Browse Items (16474 total)

Considers how Edmund Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender" "influenced the reception and presentation of Chaucer in the late Tudor period," focusing particularly on how the editorial apparatus of Thomas Speght's "Works" influenced "two of the most…

Utilizes Peter Ackroyd's "'The Canterbury Tales': A Retelling" and argues that modern English prose translations of CT are valuable teaching tools for contemporary students.

Focuses on three letters that preface Thomas Speght's Chaucer editions, which "conceive, invite, and attempt to influence their audiences." Argues that these letters reveal that the intended audience included both the established audience for Chaucer…

Shows that "what is thought to be the earliest record of a Chaucer folio in North America in fact refers to a text by the Protestant theologian Daniel Chamier." Concludes "with a brief survey of other early American readers of Chaucer."

Explores the connections between two compilations produced by scribe John Shirley--Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20 and British Library, Additional MS 16165--suggesting that the manuscripts indicate John Lydgate's two different reactions to the…

Briefly describes Shirley's manuscript and the six essays included in the Colloquium.

Considers the "non-lyric French inclusions" in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20 as evidence of what "French meant to [John] Shirley" and what this indicates about fifteenth-century English reception of French literature.

Focuses on quire xix of Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20, showing how John Shirley connects Chaucer's Anel with the female-voiced French lyric tradition of skepticism about male courtly rhetoric.

Suggests that John Shirley's motives for his scribal activities were "commercial," rather than antiquarian or courtly, motivated by a "shared interest" with John Lydgate.

Includes essays that define current Auchinleck manuscript studies. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives under Alternative Title.

Analyzes the border illustrations and other codicological features of twelve manuscripts of the hooked-g group of manuscripts (including three CT manuscripts), using them to construct a "tentative chronology" of the dates of production and the…

Analyzes the paleography and spelling of the fifteen manuscripts belonging to the hooked-g group, including three CT manuscripts, identifying two separate scribes and several collaborators. Includes four tables, six b&w illustrations, and an appendix…

Argues that the scribe John Shirley cultivates a "virtual coterie" in the series of headnotes that he attaches to his copying of five French poems that he attributes (or misattributes) to William de la Pole, the earl of Suffolk. Shirley emulates John…

Establishes that scribe John Shirley lived in Westminster/London early in his career (in the 1390s) and therefore may have been familiar with Chaucer at the time, lending credibility to Shirley's opinions about Chaucer's works and their dates of…

Suggests that Chaucer engages the Boethian tradition in TC and HF, only to challenge (and ultimately reject) that tradition's ideas of self-regulation.

Examines echoes, resemblances, and differences between the evocations of Lucretia in LGW, BD, and CT, and German painter Lucas Cranach's portrait (1513) of the Roman paragon of wifely virtue. References to Chaucer's poems, its ancient sources, and…

Presents comprehensive overview of all three iterations of Langland's "Piers Plowman." Provides discussion of differences between Langland's characters and Chaucer's depictions of social characters in GP.

Claims that Chaucer contributes to the debate concerning the translation of the Bible into English through his exploitation of the Old Testament in MLT and WBT.

Collects essays that focus on the theme of death from the later heroic era to the eighteenth century. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times under Alternative Title.

Refers to the death-bearing rioters in PardT as an example of the theme, found in medieval art, of "death as living within" the body.

Discusses Chaucer's awareness of the plague and reference to it in his works, especially PardT.

Discusses the intersection of death, money, and elements of the Catholic mass in PardT. In the wake of the plague, the mass became closely associated with death because of the spreading practice of saying masses for the souls of the dead. The…

Examines Chaucer's engagement with his French contemporaries (e.g., Machaut, Froissart, Deschamps), suggesting that Chaucer may have adapted elements from those writers such as voice and form in establishing his own poetic authority.

Examines Horatian influence on works ranging from the Exeter Book to Langland, Gower, and Fragments VIII and IX of CT.

Connects the shapeless mass of flesh, which Christian baptism miraculously reforms into a baby in the Middle English romance "The King of Tars," with a bloodless mass described by Chaucer's contemporary Henry Daniel as an "elvysch cake." Claims that…