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The Poetry of Praise
Burrow, J. A.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Burrow explores the functions and rhetoric of praise in classical, medieval, and Renaissance poetry, with commentary on its relative paucity in modern tradition. Focuses on medieval English panegyric verse, love poetry, and devotional poetry, with…
Vituperations in Chaucer's Poetry
Burrow, J. A.
Essays in Criticism 59 (2009): 22-36.
"Laus" (praise) and "vituperatio" (rendered by Chaucer as "sklaunder") find their way into medieval "ars poetriae." Using the "idiom of odium" (e.g., traditionally disreputable animals and bodily functions), Chaucer focuses on reporting angry…
The Portrayal of Amans in 'Confessio Amantis'
Burrow, J. A.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Gower's "Confessio Amantis": Responses and Reassessments (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 5-24.
In an analysis of Gower's combination of confession, "dits amoreux," and concern with old age in the "Confessio Amantis," observes a number of comparisons and contrasts with Chaucer: the individuation of Amans and of the lovers in TC, uses of the…
Old and Middle English Literature (c.700-1485)
Burrow, J. A.
Pat Rogers, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 1-58.
Illustrated survey of Old and Middle English literature, with recurrent attention to linguistic conditions and the development of literary genres and conventions. Includes many comparative references to Chaucer in the discussion of Middle English…
English Poets in the Late Middle Ages: Chaucer, Langland and Others
Burrow, J. A.
Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2012.
Reprints twenty-two of Burrow's essays on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century poetry, including several on Chaucer. Individual essays retain their original pagination.
Versions of 'Manliness' in the Poetry of Chaucer, Langland, and Hoccleve
Burrow, J. A.
Chaucer Review 47.3 (2013): 337-42.
Examines the connotations of "man," "manly," and "manhood" and discusses concept of "real" manhood for these three authors.
'Sir Thopas': An Agony in Three Fits
Burrow, J. A.
Review of English Studies 22 (1971): 54-58.
Adduces textual and rhetorical evidence to show that Tho divides into three fits of proportionately diminishing size: eighteen stanzas, nine stanzas, and four and one-half stanzas, achieving a "mathematical harmony of form."
Chaucer
Burrow, J. A.
Dyson, A. E., ed. English Poetry: Select Bibliographical Guides (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 1-14.
Discursive bibliography of Chaucer studies, including subsections on texts, critical studies and commentary, biographies, bibliographies, and background reading.
Ricardian Poetry: Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the "Gawain" Poet
Burrow, J. A.
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971.
Proposes the label "Ricardian" for the late fourteenth-century period of English literature and "looks at the four chief poets of the time . . . as a group," identifying their common stylistic features, rooted in earlier English tradition of…
"Listeth lords": "Sir Thopas," 712 and 833.
Burrow, J. A.
Notes and Queries 213 (1968): 326-27.
Dialectical analysis of "listeth" in Middle English indicates that in using the term to mean "listen" in Tho (particularly at 7.833) Chaucer alters his source and strikes for his London audience the "right jarring note" since that meaning was "no…
Nature in "King Hart."
Burrow, J. A.
Review of English Studies 66, no. 276 (2015): 624-33.
Considers how Nature brings forces to bear that "incline" Hart to feel and behave the way he does in "King Hart." Argues that Chaucer's Wife of Bath uses the same technical term when she says "I folwed at myn inclinacioun / By vertu of my…
Geoffrey Chaucer.
Burrow, J. A.
Claude Rawson, ed. The Cambridge Companion to English Poets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 20-36.
Introduces Chaucer's life and describes each of his major works in chronological order, identifying the French context of BD, the Italian travels and reading that influenced him later, the philosophical concerns of TC, and his self-representations in…
Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" as "Dits."
Burrow, J. A.
Cristina Maria Cervone and D. Vance Smith, eds. Readings in Medieval Textuality: Essays in Honour of A. C. Spearing (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016), pp. 157-68.
