Browse Items (16476 total)

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…

Challenges the critical "platitude" that love and marriage are incompatible in Chaucer. Identifies a number of instances in Chaucer's works where love and marriage clearly coincide, and argues that TC is only an "apparent exception" in this regard.…

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…

Suggests intertextual connections among Hyginus's "Poetica Astronomica," Boccaccio's "De Genealogia Deorum," and aspects of Chaucer's Mars.

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).

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…