Browse Items (16012 total)

NPT, adapted and illustrated for juvenile audience.

An illustrated adaptation of NPT for children, with added characters and significant changes to the plot. Illustrated by Marc Davis.

Adaptation of NPT in Modern English pentameter verse, designed for staging by a cast of seven, with a brief introductory note for performance and stage directions. The frame-story characters are pilgrims who decide to "dramatize the Fox and…

Item not seen. The WorldCat records indicate that this is a vocal score for children's opera, with lyrics derived from the NPT by Peter Westmore.

Musical score that adapts NPT, with lyrics in Modern English. Libretto by M. C. Richards. Composed, with additional lyrics and vocal score by Seymour Barab.

Item not seen. The WorldCat record indicates that this is a series of songs, adapted from NPT, for "unison or 2-part children's choir accompanied by violin, recorders, percussion, piano, and guitar." Duration: approximately 20 minutes.

Latin, rather than OF, sources, especially the twelfth-century "Isengrimus," provide parallels with NPT. The fifteenth-century Low German "De vos und de hane" was derived orally from the "Isengrimus." Possibly Chaucer heard an analogous English…

Mandeville's "Travels," Chaucer's CT, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" together established the "narrative strategies and structural patterns" of English travel literature, impelling the formation of the "space imagination, subject consciousness,…

Using scientific chaos theory to clarify the changeable complexity of CT, Thundy argues that disunity is a fundamental feature of the work. Also argues that the Persian poem Manteq-at-Tair ("Language" or "Parliament" of the Birds), by Farid-ad-Din…

Addresses "source relationships of geographical matters" in Chaucer. Chaucer's cosmography and its sources, and other "geographical matters," arguing that Chaucer "makes more frequent use of geography than do most of his contemporaries." Focuses on…

Explicates numerous details of GP to demonstrate Chaucer's techniques of characterization. Includes significant attention to the Wife of Bath, the Physician, the Host, and others.

Speed gives a careful reading of FranT based on the Franklin's statement of contradictory intentions in his prologue: to tell a Breton lay and to render his tale plain and simple because he has never studied rhetoric. Presenting a romantic fairy…

Argues that the WBT is appropriate to the "Marcien" Wife, who represents a rising social class that challenges the "old courtly privilege." This class challenge parallels the Wife's sexual challenge, and her speech on "gentilesse"--a "complaint…

Traces the development of characterization in representative works of English literature from the Middle Ages to Joyce and Lawrence, emphasizing the change from universalized figures to individual psychology. Includes a chapter entitled "Women by…

The romances of Chretien and Chaucer introduced the psychologically self-conscious character into medieval literature. KnT and TC make a distinction between the socially defined male, and the psychologically individualized female.

The Miller's narrative manner is adapted to the level of discourse expected of his social status. The disorganized syntax suggests a disorganized world view.

Through the virtue of hope and a sense of penance, Troilus's courtly love and death in TC parallel divine love and salvation, showing the influences of Dante's "Commedia" and Boethius's "De consolatio philosophiae."

Chaucer's characterization is sophisticated. The monk, merchant, and wife are complex personalities rather than flat stereotypes. The merchant is not duped or punished because of character flaws; he has none. The tale emphasizes the success of the…

Praises the "high organic unity" of MilT, attributing it to effective characterization of the major actors: "by making him 'hende' in one sense or another, Chaucer has motivated each incident of the plot involving Nicholas; and similarly, he has…

Chaucer is consistent in keeping an unsympathetic attitude to abnormal love and boldly cuts off the "revenge" part of the story of Tereus and Procne.

Argues that Chaucer's characterization of the lovers in TC is marked by their relationships with public opinion, especially with that of "the impersonal mass of Trojans and Greeks" who are the "anti-characters" of the poem. As fortune turns against…

Argues that Chaucer's representation of the widow in FrT anticipates the "cursing hag" of Early Modern tradition, especially in responding to the summoner's refusal of her request for charity. The curse and the summoner's refusal to repent help to…

Collects ten essays by various authors and an introduction by Perry, together showing that, in his "Fortunes Stabilnes," Charles d’Orléans was "one of the great formal innovators of English poetry," examining the genres he engaged, his metrical…

Explores possible influences of Chaucer's dream poems on the works of Charles of Orleans, especially on the dream episodes in the English poems of British Museum MS Harley 682 attributed to Charles. Similarities in pattern and verbal detail may have…

Concerns Chaucer's authorship of Astr, and "what that instrument contributes to Chaucer's idea of travel.