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…
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."
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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.
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…
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);…
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…
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."
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…
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."
Argues that "as a better joke," "worly" is preferable to "worthy" in Tho (7.917). The latter appears to be "scribal normalization" of Chaucer's mocking of a "well-worn native" word.
Details two meanings of Chaucer's idea of "fame" in lines 1873-82 of HF: either living a "private, unnoticed life," or not looking for "glory as a poet." Compares Book II to Alexander's Pope's "The Temple of Fame."
One scribe included the "Tale of Beryn" in his copy of CT. The Prologue presents Chaucer's pilgrims after they arrive at Canterbury, and the tale is appropriate to its teller, a merchant. Argues that the "Beryn" author was "an intelligent and…
Defines "pronominatio" and traces its background in medieval rhetorical handbooks; then surveys instances in the works of Chaucer, Gower, and Skelton, analyzing individual uses that convey either praise or censure given to characters by associating…
Burt, Cameron Bryce.
Open access Ph.D. dissertation (University of Manitoba, 2019). Available at https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/xmlui/handle/1993/33853 (accessed November 14, 2021).
Argues that "the increasing alterity of Middle English texts in the early modern period compelled editorial interventions designed to make the texts accessible as well as to identify, to emphasize, or to establish the texts/ relevance to contemporary…
An international ranking which summarizes the lives and works of 100 writers. Chaucer is listed as number five (behind Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, and Tolstoy), and credited with a "fundamental redefinition of the possibility of poetic expression."
Burt, Kathleen.
South Atlantic Review 86, no. 1 (2021): 58-76.
Anatomizes the theme and structures of failure in CYPT, contrasting the Canon's Yeoman and Chaucer-pilgrim as narrators, and tallying ways that failure dominates the narrative: failed science, failed rhetoric, failed comedy, failed moralizing, and…
Cites and quotes a portion of Dorigen's "song" in FranT 4.857-94 as an early, pre-Romantic lyrical example of the "'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' effect" in poetry, a trope by which reference to a physical space links the inner concerns of multiple…
