Browse Items (16320 total)

Argues that ClT, using "distinctively Gowerian terms" such as "corage" and "visage," is Chaucer's response to Gower's perceived challenge at the conclusion of the "Confessio Amantis" for Chaucer "to drop his well-known political reticence and take a…

Argues that "alone of the three 'fathers of English poesy [Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate],' Gower openly grapples with an acute awareness of the cultural centrality of a concept that extends from a betrayal of love's intimacy to social, political, and…

Finds "ideas of mortality, the end of life, and the end of storytelling . . . closely linked" in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Argues that the work leads the narrator, the poet, and the audience to a conclusion in which all "can share in his hope of…

Collects sixteen essays from the Third International Congress of the John Gower Society and divides into three groups: Part 1, "Knowing the Self and Others"; Part 2, "The Essence of Strangers"; Part 3, "Social Ethics, Ethical Poetics." The collection…

Examines the ways in which Gower and Chaucer use their source material differently. Gower uses Ovid to emphasize morality while Chaucer uses Ovid to explore both the courtly and the romantic.

Addresses connections between Boccaccio's "Decameron" and CT, with particular focus on ShT, MilT, and WBT. Presents a "hermeneutic argument" that explores areas including "alchemy, domestic spaces, economic history, folklore, Irish/English politics,…

Argues that Aristotelian theories of matter, form, and substance interact with medieval poetics, particularly in such works as ManT, SqT, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and those of Hoccleve and Metham.

Discusses the two marginal dragons found in the Ellesmere manuscript of CT, arguing that, like dragons in bestiaries and iconography, they "symbolize the marvelous," but in addition they also "prompt readers to attend to the marvelous aspects of…

Explores scribal errors in copying and comprehending details regarding classical characters and classical allusions in poetry, and how poets' phrasing implies awareness of those risks and seeks to mitigate them. These problems in transmission reveal…

Establishes that scribes are less likely than otherwise to introduce their own spellings of words that occur in initial position in verse lines, exploring why in psycholinguistic terms, and suggesting several implications for manuscript study. The…

Considers literary completeness, its relations to philosophies of perfection, and "the ways in which incompleteness is a special characteristic of Middle English literature," particularly in manuscript studies. Surveys kinds of incompleteness in CT,…

Explores the "compositional choices" made in the compilation of the texts included in San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 114, and maintains that TC (among others) was copied early and incorporated into this larger collection in response to a…

Examines the treatment of books as physical objects in the works of Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve, suggesting that this treatment may create a way of perceiving the text on the part of the reader.

Focuses on how manuscript compilations, especially biblical materials, are evoked in CT. Argues that a strictly historical arpproach to this material is inadequate and examines how an author can use the material form of books for specific literary…

Explores the "various degrees of control" exerted by medieval vernacular poets over the production of their manuscripts, maintaining that evidence from the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts indicates Chaucer "was clearly not moving expeditiously…

Focuses on aspects of the cultural situations of the medieval book. Examines elements of bibliography, social context, linguistics, archeology, and conservation within a broader view of the theory and praxis of manuscript study. For an essay that…

Claims that line 11 is not parenthetical and that "so" is an adverb of degree, in "They sleep all night with their eyes open, nature pricks them so in their hearts." In line 176, "the space" means "in the meantime," and not the object of "held." As…

A collection of essays on the production, reception, and editing of medieval English manuscripts. For an essay on Chaucer, search for Pursuing Middle English Manuscripts and Their Texts under Alternative Title

Contemplates the category of "the literary" in medieval English texts, surveying prior attempts to define or describe the category and indicating their utility. Comments on a range of Chaucerian topics, including the "cunningly self-authorizing…

Thirteen essays by various authors consider new and traditional conceptualizations of medieval English language and literature. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Imagining Medieval English under Alternative Title

Considers how manuscript evidence informs our understanding of Middle English, addressing the value of autograph manuscripts and personal letters, the process of standardization, and the importance of sociolinguistics. Includes analysis of the habits…

Traces the use of the minuscule "a" in the Latin quotations of the Ellesmere manuscript to support the argument that these annotations derive from the ways Chaucer imagines the form of CT.

Describes Joseph Holland's "thoroughgoing renovation" of the Chaucer manuscript he owned in the sixteenth century (now Cambridge University Library, MS Gg 4.27), detailing how he imitated the corpus and presentation found in Thomas Speght's 1598…

Sketches "the mode of literacy" that "occupies a borderland just beyond the precincts of surviving evidence," exploring "the role of dictation" rather than "a sequence of errors in copying that stands between" versions of such texts as TC and "Piers…

Discusses the "relationship of engravings to narrative" in Eric Gill's woodcuts for the Cockerel Press four-volume edition of CT (1929–31), focusing on its frontispieces and "late or climactic moments in the tales," with b&w illustrations. Comments…