denounces Manly and Rickert's "The Text of the Canterbury Tales," asserting the editors' failure to state and maintain consistent editorial methods, their confused and confusing classification of manuscripts, and their error in attempting to apply…

Describes the "elephantine gestation" of Robinson's edition of Chaucer's "Works," summarizes its early reception and progress to becoming a "standard edition," and assesses the text as "conservative, highly informed, and eclectic, though arrived at…

Summarizes the life of William Thynne and gauges the editorial practices and influence of his 1532 edition of Chaucer's "Workes," arguing that it introduced humanistic rigor into the editing of English works. Although Thynne's practices were…

Best known for his "Survey of London," John Stow produced an edition of Chaucer's works in 1561 that influenced Elizabethan readers, even though it is largely a reprint of William Thynne's edition of 1532 (1550 reprint) that adds several works,…

Describes the importance of Thomas Speght in the tradition of Chaucerian scholarship. Relying in part on John Stow's research, Speght produced a hurried edition in 1598, and partially influenced by Francis Thynne's recommendations, carefully revised…

Summarizes the practices and impact of John Urry's 1721 edition of Chaucer's works, describing its conservative canon and its text that, though based on multiple witnesses, was radically emended in order to achieve metrical regularity. Published…

Chaucer plays with sources, including echoes of his own works in KnT, LGWP, SqT, MerT, PF, and Anel.

Chaucer's examination of chivalry in KnT, SqT, and FranT is a "mediation on the means of representing it," offering the audience "style reflexiouns" on the making of fiction.

Examines Froissart's and Christine de Pisan's treatments of fame and the role of the poet in bestowing it. Questioning this tradition in HF, "Chaucer's art is to mask his own opinions and to reveal his readers' to themselves."

The court of Richard II was influenced not only by Wycliffe and Lollard preachers but also by the Carthusians, who emphasized private devotion, mysticism, and eremiticism.

In BD, Chaucer uses "the ambiguous status of the dream, as irresponsible fantasy and as vision of truth," to defend poetic fiction. Only in the "context of the figurative" does "the literal possess its full rhetorical power."

Questioning the validity of searches for unity, Walker posits structural disunity residing in 'contentio' to account for how PF "hangs together."

In Wom Nob, Chaucer uses traditional "topoi" and rhetorical and syntactic structure in French style; Ros is a playful parody of these conventions.

Like modern theorists, Chaucer is concerned with language as a reliable vehicle to account for reality, as in HF, ManT, TC,Ret. The pilgrim narrator shifts in viewpoint and style; Chaucer exploits the gap between language and reality, as in TC, LGW,…

The astrological passages provide "alternative explanations of the same behavior"--both freedom and determinism--and explain antifeminism partly as male impotence. The Wife as "subject" exists in unresolvable tensions and indeterminancies.

Like Boccaccio's "Decameron," CT reveals awareness of medieval principles of game and play articulated by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Albertano of Brescia.

The bitterest controversy between "ancients" and "moderns" in fourteenth-century medicine concerned the treatment of wounds. Whereas Boccaccio in "Teseida" aligns his "medici" with the ancients and prolongs Arcita's death, Chaucer in KnT aligns…

Discusses bawdy words, obscenities, and euphemisms in Chaucer,exposing fallacies in overzealous scholarly search for obscene puns.

Three medieval optical authorities possibly known by Chaucer--Alhazen, Witelo, and Bartholomew--provide parallels for the visual deceptions at the end of MerT, which reflect the medieval tradition of "perspectiva."

The slandered Trotula as Dame Trote, or as a "trot," serves as a "type" of the Wife of Bath, personification of medieval misogyny, both medical and clerical.

Examines themes of literacy, orality, emphasis on the written word, and reading in BD, HF, PF, LGW. Chaucer is unallegorical, even in NPT. In reconstructing Chaucer, we must beware of approaches too technical that cut us off from a "feeling"…

The development of literary imagery and language in TC, book 3, reveals the distinctiveness of Chaucer's approach to Dante's "Purgatorio;" Chaucer's power and control over the language far exceed Boccaccio's in the "Filostrato."

Examines the influence of "Roman de la Rose" on European literature; Brunetto Latini, "ser Durante," Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer. "Five generations of Italian poets...defined their individual enterprise" against the "Rose." Chaucer…

In Pennsylvania MS French 15, bourgeois realism produces the finest effects in the twelve pastourelles by "puy" poets. Possibly Chaucer was familiar with the collection, which could have influenced GP, MilT, RvT, CYT, PF, and TC.