Brown, Peter.
Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen, eds. Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry. King's College London Medieval Studies, no. 5 (London: King's College Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1991), pp. 143-74.
Examines the details and style of Beryn, arguing that it was written to complete CT and that it capitalizes on several of its narrative and stylistic features. Suggests that Beryn was composed by a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, perhaps in…
Following the example set in V. A. Kolve's Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, Brown develops the mimetic and iconographic relations of the prison in KnT and the castle in Roman de la Rose.
Brown, Peter.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 231-43.
Three medieval optical authorities possibly known by Chaucer--Alhazen, Witelo, and Bartholomew--provide parallels for the visual deceptions at the end of MerT, which reflect the medieval tradition of "perspectiva."
Brown, Peter.
Ph.D. diss., 1981. University of York, England.
Medieval universities taught "perspectiva," or optics, important in literary realism. Chaucer's use of light, vision, and space parallels passages in optical texts and becomes thematic in CT, fragments G and A. Jean de Meun, Dante, and Boccaccio…
The conception of the action of RvT in three dimensions is designed to provide more than narrative realism. By reducing the miller's area of influence, Chaucer represents metaphorically his being cut down to size by the students.
An "interactive" introduction to CT designed for classroom use. Provides for GP and select tales contextual materials from sources and analogues, rhetorical and visual traditions, and contemporary resources, guiding students in their considerations…
Brown, Peter.
Peter Brown, ed. Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 22-50.
Argues that Middle English dream visions from the second half of the fourteenth century allowed writers to experiment with altered states of consciousness and liminality. Discusses French and Middle English dream visions, including BD, HF, LGW, and…
Brown, Peter.
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1999.
Six essays by various authors on dreams in medieval and early modern literature. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Reading Dreams under Alternative Title.
Questions the traditional gloss of "shot wyndowe," arguing that the words refer to a window that opens inward, that is unglazed, and that, in MilT, is a window to a privy.
Brown, Peter.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 27 (2005): 261-67.
Brown describes a "recent crisis" that threatened the survival of the Canterbury Centre for Medieval and Tudor Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Brown, Peter.
Oxford and New York : Peter Lang, 2007.
Brown traces classical and medieval study of optics in various kinds of writing, arguing that in the late Middle Ages the science of "perspectiva" became part of intellectual consciousness, influencing Chaucer and several of his models (Jean de Meun,…
Brown, Peter.
Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1418 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1:191-207.
Describes late medieval literary production in the city of Canterbury and explores its literary affiliations, ummarizing its place in early English Christianity and the impact of Becket's martyrdom. Highlights works produced in Canterbury or written…
Includes previously published essays on English medieval writers, including Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, and Ranulph Higden. Contains one unpublished essay, "Towards a Bohemian Reading of Troilus and Criseyde." Topics are divided into subsections:…
Brown, Peter.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 11-25.
Details the extant evidence for Chaucer's travel, both in England and abroad, noting that all known travel is for the court, if we define it as "the various royal households with which Geoffrey Chaucer was associated." Explores countries and places…
Brown, Peter.
Peter Brown, ed. A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c. 1350--c.1500 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 307-21
Explores relations between the late-medieval debate on religious images and imagery in literature, including detailed assessment of the portrait of Chaucer that is included in manuscripts of Thomas Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes." Assesses the…
Brown, Richard Danson.
Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith, eds. Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 113-36.
Argues that the Spenserian stanza "rebuilds Chaucerian rhyme royal" and that it "demands to be read as a form which takes its syntactic impetus more from rhyme royal than elsewhere." Examines aspects of rime riche, "interconnected" rhymes across…
Twelve chapters assess why so many poets have been drawn to Ovid's Metamorphoses as a source of inspiration. Although its intrinsic richness and complexity provided the original impetus for its popularity, its permeation of so much English literature…
Brown, Sarah Annes.
Translation and Literature 13 (2004): 194-206
Surveys versions and adaptations of the Philomela-Procne-Tereus story from Euripides through Timberlake Wertenbaker's "Love of the Nightingale" (1988), observing overt and submerged motifs of incest and lesbianism. In LGW, the motifs are underscored…
Brown, W[illia]m J.
University of Colorado Studies. Series in Language and Literature 10 (1966): 15-22.
Argues that the dramatic interchange between the Miller and the Reeve in MilP "anticipates every important argument in Chaucer's formal defense" of including the ribald MilT in CT. Together the two "apologies" constitute a "richly comic but…
