Browse Items (16470 total)

Anthologizes 54 selections and excerpts from the history of mathematics and related sciences from around the world, ranging widely in date from classics to the nineteenth century. Includes a selection (pp. 220-42) of a modernization of Astr, from R.…

Examines Chaucer's various uses of color expressions: metaphorical, contrastive, mixed, etc. Yoshimura argues that there is a gradual transmutation from simplicity to complexity in Chaucer's use of such expressions.

Eleven essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors focus on the codicology and metrical forms of Middle English romances; the volume includes an index. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Transmission of Medieval…

Chaucer's translative and appropriative practice in SNP is characterized by "a limited personal perspective transcended by an authoritative source," plus a movement from abstraction (particularly in Dante) to concreteness.

Explores cultural, prosodic, and personal aspects of translating selections from CT into Farsi verse, with sustained attention to GP, the translatability of Chaucer, and parallels between his work and Persian literature and culture.

Contrasts medieval and modern ideas of authorship, focusing on how Chaucer "treated old authorities in developing his own reputation and what strategies he employed to establish a harmony among the multiple authorial voices" in PF. Proposes that, for…

CT is a storytelling contest involving a drama of contrasting visions. It was intended to end not with ParsT but with a feast of celebration and judgment.

A novel about a modern-day transcriptionist who works for a New York newspaper. Obsessed by a recent suicide, her distrust of truth and language grows. Includes recurrent references to Chaucer and his works, most extensively in Chapter 6, "Chaucer's…

Three important omissions (including omission of ClP) strip the HM140 text of ClT of its "Canterbury" context. Whether these were deliberate excisions or a consequence of problems in production cannot be demonstrated conclusively.

Considers how "quyting" ("paying back or balancing") among the pilgrims enforces comic harmoniousness and balance in CT, despite the work's fragmentary structure. In addition, CT invites the reader to "'quyt' the author."

The lists of lovers in PF extend Chaucer's commentary on the common profit. The lovers cited all neglected their political and social responsibilities for love.

Describes a strong strain of morality in Chaucer's writing and emphasizes his "reticence" in expressing it. Then explores tragic dimensions of WBPT, focusing on Wife's early marriages (in comparison with May's and January's in MerT), her memory of…

Morgan contends that TC is coherent; it has no sudden reversals, palinodes, or "unresolved dialectics." He discourages attention to Andreas Capellanus's theory of courtly love and encourages viewing TC in light of Dante's "Commedia," demonstrating…

A collection of essays by Boitani, chiefly comparative.

Argues that KnT is "mainly about" the tragedy of Arcite rather than the success of Palamon. The latter mistakes both the nature of Emelye and the rivalry of Arcite, who is a "worthier" man. Like Troilus, Arcite falls in fortune, and ultimately fails…

Chaucer and Marie de France simultaneously contribute to the development of vernacular literature and subvert its conventions through parody, pastiche, and resistance to existing gender models.

Surveys English literature in Britain from Chaucer to ca. 1970, with the opening section (pp. 13-72) covering Chaucer's life, works, audience and reception, and his cultural environment--both historical and literary. Pays particular attention to CT,…

Late fourteenth-century traders' time of profit-making synchronizes with narrative time in Chaucer's tales, enabling the poet to articulate the relationship between time as physically experienced and Christian time, both linear and cyclical.

MilT's reference to Absalom's "having moore tow on his distaf" (I, 3774) adds another significance to its long recognized proverbial one when we realize that carrying a distaff with tow on it to the pillory was statutory punishment in Chaucer's…

Assesses the literary conventions and intellectual context of "The Court of Love," a sixteenth-century poem thought to be by Chaucer until the twentieth century. Emphasizes early modern modifications of medieval amatory verse, and includes comments…

Provides "some scholarly background information" about the Pardoner intended for teachers of high school senior English classes, summarizing studies by Tupper, Kittredge, Curry, and Patch, and focusing on why Chaucer may have invested this Canterbury…

Religious hypocrisy, so crucially the key to the Pardoner's success, had for a London audience of the 1390s an urgent topicality.

Argues that KnT is a heightened, courtly "particularization" of a fundamental aspect of the human condition: "the disorderly promptings of carnal love and their disastrous effects." Considers the imagery of the poem (Christian, Boethian, fire, and…

When Chaucer notes in GP that the Pardoner could "wel affile his tongue," he is referring to the tongue as a weapon, a source of "slander and destruction," as noted in Psalms 56 and 63. Critics who have translated "affile" as "polish" have misread…

An anthology of selections from medieval literatures that influenced J. R. R. Tolkien: Old English, Middle English, Old Norse, Celtic (Welsh and Irish), and Finnish. Includes RvT, NPT, and FranT (pp. 127-53), translated by John S. P. Tatlock and…