Browse Items (16371 total)

Cannon combines Marxist and Hegelian ideas of "form" to argue that "form is that which thought and things have in common" (5), enabling a valuation of form as a record of thinking in and about a culture. Formalist criticism (in this sense) of Middle…

Although Chaucer's version of the Griselda story closely follows that of Petrarch, ClT makes the marquis less sympathetic and Griselda more so.

When the Griselda legend first appears in English literature, in ClT, Griselda is praised for her patience. In subsequent versions, as the centuries pass, her patience loses its moral worth and comes to be equated with unhealthy submissiveness.

Verbal echoes and character parallels such as the Wife's hag and the Friar's yeoman/fiend indicate that the Friar's purpose is parody. He uses his theme of moral "maistrie" to debunk the Wife's marital "maistrie." His view of human nature is…

Assesses the ecopoetics of the Celtic underworld in the "Immram Brain," "Tochmarc Étaíne," and the "Mabinogi" as background to green-world concerns in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Closes with commentary on parallel concerns in the opening of…

Some northernisms in RvT have been dismissed as quasi-northern or as scribal misreadings. However, these forms are genuine attempts by post-Shift southern scribes to reflect a pre-Shift northern pronunciation.

As reflected in ShT, medieval urban space allows the powerful to exert political influence by converting capital into noncommercial culture.

Examines tapestries dealing with the story of Troy from the fourteenth century onward.

Identifies parallels between TC and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," treating plot, theme, and characterization, and regarding the two works as tragedies of false gentilesse or gentility.

Includes graphic adaptations of great works of western literature. Contains brief introduction to CT, with example of Seymour Chwast's WBPT.

Anthologizes selections from international graphic literature, including an adaptation of WBPT by Seymour Chwast (pp. 293-304).

Line-by-line, phrase-by-phrase commentary on the grammar and lexicon of CkPT, presented as a series of notes to a reprinting of the text from F. N. Robinson's 1957 edition.

Praises E. Talbot Donaldson as a great textual scholar, using TC to explain Donaldson's ideas on rhyme and meter and discussing the final -"e" and the five-stress verse. The reliability of scribes is examined.

Assesses previous explanations of the "greyn" placed on the clergeon's tongue in PrT (7.662ff.), including comments on analogues, and suggests that it is best understood as a "grain of paradise," i.e., the seed capsule of Aframomum melegueta…

Suggests that the "greyn" placed on the clergeon's tongue by the Virgin in PrT 7.662 may represent that his "disembodied spirit [was] restored for a time," offering contextualizing background from biblical, classical, and medieval scientific sources…

Item not seen. Identified in WorldCat as a modern reworking of CT set on a twenty-first-century train trip from Chicago to Memphis to visit Graceland, home of Elvis Presley, with characters and tales adapted from Chaucer.

Surveys the "history of Gower's reputation," beginning with Chaucer's reference to him as "moral Gower" at the end of TC and his possible allusions to Gower's works in ManT and MLP. The idea of a "quarrel" between the two poets is perhaps…

HF seems a transitional and occasional poem but is unfinished and experimental, under contemporary Italian literary influence.

After the anonymity of earlier times, fourteenth-century writing reveals increasing individuation and attention to the gender of an author. Chaucer's fictional women writers indicate an anxious sense on his part of declining "auctoritas, whereas…

Chaucer's use of worthy and the many ways CT plays with questions of value lead to a reading of CT in which SNT exemplifies the highest value in human living-holiness-and joins ParsT to challenge all other values and narratives.

Historical novel in which the setting, plot, and first-person protagonist, Eleanor (later Alyson) are based on WBPT, with many characters adapted from history and from CT, including Chaucer. Includes a glossary, list of historical characters,…

Introduces the conventions of "impersonal" style based in classical rhetoric and developed in medieval rhetorical handbooks Then anatomizes the characteristics of Chaucer's descriptive techniques in relation to his "predecessors and contemporaries,"…

Holliday considers Eric Gill's wood-engraving illustrations to The Canterbury Tales (4 vols., Golden Cockerel Press, 1929-31) in light of Gill's collaboration with Robert Gibbings (owner of the press), the legacy of Edward Johnston (Gill's teacher of…

Argues that "linguistic irony which results from [an] extended pun on 'amor'" runs throughout CT, supported by the diction and imagery of gold. Spiritual love is associated recurrently with positive images of gold; earthly love, with negative ones.

Traces the uses and development of personified Nature in classical and medieval traditions, focusing on Boethius, Bernard Silvestris, Alain de Lille, Jean de Meun, and Chaucer's relations with all of them in PF. Following tradition, Chaucer presents…