Browse Items (16472 total)

Thompson, N. S.   Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature (Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1999), pp. 17-29.
CT and Boccaccio's Decameron depict a variety of social and moral transgressions committed by male characters; these transgressions constitute the ills of society. Female characters in the works are less likely to be transgressive, and only female…

Nolan, Barbara.   Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature (Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1999), pp. 79-105.
Comments on similarities between the mixture of bawdy and sublime in CT and in other medieval tales, collections, and contexts, exploring how bawdiness challenges official discourse. Examines at length Henri d'Andeli's aristocratic fabliau,…

North, Richard.   Piero Boitani and Emilia Di Rocco, eds. Boccaccio and the European Literary Tradition (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2014), pp. 123-38.
Compares Chaucer's Pandarus with Boccaccio's Pandaro, arguing that "that Pandarus so loves Troilus that he consummates his passion vicariously on Criseyde, telling lies which kill the affair before the lady leaves Troy." The "cues" for this…

Strohm, Paul.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 1-18.
Discusses the hierarchical but interdependent social structure of fourteenth-century England, Chaucer's social position and civil career, fourteenth-century literacy, and the "immediate circle" to whom Chaucer's works may be addressed.

Burrow, J. A.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 109-24.
Discusses the five "romances" in CT. WBT, ostensibly an Arthurian romance, is actually a "fairy tale, told by a woman and dominated by women"; Th is an "outright burlesque" of contemporary English roamnces; SqT, unfinished, does not offer 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.

Frank, Robert Worth,Jr.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 143-58.
Although Chaucer's "tales of pathos"--MLT, ClT, PhyT, PrT, and MkT--do not constitute a genre, they share characteristics: lack of comedy, absence of irony, little complexity, abstract settings, and characters "motivated by a single virtue." Each…

Spearing, A. C.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 159-77.
FrT, PardT, NPT, and ManT both exemplify and undercut the purposes of moral teaching.

Bloomfield, Morton W.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 179-93.
This updated version of Bloomfield's 1964 essay "Authenticating Realism and the Realism of Chaucer" discusses "authenticating frames" in Chaucer: the dream frame of BD, the historical frame of TC, and the social frame of CT, which "gives us a strong…

Wallace, David.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 19-37.
Traces Chaucer's increasingly creative use of sources and development as a poet: his treatment of French materials in Rom, BD, and HF; his use of Dante in BD and HF; his adaptation of Boccaccio in Anel, PF, and TC; and his own developing,…

Windeatt, Barry.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 195-212.
Treats prologues, frames, links, interruptions, pairing, and endings in BD, PF, HF, CT, Anel, Th, and Mel, with emphasis on CT.

Mehl, Dieter.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 213-26.
The Chaucerian narrator "directs our responses and controls the narrative situation" but does not give definite answers. The narrators of BD, HF, PF, and LGW are not necessarily representative of Chaucer himself. The ever-present narrator of TC…

Fichte, Joerg O.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 243-54.
Selective bibliography of materials on Chaucer.

Boitani, Piero.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 39-57.
Literature is both source and subject matter for Chaucer. In BD, PF, and HF, he transforms source material ("old books") into "new" Chaucerian texts with their own structures and themes.

Lambert, Mark.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 59-73.
The "texture" of TC--its nuances and suggestive detail--both enriches and "interferes with" the meaning conveyed by theme and structure. Thus, by the end of TC readers may both admire and dislike the "trouthe" of the hero and heroine. Overtly, TC…

Mann, Jill.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 75-92.
Chaucer painstakingly "alerts" his sources in Boethius and Boccaccio to "emphasize the role of chance in the events of the narrative." Mann explores relationships among chance, "necessitee," and free will in TC and KnT.

Benson, C. David.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 93-108.
The characters in CT are neither fully developed nor consistent; tellers and their tales are loosely connected. Thus, Kittredge's "dramatic theory" is limited: it leads readers to focus on personalities of the pilgrims rather than on Chaucer's…

Brewer, Derek.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986): pp. 227-42.
Discusses "orality" and "literacy," "familiar" and "learned" elements of Chaucer's style, including formulas, sententiousness, "repetition with variation," metonymy, hyperbole, and imagery.

Boffey, Julia, and A. S. G. Edwards.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), pp. 112-26.
Boffey and Edwards confront several scholarly and critical issues that pertain to LGW: date, occasion, sources and models, patronage, and the relation of the F and G versions of LGWP. The authors emphasize the variety in the legends themselves and…

Butterfield, Ardis.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), pp. 20-36.
Butterfield surveys the French literature available to Chaucer and argues that French language and literature pervade Chaucer's entire career. The French influence is a fundamental "habit of mind" that resides in the deep and surface structures of…

Cannon, Christopher.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), pp. 233-50.
Though traditional at root, Chaucer's diction, syntax, and rhetoric are made fresh by the poet's careful combination and articulation of traditional features. Doubleness (as in mixed styles, ambiguity, and irony) is characteristic of his style and a…

Simpson, James   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), pp. 251-69.
Changes in literary practice in the late fifteenth century helped modify reception of Chaucer's works. Remembered as a personal figure to be reckoned with by Hoccleve and Lydgate, Chaucer--like his works--was later objectified in the "philological"…

Dinshaw, Carolyn.   Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), pp. 270-89.
Dinshaw contemplates recent critical trends in medieval studies in light of the events of September 11, 2001, tracing the developments of feminist, queer, and postcolonial approaches to Chaucer's works by focusing on MLT.

Boitani, Piero.   Piero Boitani, ed. Chaucer and the Italian Trecento (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 115-39.
Dante and Chaucer shared a common knowledge in the classics, medieval philosophy, and science. For HF, Chaucer drew on the "Purgatorio" and the "Paradiso" more than on the "Inferno." TC is Chaucer's equivalent of the "Divine Comedy" and the…

Boitani, Piero.   Piero Boitani, ed. Chaucer and the Italian Trecento (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 185-99.
Examines Chaucer's style, iconography, and adaptations from the "Teseida" in HF, Anel, TC, KnT, LGW, and FranT. Chaucer's method is metonymic; Boccaccio's is metaphorical.
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