Browse Items (16364 total)

Identifies several aspects of medieval legal discourse concerning rape and explores how they "inform the representation of rape" in RvT. Also assesses implications of modern resistance to recognizing the two rapes in RvT, viewing that resistance as…

Examines the narrative devices of WBP, classifying the Wife's oaths, metaphors, logic, euphemisms, and proverbs and suggesting that her appropriations of these traditional devices underpin her broader challenge to male authority.

Tallies devices in WBP whereby Chaucer sought to "criticize and belittle his own creation": blasphemy, intrusions of male discourse, contradiction, and various forms of distortion and exaggeration. But the Wife's "loud, polemical voice ... carries…

Treats the concept of tragedy in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, touching on TC and MkT.

Essays honoring the extensive career, range, and importance of Derek Brewer's influence on medieval English scholarship. For essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Middle English Literature under…

Examines several key terms in textual/editorial theory, exploring their application to various editions of Chaucer--Skeat's edition, Pollard's Globe edition, and editions by Zupitza, Koch, Manly and Rickert, and Robinson. The terms are used…

Analyzes the history of the OED's medieval portion, and emphasizes how Chaucer's "linguistic innovativeness" is shaped by the "substance of OED and MED quotations and definitions." Includes extensive appendix of OED's record of vocabulary in BD.

Argues that while quotations of Austen in the revised OED have increased in number overall, those of female authors are still extraordinarily low when compared to the canonical literary male authors: Shakespeare (c. 33,000), Walter Scott (c. 15,000),…

An edition of PF based on University of Cambridge Library MS Gg.4.27, with end-of-text textual and explanatory notes, modern punctuation, and original spelling. The Introduction (pp. 1-68) presents the poem as the "best of Chaucer's shorter poems,"…

Discusses representative examples of book-length studies of Chaucer written in the twentieth century (by Kittredge, Chesterton, Lowes, Dempster, Speirs, Donaldson, Muscatine, Payne, and Robertson); surveys several "main literary topics" in Chaucer…

Contemplates social status and social mobility in Chaucer's works, considering them in light of contemporaneous attitudes. Focuses on Chaucer's uses of "degree" and the ladder of degree as a "symbol of social mobility," inflected by Chaucer's comic…

Describes the conditions under which Chaucer developed his verse and prose styles, focusing on the former. Argues that English verse romances are the foundation of Chaucer's poetic style to which he "grafted" the continental traditions of "fin…

Surveys the reception of Chaucer as a poet, century by century, commenting recurrently on the understanding and appreciation of his rhetoric and meter, humor and moral seriousness, linguistic obscurity, relations with sources, characterization, and…

Examines the meaning and significance of "courtesy" in the works of the "Gawain"-poet, and includes comments on characterization (as a matter of role rather than personality) in Chaucer's works, along with an excursus on "hende" that focuses on…

Surveys the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French tradition of short love-visions, observes similarities between PF and Oton de Grandson's "Le Songe Saint Valentin," and emphasizes that Chaucer's originality most evident in two ways: his…

A textbook edition of selections from TC in Middle English (some 5000 lines), with an introduction and end-of-text commentary and glossary. Much of Book 4 is excluded (its Prologue of is included), and other passages reduced slightly. The…

Nine essays by various authors accompanied by a cultural timeline and a comprehensive index. For the individual essays, search for Chaucer and Chaucerians under Alternative Title.

Facsimile edition of William Thynne's 1532 edition of Chaucer's "Works," accompanied by selected additional facsimile materials from the editions that followed (by John Stow and Thomas Speght), including apocryphal materials, hard-word lists,…

Brewer surveys the presence (and absence) of music in Chaucer's work, suggesting that Chaucer knew its celestial, theoretical underpinnings and enjoyed its zesty, earthy pleasures.

Gauges Chaucer's familiarity with the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes, commenting on the English poet's use of "vavasour" to describe the Franklin and on his allusions to Lancelot, Arthur, and Gawain. Suggests the possibility that…

Examines the word "sad" in ClT to show that meaning and nuance in Chaucer's poetry derive, not from patterns of similarity or metaphor, but from metonymic contiguity, which functions much as does the "creative contiguity" of Gothic juxtaposition.…

Defines the private and social aspects of "honor" in Chaucer's works, exploring its relations with related concepts such as "worth," "worship," shame, gentility, heritability, and, for women, chastity. Focuses on TC and FranT, but comments on these…

An introduction to Chaucer's "life, times, and works" (originally published in 1953; 2nd ed. 1965) which attempts "to suggest (rather than to describe) something of the general quality of Chaucer's age, and to note the chief events of Chaucer's early…

Argues that children in Chaucer's works are generally depicted with "tender pity," discussing narratives in which children have relatively prominent roles: MLT, MkT, ClT, PhyT, and PrT.

Reprints, with a new title, the second edition of Brewer's Chaucer and His World (1977, 1978; 2d ed., 1992).