Browse Items (16472 total)

Draws from TC examples of how voice contributes to ambiguity, considering how "suprasegmentals" and various phonetic and prosodic features contribute to voice.

Johnston scrutinizes Chaucer's comments on alliterative poetry in ParsP, interpreting them as evidence of a power struggle in England's evolving literary field. By presenting aesthetic difference as linguistic difference, Chaucer consciously presents…

It is "anachronistic to assume" that Chaucer distinguished between the "reading and hearing of his literary works." His "style is best understood as a versatile adaptation of language to suit both silent and vocalized readings."

Examines the readers' marks in an annotated copy of the 1550 Thynne edition of Chaucer's Workes (Folger STC 5074 Copy 2), identifying its century-long provenance (1578-1677) of female ownership and commenting on how notes, bracketed passages, and…

Includes comments on Chaucer's combination of jest and earnest as it was admired by Thomas Heywood and Thomas More.

Argues that Lydgate's allusions to HF are part of a larger effort to deny the accessibility of truth through language, which the author describes as a "Chaucerian poetics of ambiguity and skepticism."

Sweet examines works by William Dunbar and Robert Henryson as well as lesser-known texts to argue that, like Chaucer, Lydgate had significant influence on the development of literature in Scotland.

Sponsler comments on the "appropriation theory" underlying Candace Barrington's analysis of a Chaucer-themed Mardi Gras pageant of 1914, raising broader questions about the ideology, methodology, and disciplinary implications of "American…

Bokenham repeatedly refers to himself as an "auctor" as a way to extricate himself from the classicizing, conventional, and paternal shadow of Chaucer.

Jimura cites instances of impersonal constructions in TC and KnT in which verbs of "occurrence or happening" (e.g., "befal," "hap") are used to present important events and to suggest inevitability.

Comments on various aspects of dialect, diction, prestige, etc. in Middle English poetry, with many examples drawn from Chaucer's works.

The semantic field of "heat" includes emotional connotations in Old English, but Chaucer evokes new oxymoronic nuances when he uses it in Troilus's song, TC 1.400-420.

In late medieval England, "code-switching" among English, French, and Latin was linked to literacy and social prestige, not to aberrant or nonconformist behavior; code-switching was a means to articulate social identity. Chaucer distanced his…

Zarins assesses Gower's and Chaucer's uses of rime riche ("in which rhyme patterns appear identical but diverge in meaning"), focusing on instances in which the device lends seriousness (or mock seriousness) in characters' dialogue. Appends a partial…

Tani examines the word pairs or doublets in Fragment A of CT and those in Chaucer's prose texts. The pairs are used for rhyme and for generic and stylistic differentiation among verse texts.

Nolan exemplifies the continuity of English versification through close metrical analyses of samples from Chaucer (Truth), Lydgate, and Wyatt. Each text "displays inherited forms at the very limits of their capacities."

Comments on translations/modernizations of TC from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. Considers modern problems with reproducing the nuances of Chaucer's courtly idiolect, particularly "courtly value words" such as "goodly," "fresshe,"…

Tabulates and analyzes various combinations of Middle English infinitive markers--the -e(n) ending, the particle "to," and the particle phrase "for to"--finding that they occur in no identifiable grammatical or semantic patterns of distribution in…

Taylor surveys the development of attention to language and linguistics in Chaucer studies, commenting on the usefulness of developments that enable increased attention to sociolinguistic uses rather than philological forms. She reads RvT as a work…

Tallies uses of "that" clauses and "to" clauses after the verb "command" in Chaucer's works, documenting their frequencies in various syntactic contexts.

Tabulates features of impersonal usage in Chaucer, Gower, and Langland, using a variety of verbs and commenting on the conditions of usage.

Studies the occurrence of "extra" (doubled or mismatched) prepositions in Middle English relative and interrogative clauses and the persistence of the phenomenon in modern English. "Noncategorical" (gradient) constraints such as "preposition…

When used in direct discourse, "as" often functions as a "discourse particle" in a manner similar to "the multivalent 'like' that seasons the more youthful dialects of Modern English." Such words allow interlocutors to convey meanings while not…

Explores literary composition as "cybertextuality," employing a fusion of cognitive theory, stylistic analysis, computer applications, and attribution studies. The goal is to uncover the compositional processes of writers by examining their verbal…

Explores testing in Chaucer's narratives, focusing on uses of the word "assay."