Browse Items (16479 total)

The medieval bagpipe was featured in Nativity scenes, depictions of angels, and royal occasions. The Miller's bagpipe was a soft, pleasant, courtly, even celestial instrument--in subtly ironic contrast to his character.

The instruments that January uses to solemnize his wedding in MerT are trumpets, the only instrument capable of making "loud mynstrancye."

Similarities between Chaucer and the Middle English mystics do not imply a conscious intention on his part either to imitate the mystics or to parody them ironically.

MkT is not fragmentary, although the Knight misunderstands its common fourteenth-century technique of closure. Boenig provides parallel examples from Chaucer and Machaut.

Like the "Cloisters Apocalypse," HF depicts the Day of Judgment. Both works "select, rearrange, and fragment" the biblical account of the apocalypse, reminding us that interpretation is necessary for sinners.

Discusses Chaucer's use of "Alma Redemptoris" rather than "Gaude Maria" in PrT, arguing that the choice may have influenced his characterization of the clergeon. The option was available in Chaucer's sources.

As found in "The Golden Legend" ("Legende Aurea") and the "South English Legendary," the life of St. Kenelm offers striking parallels with both PrT and NPT, in which Chaucer refers to it (7.3110-21). Kenelm was murdered at age seven, perhaps the…

Examines the almost ubiquitous assumption that hypocrisy is reflected in PardPT and suggests an alternative reading in which the Pardoner's words do not reveal his morality but parody WBPT.

Surveys medieval representations and understandings of the psaltery, a musical instrument, as background to reading its meanings in MilT. The psaltery clashes ironically with Nicholas's amorous escapades, and his playing it to accompany his singing…

For medieval poets, the "hyperreality of musical instruments" was "more significant" than was their reality. In "Beowulf," the harp signifies Hrothgar's agenda of political conquest and order; in Machaut's "Remedy of Fortune," the "instruments…

Reads C. S. Lewis's essay on TC, "What Chaucer Really Did to 'Il Filostrato'" (1932), as an index to how Lewis adapted H. G. Wells' novel "The First Men in the Moon" in his own "Out of the Silent Planet." Because of Chaucer's changes to Boccaccio's…

Contrasts the unequivocal hermeneutics of "eating a book"--i.e., internalizing the text of the Bible and its "one true meaning"--as depicted in the illustration of the Cloisters Apocalypse (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection, MS 68.174)…

Facsimile reproduction of Caxton's edition of Bo, reproducing STC 3199.

Assesses evidence of influence on Chaucer of Bohemian culture, focusing on transmission of this culture and on the "possible role" of Anne of Bohemia as influence on and "likely commissioner" of LGW, attending especially to the "queenly rulers" in…

A three-stanza poem in praise of the Virgin Mary--from a single leaf inserted after Lydgate's Life of Our Lady in Bodleian Library MS Bodley 120--alludes to or echoes SqT (5.347) and TC (5.1670).

Boffey and Edwards confront several scholarly and critical issues that pertain to LGW: date, occasion, sources and models, patronage, and the relation of the F and G versions of LGWP. The authors emphasize the variety in the legends themselves and…

The essay describes the "complex exercises in historical reconstruction" essential to bridge the distance between modern readers and Chaucer and his contemporary audience. Discusses Chaucer's literary production, his revisions, and scribal…

Surveys knowledge of and responses to HF from the earliest manuscripts and printed editions to Alexander Pope's adaptation, "The Temple of Fame" (1710), with commentary on early uncertainty about the title and author of HF, and on the "ways in which…

Outlines the numerous problems surrounding BD's dating, occasion, early transmission history, title, and text. Because of the small number and lateness of manuscript witnesses, BD evinces significant "textual uncertainty"; consequently, literary…

Examines the textual witnesses for issues of authorship and attribution, as well as the various forms in which Sted survives.

Rawlinson C.86 contains ClT and portions of PrT and LGW. Analysis of the manuscript reveals interests of the contemporary London audience and suggests that several booklets in the manuscript may have been produced on speculation.

Includes twenty essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors, examining textual, contextual, aesthetic, and cultural issues that relate to a wide variety of English lyrics from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. For three essays…

Nine essays by various authors, eight of which assess Chaucer's fifteenth-century legacy. For the individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry under Alternative Title.

Texts, notes, and introductions to Lydgate's "Temple of Glass"; James I of Scotland's "The Kingis Quair"; Charles of Orleans's "Love's Renewal"; "The Assembly of Ladies"; and Skelton's "The Bouge of Court". The general introduction and the…

Includes TC, Truth, Mars, Ven, PF, LGW, several pieces of Chaucerian apochrypha, and works by Lydgate, Hoccleve, James I, and anonymous authors (twenty-five works total). Eight color plates complement the sepia-tone facsimile, photographed in 1994…