Browse Items (16472 total)

Background of Spirleng, a copyist of CT (Glasgow, Hunterian MS U.1.1).

Focuses on Ackroyd's use of Chaucer's "formulism" (Zumthor) and reflects on how successful the accumulation of medieval formulas and sayings really is.

Eleven articles on medieval women and/or literature for them, especially works that are written by women authors. For one essay that pertains to Chaucer, see Piero Boitani, "Marie de France and the Breton Lay in England," (pp. 211-26).

Studies how Chaucer's ClT may have been affected by the Italian textual tradition. The first part of the book concentrates on the Italian texts, particularly the Manelli codex of Boccaccio, "Decameron" X.10. The second part considers how the Hengwrt…

A collection of essays addressing the history of the book, manuscript studies, culture, and history of late medieval England. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Production of Books in England under Alternative Title.

Da Rold's study of Cambridge University Library MS Dd.4.24 (a manuscript of CT) suggests that variations in shades of ink helps to disclose scribal habits of copying and emendation as well as the continuity of the exemplars used. Argues for further…

Observes that scribes often used more than one exemplar. In the case of at least one CT manuscript (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 198), the scribe's addition of glosses from an exemplar apparently received late in the copying process resulted in…

For six essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature under Alternative Title.

Examines twenty-five CT mss in which "Gamelyn" appears and makes suggestions about the tale's relationship to the CT, arguing against the notion that early scribes included it on "wholly whimsical grounds." Its inclusion early in the textual…

Chaucer, Lydgate, and Henryson recognized a song's ability to excite and articulate passionate feeling and they invoke the idea of song in their works in ways that call attention "to the formal qualities of song itself." Zeeman inquires into "the…

Swooning in medieval literature points to a marked cultural contrast between medieval sensibilities and modern ones for which swooning is extreme and exceptional. This broad survey defines swooning as a "loss of consciousness, brought on by…

In their attention to language as "an active part of social life," the FranT, NPT, and ManT constitute a language group whose tales are deeply rhetorical in the sense that they look closely at how language works as "an entity, process or phenomenon,"…

MLT engages with ideas found in Latin and French treatises advocating crusade and assesses the rhetoric and practices of crusades, critiquing their mercantile aims, the ignorance of cultural differences dooming efforts to convert Muslims, and poor…

Pity's "double life" as person and quality "calls attention to the mechanics" of allegory and to one's "ordinary" experience of pity; through word play, pity is both dead to the frustrated lover and alive to others.

Examines fifteenth-century scribal responses to sexual language in the CT, noting that some manuscripts either replaced obscenities or added to sexual language. Observing that female narrators in the CT are restricted in their use of vernacular…

Explores intersections between the "new formalism" and the close study of the formal features of late-medieval manuscripts, surveying recent scholarship and focusing on analyses of Chaucer's Adam and the scribe Adam Pinkhurst. These analyses…

Essays examine influence of classical learning, Germanic and Old Norse cultures, and Romance languages on the development of medieval English literature and language. For essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for From Beowulf to Caxton under…

Variants in TC passages depicting Criseyde's fluctuating affections reveal the reactions of both early scribes and modern editors to ambiguity in Chaucer's language.

A report on a project creating a comprehensive textual collation between the text of TC in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 61 (Cp) and Barry Windeatt's 1990 edition of TC. Using Cp as a copy text, Windeatt not only attempted to reconstruct…

Examines Chaucer's use of the prefix "y"- in the history of the English language.

In the Ricardian period, English poets adopted strategies of indirection and displacement to comment on political power. The rulers' speeches in the KnT and the ClT reveal Chaucer's sense of power.

Challenges the identification of Adam Pynkhurst with Scribe B (the "label nowadays given to the scribe" of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts of CT). Surveys the history of identifying Pynkhurst as Scribe B, examines paleographical and linguistic…

Evidence that verses from Chaucer's Westminster tomb were transcribed, possibly on site, into copies of Stow's 1561 edition.

Briefly surveys uses of Ovid in late-medieval England, and compares Chaucer's and John Gower's engagements with Ovid's works and moralized version of them. Focuses on creative uses of Ovid in Gower's "Vox Clamantis" (Book 1), in the Pyramus and…

Applies psychoanalytical analysis to Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato," Chaucer's TC, and Robert Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," tying "literary neighbor relations to the social and political realities of the late Middle Ages."