Argues that CT and Gower's "Confessio Amantis" take the form of French "dit" poems. Claims that both works fit the genre because they have "sufficient 'dit'-like features."
A Northern Pronunciation in Chaucer, Skelton, and Spenser.
Burrow, J. A.
Notes and Queries 261 (2016): 191-94.
Explains that imitations of northern pronunciations in RvT, preserved in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts, provide evidence that the shift of "a" from /a:/ to /ɛ:/ was underway in northern England during the fourteenth century. Notes similar…
The Title "Sir."
Burrow, J. A.
Essays on Medieval Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), pp. 69-78.
Documents that the honorific "sir" plus a "knight's name" occurs twelve times in Th and "not once elsewhere" in Chaucer's works, suggesting that, confined to a "burlesque context" and similar to historical French practice, this usage should be…
Irony in the "Merchant's Tale."
Burrow, J. A.
Anglia 75 (1957): 199-208.
Identifies various instances of irony in MerT, arguing that its "persistent irony" distinguishes the tale from Chaucer's comic fabliaux and aligns it with the "moral fable" of PardT. A poem of "clarity, critical observation, and disgust," MerT also…
Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative
Burrow, J. A. .
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Explores the functions and significances of "non-verbal signs" (glancing, pointing, winking, hand-clasping, kissing, bowing, etc.) in medieval literature, concentrating on Dante's Commedia, the romances of Chrtien de Troyes, Froissart's Chronicles,…
Medieval Futures : Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages
Burrow, J. A., and Ian P. Wei, eds.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y. : Boydell, 2000.
Nine essays by various authors on topics related to common attitudes toward the future in the Middle Ages, i.e., theories and practices rather than apocalyptic concerns. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Medieval Futures under…
A Book of Middle English
Burrow, J. A., and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds.
Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1992. 2d ed. 1996. 3rd ed. 2005.
An introduction to Middle English language, designed as a textbook with discussions of history, phonology, lexis, grammar, syntax, and meter. Includes a reader of fourteen (non-Chaucerian) texts, with brief notes and glossary.
Middle English Literature: British Academy Gollancz Lectures
Burrow, J. A., ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Includes nine Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lectures delivered since 1950, and one on Scots delivered in 1942. Reprints Dorothy Everett's "Some Reflections on Chaucer's Art Poetical" (1950), Derek Brewer's "Towards a Chaucerian Poetic" (1974), and…
Geoffrey Chaucer: A Critical Anthology
Burrow, J.A., ed.
Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1969.
A selection of critical responses to Chaucer's works from his late contemporaries until 1968. Mostly excerpted from longer works, the selections are arranged in three categories: "Contemporaneous Criticism" (Deschamps, Usk, Lydgate, and Hoccleve);…
Poems Without Endings
Burrow, John.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 13 (1991): 17-37.
Disagrees with modern critical arguments that CkT, SqT, HF, and LGW are intentionally open-ended. Surveys the textual history and continuations of these poems to show that recent opinions probably result from post-Romantic "taste for the…
Hoccleve and the Middle French Poets
Burrow, John.
Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone, eds. The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 35-49.
Although Hoccleve's poetry is in many ways "at a further remove than Chaucer from French formal models," some features of his verse suggest a "closer affinity," especially the holograph manuscripts that can be seen as single-author "collected poems."
The Third Eye of Prudence
Burrow, John.
J. A. Burrow and Ian P. Wei, eds. Medieval Futures: Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2000), pp. 37-48.
The image of Prudence's third eye signifies looking to the future and implies that such prudential anticipation of implications and outcomes had "moral and even spiritual significance." Discusses the image and its implications in TC and Mel, as well…
Chaucer as Petitioner: Three Poems
Burrow, John.
Chaucer Review 45 (2011): 349-56.
In Purse, For, and Scog, Chaucer employs the basic elements of an official 'supplicacio' "with great freedom, voicing them in a variety of unexpected ways."
