Browse Items (16171 total)

Recounts difficulties of teaching Chaucer in France and other countries, especially in Middle English.

Argues that in late medieval English poetry (including Chaucer's) tone is "more likely to be found in the disposition" of rhetorical units larger than individual words and phrases. Draws illustrative examples from CT, TC, and "Sir Gawain and the…

Evokes the social and cultural conditions of England during Chaucer's lifetime by describing historical events, political circumstances, court life, domestic conditions for all classes, child-rearing, education and literacy, the influence of…

Argues that an "ambivalent enterprise of simultaneous innovation and retrospection . . . structures Spenser's approach to the reform of Ireland" as well as his "engagement with Chaucer in his poetry." Analyzes Spenser's use and explanation of two…

The study of Chaucer in Japanese universities has increased dramatically during the past quarter century. The paper lists relevant professional organizations and research trends.

Demonstrates that Chaucer's works are a significant source of John Minsheu's multilingual dictionary, "Guide into the Tongues" ["Ductor in Linquas"] (1617).

Discusses the reception of Chaucer's poetry by nineteenth-century French critics who focused on CT, read Chaucer as a "European" rather than an English writer, discussed the accessibility of his language, and examined Chaucer's national literary and…

Romantic criticism of Chaucer was characterized by popular revival of his poetry and was interested in gaining for Chaucer a reading public.

Twenty essays by various authors, plus a forward (pp. 13-25) by Lester that describes the career and lists the publications of Norman Blake. The essays consider Middle English language, literature, editing, and publishing, with eleven essays…

Compares characterization in KnT with Milton's in "Paradise Lost."

Review of "Legenda femeilor cinstite si alte poeme" (1986). Dan Dutescu, praised as a highly sensitive translator possessing the "quintessence" of the art of translation, has given Romania its first complete Chaucer translation--of LGW.

Characterizes the treatment of Chaucer in the critical journal Scrutiny as a "deliberate fragmentation" of his works in an effort to convey upon the poet an ahistorical and timeless sense of value and authority.

Walker assesses the three allusions to the Trojan War in NPT and argues that they underlie parallel concerns in Shakespeare's play. Shakespeare emulates Chaucer's skeptical attitude toward the Trojan War.

Speght's edition of Chaucer (1602) included an extensive glossary of "hard words." Later lexicographers, including the editors of the OED, have missed the fact that Jacobean dictionaries of "hard words" borrowed extensively from Speght--entries,…

Describes conjunctions--"many of them improbable or curious"--among the materials contained in manuscripts "which preserve just one or two of Chaucer's short poems," exploring what they "can tell us about the reception and transmission of Chaucer's…

Describes political and military events involving Edward, the Black Prince, Pedro of Castile, and his rivals that led up to the military campaign of 1366. Suggests the nature and timing of Chaucer's likely participation in these events, perhaps as an…

Argues that Chaucer's role in Spain in 1366 was as a "confidential messenger" of the Black Prince, adducing historical and biographical evidence as well as the attitude expressed about Pedro of Spain in MkT 7.2375ff.

Describes a pedagogical experiment featuring a mock trial of Chaucer--asking students to prosecute and defend Chaucer on the charge of perpetrating medieval antifeminism through his characterization of women in CT and TC.

A collection of essays from the conference "Chaucer at Albany II" places Chaucer's works in both medieval and modern contexts. Some essays apply contemporary critical theories, e.g., Harold Bloom on the anxiety of influence, while others reinterpret…

Assesses Chaucer's sense of poetic tradition in HF, arguing that while following Dante's use of the vernacular, Chaucer eschewed Italian emulation of classical models because he distrusted "classical pretensions to artistic or moral superiority."

Chaucer is an "accommodated deconstructionist" rather than a politically committed one. Nonetheless, HF goes beyond mere textual play to historical reference, and Chaucer wavers in the uneasy contradiction between the formal presence of authority…

Reviews Priscilla Martin's "Chaucer's Women: Nuns, Wives, and Amazons" and Helen Cooper's "The Canterbury Tales," arguing that they "provide a good indication of some of the newest orthodoxies in Chaucer studies."

Chaucerians have reached no consensus on specific written sources for NPT, PardT, MilT, and RvT, similarities between which and their Ozark analogues (all reprinted here) point to a common source in Anglo-American oral folktales.

Justifies accepting PF 99-105 as the more likely immediate source of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" 1.4.70-88 than Claudian's "De Sextu Consultat Honorii Augusti," Preface, 3-10, the ultimate source of both English texts.

Reports on pedagogical applications of digitized images and concordancing programs in the Chaucer classroom. The goal is to improve students' abilities to perform research and to read closely.