Surveys medieval and early modern study of alchemy and writing about alchemy, with particular attention to its obscurities of language and limited potential for progress. A section called "Playing with Obscurity: Chaucer's Manipulation of the 'Tabula…
Hopkins, Amanda, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton, eds.
Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2014.
Collection of essays explores British medieval sexuality and sexual expression in literature. Examines fabliaux and romances of Chaucer, Gower, and Malory; alchemical texts; and satirical poetry of William Dunbar. The Introduction (pp. 1-11)…
Bellis, Joanna.
Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2016.
Examines the narrative and linguistic effects of the Hundred Years War, and claims that the war functions similarly to the Conquest of 1066 as an event that shapes a relationship between word and war and emphasizes the mimetic relationship between…
Mooney, Linne R., and Estelle Stubbs.
Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2013.
Comprehensive study of scribes from the London Guildhall responsible for copying Chaucer's earliest manuscripts, including Adam Pinkhurst, Guildhall scrivener from 1378-1410.
Hanna, Ralph, III, intro.
Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 1989.
A reproduction of the rare 1911 facsimile. Hanna's critical introduction treats manuscript preparation, accuracy, scribal practice, and the value of the Ellesmere in textual matters.
Comments on various aspects of KnT and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (sources, dates, verse forms, etc.), discussing most extensively their uses of rhetorical devices. Finds KnT to be inferior because in it "form dictates to matter" and because…
Kohl, Stephan.
Roderick J. Lyall and Felicity Riddy, eds. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Scottish Language and Literature (Medieval and Renaissance) (Stirling/Glasgow: Department of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow, 1981), pp. 285-98.
Aruges that in its depiction of love Henryson's "Cresseid" is more a Renaissance poem than a medieval one. Though its subject matter and verse form follow Chaucer, the poem gives license "to love a human being for his or her own sake--not for God's…
Fradenburg, Louise O.
Roderick J. Lyall and Felicity Riddy, eds. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Scottish Language and Literature (Medieval and Renaissance). (Stirling/Glasgow: Department of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow, 1981), pp. 177-90.
Questions the nature and extent of Chaucer's influence on the "Scottish Chaucerians," since most medieval literature is simultaneously derivative and innovative. The "Kingis Quair" of James I (viewed here in the context of the Selden manuscript) is…
Nakamura, Tetsuko.
Roger Ellis and Rene Tixier, eds. The Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age, 5 ([Turnhout, Belgium] : Brepols, 1996), pp. 322-33.
Surveys eighteenth-century translations of portions of Chaucer's CT, examining Ogle's translation of ClT as an example in which the translator adapted the original to contemporary taste. Ogle's Walter and Griselda are a couple with human feelings…
Dor, Juliette.
Roger Ellis and Rene Tixier, eds. The Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age, 5 ([Turnhout, Belgium]: Brepols, 1996), pp. 376-89.
Examines the differences between Chaucer's poverty prologue to MLT and its source, Innocent III's "De miseria condicionis humane," attributing these differences to the influence of Renaud de Louen's "Livre de Mellibee et Prudence," which Chaucer…
Koff, Leonard Michael.
Roger Ellis and Rene Tixier, eds. The Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age, 5. ([Turnhout, Belgium]: Brepols, 1996), pp. 390-418.
Briefly sketches a medieval philosophy of animal language in relation to medieval notions of translation as a communal ideal. In ClT, Chaucer presents translation as a form of revelation; in SumT, it is transgressive; in KnT, a kind of disguise. In…
Phillips, Helen.
Roger Ellis and Ruth Evans, eds. The Medieval Translator, 4. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, no. 123. (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1994), pp. 86-103.
Compares the diction of Chaucer's Ven with that of its sources (three of Otto de Graunson's ballades) to explore how Chaucer reconceived "what de Graunson had written for a male speaker as an expression of a woman's feelings." The speaker of the…
Machan, Tim William.
Roger Ellis, ed. The Medieval Translator: The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages. Papers read at the University of Wales Conference Centre, Gregynog Hall, 20-23 August 1987 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989), pp. 55-67.
Evaluates Chaucer as a translator according to the theories and principles of translation current in Chaucer's day.
Windeatt, Barry
Roger Ellis, ed. The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Volume I: To 1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 137-48.
Surveys Chaucer's career as a translator and the varieties of his "translational practice," focusing on his literal translations and how his "guise of the slavishly faithful translator" sometimes enables his "transformative adaptation." Considers…
Medcalf, Stephen.
Roger Ellis, ed. The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Volume I: To 1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 364-90.
Surveys the tradition of medieval translation from Latin into English, commenting on Continental mediators and awareness of Greek literature. Focuses on translations of Boethius (including Chaucer's) and those of Apollonius of Tyre, treating them as…
Harding, Wendy.
Roger Ellis, Rene Tixier, and Bernd Weitemeier, eds. The Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age, 6. ([Turnhout, Belgium]: Brepols, 1998), pp. 194-210.
Assesses Chaucer's transformation of ClT in his process of translating his sources, focusing on the imagery of clothing. Through his alterations of the clothing motif, Chaucer disclaims the traditional notion that translation is merely superficial…
Norton-Smith, J[ohn].
Roger Fowler, ed. Essays on Style and Language: Linguistic and Critical Approaches to Literary Style (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), pp. 157-65.
Explores Chaucer's "reading and use" of the genre of verse epistle, drawing on evidence from LGW, the two letters in TC, Scog, and Buk. Considers the influence of Ovid's "Heroides" and Horace's "Satires" to argue that Chaucer was adept in the Ovidian…
Reisner, M. E.
Roger L. Emerson, Gilles Girard, and Roseann Runte, eds. Man and Nature: Proceedings of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 1 (London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario, 1982), pp. 185-98.
Demonstrates that details of dress in William Blake's "Canterbury Pilgrims" derive from the monuments in Westminster Abbey. Focuses on Blake's depictions the Pardoner, Prioress, and Wife of Bath.
Travis, Peter W.
Roland Hagenbuchle and Laura Skandera, eds. Poetry and Epistemology: Turning Points in the History of Poetic Knowledge (Regensburg: Pustet, 1986), pp. 30-45.
Chaucer's only beast fable, through the catalyst of parody, transforms a "literary primer" to achieve artistic freedom from past determinants. NPT "is an epitome of what Foucault calls the archaeological text," containing every major concern and…
Kaempfer, Lucis.
Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), pp. 105-19.
Examines joy in TC--looking forward to it in Books 1 and 2, experiencing it in Book 3, and remembering it in Books 4 and --as aspects of Troilus's identity and of the poem itself. Anticipated joy shapes the characterization of Troilus as a courtly…
Morgan, Gerald.
Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), pp. 121-53.
Explicates the rhetorical, conventional, and philosophical aspects of the combination of physical beauty and moral virtue in Chaucer's portrait of Blanche in BD, "a triumph of the poet's art." Clarifies similarities and differences between Chaucer's…
Dwyer, Seamus.
Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), pp. 193-208.
Surveys critical attention to Adam and reads the poem as an exhortation to "moral and professional penitence." Focuses on "corect," "rubbe," and "scrape" as scribal activities and as metaphorical links to penitential erasure in Chaucer and other…
Hanna, Natalie.
Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), pp. 229-49.
Questions how and to what extent recurrent mention of Hector in TC helps to characterize Troilus as a knight. Instances and collocations of "knight," "worthy," related terms, and references to Hector, generally not found in Chaucer's source text,…
