Browse Items (16472 total)

Suggests that Langland, Chaucer, and Gower represent political speech with the speech of animals, and argues that this device was later appropriated in anti-Ricardian discourse.

Considers depictions of wilderness in GP and ManT, along with works by Gower and Langland, as metaphors for undisciplined rulers.

Looks at confessional elements in works by Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve, ultimately arguing that such practice is central to an understanding of early English vernacular literature.

Addresses the "existence of a tradition that attributes 'Piers Plowman' to Chaucer." Surveys notes and items that contribute to Chaucer's and Langland's "reception histories."

Argues that the novel has a far-reaching international history, evident in early eighteenth-century works translated and published in Amsterdam and Leipzig such as "Les Mémoires de Madame la Marquise de Frêne," which shows not only proof of…

Based on student transcriptions of Borges' 1966 lectures. Chapters are divided into chronological class sessions; lecture topics begin with the fifth century and conclude with nineteenth-century writers. Describes the history of the English language…

Refers to P.R. Stephenson's deployment of Chaucer as a descriptor for early twentieth-century Australian poetry, noting his assertion of "Chaucerian" as shorthand for "a golden age of national self-confidence in which cosmopolitan sophistication…

Distinguishes between academic and popular versions of Chaucer, defining and discussing various categories of popular intertextuality: adaptations, appropriations, invocations, and citations--diminishing degrees of engagement with original works.…

Reflects on the importance of incorporating the "professional and popular" representations of CT to enhance classroom teaching of Chaucer. Films, including Brian Helgeland's "A Knight's Tale," Jonathan Myerson's animated "Canterbury Tales" trilogy,…

Discusses the eremitical image of Chaucer promulgated by Shirley and Lydgate in the context of efforts to promote solitary, contemplative modes of life.

Discusses Chaucer as the first English poet laureate in a larger argument for the political impetus behind the selection of Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Samuel Rogers, and Alfred Tennyson as laureate poets of the Victorian period.

Considers Harriet and Sophia Lee's "Canterbury Tales" as an eighteenth-century re-reading of CT. The moral and didactic character of the Lees' "Tales" made possible the inclusion of three of them in Spanish anthologies of 1800 and 1808, providing…

Refers to Elizabeth Gaskell's footnotes to "Mary Barton" that explain unfamiliar phrasing in terms of Chaucer and Langland, identifying them as evidence for the synchronic nature of the bigamous return plot in sensation novels.

Focuses on how CT influences English science fiction authors such as Margaret Atwood, James Gunn, and Dan Simmons. Also analyzes the "pilgrimage motif"; refers to HF, LGW, and TC; and discusses "Chaucerian science fiction" in South America.

Fourteen essays by various authors, plus an introduction, honoring the scholarship and teaching of Alan Gaylord. The essays mirror Gaylord's work and methods, including exegetical historicism, close reading, prosodic criticism, and pedagogy. The…

Chaucer's poetry should be declaimed or at least heard with the "mind's ear." His decasyllabic couplets, once dismissed by critics as "riding rhyme" and even confused with the doggerel of Th, are "eminently playable," offering a variety of…

Students of Chaucer's poetry can easily appreciate its sounds and syntactical patterns, and should examine for themselves issues such as the pronunciation of final -e. Prosodic analysis can also be applied to translated versions of Chaucer. Live…

Lydgate's meter differs from Chaucer's for several reasons, but their differences have been exaggerated by editorial practices. When performed, the "Lydgate" or "broken-backed" line emerges as an aesthetic choice. The broken-backed line characterizes…

Addresses Chaucer's Host as both character and rhetorical device. The Host's speech is characterized, in GP, by pauses, asides, and delayed rhyme, creating Lydgate (or "broken-backed") lines and a prosaic tone. The Host's speech also displays his…

Oral performance of ambiguous lines can illustrate their various possible meanings. Emphasizes how recordings and online materials can supplement student reading and performance, and how films can help readers visualize key moments. Costumes, props,…

Demonstration and performance, accepted aspects of classroom practice, can make academic conference presentations more memorable. Examples of performative practice include an enacted battle in KnT, created costumes illustrating the Wife of Bath's…

Includes a brief biography of Alan Gaylord and summary of his teaching career at Michigan and Dartmouth. Among the hallmarks of Gaylord's work are interdisciplinarity, a sense of playfulness, and the value of performance both within and outside the…

Discusses four versions of Arcite's death and focuses on the actions of the horses in each: in Boccaccio, as in Statius, divine interventions frighten the horses; Chaucer's Arcite falls due to both a god's intervention and his own pride; in Dryden,…

A comic completion, in mock Middle English, of CkT as a version of both Little Red Riding Hood and the parable of the Prodigal Son, with allusions to TC, GP and several stories from CT.

The Squire's digressive, complex tale may be understood as a reenactment of the creative process. Critics may be mistaken in trying to explain the significance of the four gifts, the falcon's distress, and other details, if the center of the tale is…