Browse Items (16318 total)

Masi investigates depictions of women in Chaucer's works compared to depictions in works of other authors, including Christine de Pizan, Aquinas, and Boethius. He links Chaucer's LGW and Pizan, suggesting that Eustace Deschamps may have been a…

Pugh describes a course plan that focuses on genre expectations and reversals, concentrating on romance in KnT and on the fabliaux of CT.

Chaucer views gentility as a matter of virtue rather than of birth or economics, reflecting contemporary shifts in aristocratic lifestyles. Italian influences and decreasing military service made it necessary for the aristocracy to redefine…

Several studies have suggested Chaucer's indebtedness to works by Giraldus Cambrensis. Comparison of passages from the "Topographia Hibernie" and HF support the claim that Chaucer used this particular Latin source.

Chaucer and Gower both saw life as a soul's endless journey. Both were concerned with the antipodal aspects of man's life. But Gower observed human conduct in light of moral and philosophical standards, while Chaucer never passed judgments.

The seven essays assess Gower and Chaucer as joint recipients of an antique heritage, as readers of (and borrowers from) each other's works, and as writers whose work reveals much about late-medieval attitudes toward language and about the constantly…

Assesses the "depiction of women as ethical signifiers" in Chaucer's and Gower's writings, summarizing the "multilingual and transnational networks on which both poets draw," exploring the "ethical valences" of gender (especially feminine) in their…

Explores how Chaucer addresses the sacred authority of hagiography, posing it in tension with the poet's own authority in LGWP, and examining authority and authorization in the "pseudo-hagiographies" of CT (MLT, ClT, and PhyT) where Chaucer…

Despite recurrent uncertainty, the location of "Bobbe-up-and-doun" mentioned in ManP is surely the same place as Harbledown.

Tallies parallels between James's "The American" and Chaucer's TC, including aspects of characterization (James "splits" Chaucer's major characters), plot, and diction.

Treats Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" as a sequel to TC, examining how its attitude and tone differ from Chaucer's work, largely as a result of differing styles, techniques, opinions, and points of view. Henryson's style and tone are harsher, and…

Ridley views certain aspects of hermeneutic study of Chaucer, in company with certain modes of classical rhetoric, to "help us better to understand both 'how' the poet crafted his poetry and 'why' as a medieval writer he did so."

In Japanese.

Chaucer's audience influenced his familiar material and subjects to convey his points. Their ability to evaluate and judge must have figured in his manipulation of truth and seeming in the stories. We must use their intended presence in responding…

Revisits the "authorship question" of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," exploring not what was composed by Shakespeare or by Fletcher, but rather the social tensions between characters found in KnT, the play's source, and those nameless ones of the "Jailer's…

Study guide to MilPT, designed for adolescents, with Middle English text and facing translation in modern verse and a variety of background materials: GP descriptions of Miller, Wife, of Bath, and Pardoner; an introduction to Chaucer's life and…

An anthology of previously published materials, including selections from Boccaccio (on the Black Death) and Froissart (on the Peasants' Revolt), essays on cultural backgrounds to the fourteenth century (imagination, technology, science, courtly…

Reprints the 8th edition (1950) of Coulton's 1908 critical biography of Chaucer, with a new bibliography by Craik (pp. 277-79).

Chaucer shares literary conventions with the writers of his age. Both he and Gower use framed stories, Chaucer exploiting to the fullest both frame and story. Langland and Chaucer share the use of symbols, but Chaucer's are more expansive. Chaucer…

Chaucer was influenced by his English contemporaries, particularly John Gower, William Langland, Thomas Chester, and the Gawain poet; yet he chose to seek new literary directions. Chaucer was on a pilgrimage of self-discovery and a quest for…

The "formes fixes" lyrics of Middle French, especially the ballade, are almost as influential for Chaucer's works as was the "Roman de la Rose." The "formes fixes"--ballade, rondeau, and virelay--were highly musical and connected with dancing.

A comprehensive analysis of the contemporary French influence on Chaucer, exploring lyric rather than narrative features and concentrating on the impact of "formes fixes." Wimsatt devotes individual chapters to Chaucer's literary relations with Jean…

Rebinding and rearrangement of John Dart's biography of Chaucer in one of the six seventeenth- and eighteenth-century editions of his work held in Paris, effectively reframe it as having been modeled "culturally and linguistically from French…

Argues that Chaucer adapts his first-person narrators throughout his career in order to explore aspects of the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. Chaucer achieves a greatest sense of objectivity when his subjective narrator is most…

Examines Chaucer's reception in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and its relation to the historical development of poetic identity. In their responses to and depictions of Chaucer, such writers as Lydgate, Clanvowe, James I, Hawes, and…