Browse Items (16364 total)

A word list from TC 4 shows that Chaucer invented new meanings by combining previously unconnected root words; however, someone else may have introduced those roots into the language.

The advance of the fabliaux in critical estimation is perhaps the major development of twentieth-century Chaucer studies. The fabliau--an "upper"-class genre ridiculing the buffoneries of the "lower" classes and clergy--flourished in…

The character types in Chaucer's comic tales spring from the popular Aristophanic tradition; "popular" here does not exclude the learned or learning. While the humor of the tales is ambivalent and derisive, it yet elicits acceptance and sympathy.

Comments on the ambiguities and implications of the ages of the protagonists in TC, considering evidence that indicates Troilus is "twenty or less," Criseyde, "several years older," and Pandarus, a "middle-aged trendy."

Explores the literary and historical implications of identifying "Soler Hall" in RvT (1.3990) as King's Hall, Cambridge. Favors the variant "Scoler."

Item not seen; cited in WorldCat.

Selection of critical writings from fourteenth century through 1933. Vol. 1 (1385-1837) contains remarks about Chaucer by Deschamps, Usk, Lydgate, Caxton, Dryden, Hazlitt, Blake, Crabbe, and Coleridge; vol. 2 (1837-1933) contains hitherto neglected…

An expanded revision of the 1973 edition, with one additional tale translated from French, three from Spanish, five from Middle English, three from German, six from Dutch (with three deleted), and one from Latin, for a total of eighty tales, songs,…

Twelve essays on a range of topics that consider Chaucer in light of his contemporary culture and literary tradition. For individual essays, search for Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background under Alternative Title.

In ABC, BD, and HF, uncertainty and duality-producing irony emerge as basic patterns that may be applied to all of Chaucer's poetry.

In Chaucer's works, the wide spectrum of Venus's portrayals, from mythographical Venus to planetary Venus, represents "some profound human problems in the relations of men and women" and contributes "significantly to the rich variety" with which…

Chaucer's remarks in the Prologue to LGW provide a guide to his poetic. The basic poles of reference are the inner point of the narrative itself and the outer details of the tradition in which it is realized, but Chaucer also introduces the…

TC is a dramatic monologue delivered by a narrator who is distinctly detached from Chaucer himself. Brewer reexamines the narrator's position and function in TC and the history of the concept of that narrator.

Certain characteristics of Chaucer's poetry resulted from the influence of the court of Richard II, but paradoxically "in reaction against Richard." Brewer refutes Gervase Mathews's claim for a high state of culture and its influence in the reign of…

Explores Chaucer's interest in the Bible and assumes that he possessed his own copy and read it seriously. Suggests that Chacuer's piety may be connected with the late-fourteenth-century courtly interest in Carthusian ideals.

Encased in a larger, comic vision of "potential human freedom and happiness," Troilus's tragic misfortunes acquire new meaning in Chaucer's TC, which is neither comedy nor tragedy but a "curious mixture" of the two.

Chaucer's style in his poetry, though not in his prose, is a special mixture of orality and literacy. Brewer analyzes characteristics of orality (with examples): formulas and set phrases, sententiousness, repetition with variation, metonymy,…

Places RvT in the context of oral literature: fluidity, a plot pattern more important than characters, fulfillment more important than suspense. RvT emphasizes the victory of young over old and shows no concern with moral values, except that "pride…

Discusses "orality" and "literacy," "familiar" and "learned" elements of Chaucer's style, including formulas, sententiousness, "repetition with variation," metonymy, hyperbole, and imagery.

Rebuts use of audience to privilege interpretation in Middle English romances. Rather than representing a historically authentic event, the Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 61 frontispiece of Chaucer reading to a court audience may be merely a…

Examines themes of literacy, orality, emphasis on the written word, and reading in BD, HF, PF, LGW. Chaucer is unallegorical, even in NPT. In reconstructing Chaucer, we must beware of approaches too technical that cut us off from a "feeling"…

Eight chapters on the genre of PF; the relationship of Chaucer to English and European traditions; metonymy in Chaucer's poetry; Chaucerian poetic; popular comic tales; NPT as story and poem; the poetry of the fabliaux; and Chaucer's rationalism. …

Treats the works of Chaucer, Langland, Malory, and the Gawain poet from the social and religious contexts of court and monastery, town and country.

General, introductory work in fourteen chapters on Chaucer's schooling, courtly life, literary traditions, BD, Chaucer as diplomat, HF and PF, from Boethius to Venus, KnT, TC, LGW, GP and CT, and Chaucer's last years.

Examines Chaucer's use of arithmetic--connected with money, towns, upward social mobility, government, the vernacular, astronomy-astrology, universities, commerce--in BD, HF, PF, TC, Astr, CT, GP, KnT, MilT, RvT, MLT, ShT, SumT, CYT, and Ret.