Browse Items (16012 total)

An anthology of literature produced in Britain and Ireland in the Middle Ages: Celtic, Latin, Old English, French, and Middle English. The section pertaining to Chaucer (pp. 467-569) includes introductions to Chaucer's life and language, along with…

Surveys late medieval "attitudes toward alchemy" in order to establish their influence on CYPT. Although Chaucer's depiction is generally orthodox in its condemnation of alchemy, it derives language and details from treatises that promote the study,…

In a chapter called "Renaissance to Enlightenment, 1300- 1800," includes a section (pp. 68–71) entitled "Turn over the Leef and Chese Another Tale: The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387–1400), Geoffrey Chaucer" that describes CT, its innovations, and…

Chapter titles include "The Writer and His Age," The Poet's Craft," "The Shorter Poems," "Chaucer and Italy," and "The Canterbury Tales."-

Explores the importance of the "new history" for Chaucer criticism and for our idea of medieval literature in general. Examines interpretive models by historians such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Natalie Davis, and Carlo Ginzburg.

Isolates various religious formulae that are "more than mere line-fillers" in Middle English romances; they are significant in the vows and prayers.

Approached through anthropology, psychoanalysis, and theory of literary response, the two works resemble female initiation rituals.

There was a new tendency to assimilate paganism to Christian doctrine in medieval European literature. Emphasizing the influence of the sources and analogues of medieval Latin literature on Chaucer, Ebi discusses the meaning of the Alceste myth in…

Asserts that the label "Scots Chaucerian" clearly does not apply to William Dunbar, documenting the "meagerness of the evidence of Chaucer's influence on him" and demonstrating that Dunbar's poetry is "completely continental" rather than Chaucerian.

Argues that the source of ShT is Boccaccio's "Decameron," and that their several differences were "made necessary by Chaucer's alteration of the ending." Chaucer gave his tale the "superficial appearance of a French fabliau" in order to critique the…

Linking the idea of intention to the moral self in the medieval understanding of the subject, considers TC along with Margery Kempe and "The Testimony of William Thorpe."

Treats (1) the theme of poetry in Dante's "Purgatorio," (2) why Ulysses is in hell, (3) FranT, (4) ManT, (5) "Unaccommodated Man" in "King Lear," (6) The imaginative and the real in "Antony and Cleopatra," and (7) Shakespeare's dramatic illusion in…

An anthology of sources and analogues of MilT, RvT, MerT, and ShT, with more limited analogous materials for SumT, ManT, and FrT, in all cases providing facing-page translations of non-English materials. Each section includes an introduction that…

Mentions HF 1321-22 as an early example of the role of heralds in the fifteenth century as "court publicists."

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."

Feminist criticism has changed perceptions of the Wife of Bath. Feminist critics perceive her not as a superficial and "garish caricature" of womanhood but as a serious person attempting to establish her identity, rejecting antifeminist tradition,…

Like individual tales, the links of The Canterbury Tales exist in several authorial versions, indicating that Chaucer prepared several versions of the whole during his lifetime. Thus, the notion of a single manuscript stemma is impossible or…

In CT, sentences are interlinked. Structures are repeated: MilT is a bawdy version of KnT; RvT, a nasty version of MilT. The structure may reflect interlinked concepts in the Great Chain of Being.

The authors review previous scholarship concerning Cambridge MS. Dd.4.24 and evaluate the linguistic stratification indicated by orthographic variants. They argue that the manuscript appears to date from the late fourteenth century, that it…

Treats the motif of wish-fulfillment in WBT, KnT, FranT.

Explores how the concern with vision as a way of knowing is a concern in a variety of medieval dream visions, including "Pearl," "Piers Plowman," and HF.

Analyzes the list of trees in KnT and discusses as counterpoint the lists in PF. Contends that KnT refigures the trope of epic listing to insert a tragic tone into Chaucer's retelling of Boccaccio's "Teseida."

Challenges the universal applicability of the "organic" ideal (form equating to content) of New Criticism, arguing that it is applicable to modern novels but not earlier narratives. Explores Chaucer's and his audience's "lively consciousness of his…

Argues that social identity is fundamental to description of each pilgrim and determines how each is presented; examines how Chaucer presents himself in rhetorical terms, with particular reference to the "diminutio" of GP 745-48.

Suggests that readers most identify with Pandarus in TC because he embodies the type of the folkloric trickster.