Combines a biography of Benedictine astronomer John Westwyk with contextualizing information about medieval science, technology, education, and innovation, particularly in the monastic settings of St. Albans Abbey and its Tynemouth Priory. Credits…
Pearsall, Derek.
Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1992.
Traces Chaucer's life and the development of his works in relation to court life and the affairs of contemporary London. Divides his life into six periods of professional activity and explores his changing status as a public servant, the growth of…
Chaucer's childhood was pleasant and stimulating. He was a close and lifelong friend of John of Gaunt. Alice Perrers was likewise his close friend and patron. Richard was an intelligent, sensitive ruler, more sinned against than sinning. In 1398,…
Shenk, Robert.
Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 2 (1981): 69-77.
Assesses "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" with recurrent glances at its analogues, Gower's "Tale of Florent" and Chaucer's WBT. The life question in the "Wedding" and in WBT "speak directly to a perennial feminine plight" (69), and in…
Chaucer's uses of the term trouthe (truth, integrity) indicate that he is a serious moralist, though sometimes ironic. Kane focuses on GP but also draws examples from FranT, CYT, Anel, and Langland's Piers Plowman.
Schaber, Bennet Jay.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1989): 3359A.
Through the application of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Schaber examines HF, BD, PrT, and PardT to determine the repressed objects, erotic and political, manifested as the body and understood as fantasmatic.
Steiner, Emily, and Candace Barrington, eds.
Ithaca, N.Y., and Londons : Cornell University Press, 2002.
Nine New Historicist essays by various authors, assessing the intersections of legal history and literature and addressing Robin Hood, the N-Town Trial play, The Owl and the Nightingale, alliterative poetry, Lollard preaching, and works by Chaucer,…
Gaylord, Alan T.
Mary Salu, ed. Essays on Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge: Brewer, 1979), pp. 1-22.
Modernist critics reduce Troilus' experience to sentimentality. They encourage us to pity the hero because he could not do otherwise. The lesson of TC is, on the contrary, that the characters in the tale (and we the audience) do indeed have choices…
Examines the Summoner in GP in connection with representations of leprosy and discusses the limitations of the digital manuscripts used to research findings.
Dugas, Don-John.
Modern Philology 95 (1997): 27-43.
Additions to MLT suggest Chaucer's concern with aristocratic power, particularly with "translatio imperii." Considered in the "context of the second decade of Richard II's reign," MLT "subtly legitimizes kingly authority."
Anderson, David.
Dissertation Abstracts International 40 (1980): 4585A.
The complex and suggestive analogies between the "Teseida" and Statius' "Thebaid" force a re-evaluation of the question "What did Chaucer do the the 'Teseida'?" in light of what Boccaccio had already done to the "Thebaid." The "Teseida" is modeled…
Argues that Chaucer's "occlusion" of Boccaccio as a source for TC and KnT is a complex affirmation of literary authority that asserts independence within a "genealogy of erasure." Statius, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer, and in turn Lydgate,…
Explores the narrator's "royalist" politics in MLT, arguing that they are "more incomplete" than the narrator thinks. Alla is presented as a good king, and the Sultan follows the trajectory of a typical "martyr king," although the teller…
Lachs, Stephen.
Western Folklore 19.1 (1960): 61-62.
Quotes PrT 7.684-86 at the beginning of a report about a "new version" of the information plaque at the tomb of Hugh at Lincoln Cathedral, one that castigates "Trumped up stories of 'ritual murders' of Christian boys by Jewish communities."
Anastasas, Florence H., trans.
Hicksville, N. Y.: Exposition Press, 1976.
Part I (pp. 3-84) is a modern verse translation of LGWP (F version) and LGW in rhyming iambic pentameter couplets; Part II includes an additional eleven poems written by Anastasas to complement Chaucer's work, with additional "legends" dedicated to…
Quinn, William A.
Carolyn P. Collette, ed. The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 1-32.
Quinn describes the "performance" features of each of the manuscripts and printed editions of LGW, exploring ideas of oral composition, performance theory, and performativity. Addresses how each witness to the text of LGW shapes the "protocols of…
Collette, Carolyn P., ed.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006.
Eight essays by various authors, with an index and an introduction by the editor, who argues that Alceste's mediation is central to LGW, a poem about the "public dimension of ideal female behavior." The poem is best understood in the context of late…
A murder mystery that incorporates details from Chaucer's life, featuring investigations of two murders, the involvement of Philippa and John of Gaunt, and Chaucer's interests in poetry and astrology.
Burton, T. L., dir.
Provo, Utah: Chaucer Studio, 1999.
Includes LGWP (F text) and the legends of Cleopatra (580-676), Dido (924-1367), Hypsipyle and Medea (1368-1679), and Phyllis (2394-2561). Read by Andrew Lynch.
McMillan, Ann, trans.
Houston: Rice University Press, 1987.
Literal Modern English translation with introduction (pp. 3-62) treating the catalogue tradition, classical heroines, Jerome, Boccaccio, Christine de Pisan, LGW, LGWP, and the victims.
Analyzes LGW as "a narrative treatise on the 'affect of invention,'" linking the processes of emergence that precede the mind's conscious recognition of emotion with the inventional processes which culminate in poetic art. LGWP introduces a method…
