Barnes, John, producer.
Morrison, Theodore, collaborator.
United States:] Encyclopedia Britannica Films, 1957. Also released in VHS and DVD. YouTube version available at https://www.youtube.com/live/vJEVRxYDJz0?app=desktop&t=262s; accessed June 28, 2024.
Brief introduction to Chaucer, his age, and his language, with samples in Middle English and modern translation, followed by a dramatization of adapted portions of GP and PardPT, in stylized modern English, prose and verse.
Hanawalt, Barbara A., ed.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.
Ten essays explore the intersection between history and literature in Chaucer's lifetime; issues of class, gender, and politics are recurrent concerns. One essay on literature and Richard II's court, two on Langland, one on medieval hunting, and one…
Elliott, Ralph W. V.
London: Andre Deutsche, 1974.
An introduction to Chaucer's pronunciation, grammar, and prosody, followed by an extensive analysis of his lexicon that considers aspects of his syntax, prose vocabulary, colloquial language, oaths, scientific diction, characterization through…
Four connected webpages that introduce Chaucer's language by focusing on the pronunciation and vocabulary of the GP descriptions of the Cook and Shipman, with an audio link, an image from Caxton's first edition, and exercises in vocabulary…
Wang, Denise Ming-yueh.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 22.02 (2014): 1-27.
Argues that medieval English literature in general, and Chaucer's poetry in particular, is primarily a product of a cross-cultural and multilingual experience. Compares multilingualism in Chinese with aspects of medieval English culture, and…
Wang, Denise Ming-yueh.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 22, no. 2 (2014): 1-27.
Discusses Chaucer's English inheritance from a Taiwanese-Chinese point of view. Reviews multilingualism in Chinese and medieval English cultures, and examines Chaucer's cross-cultural and multilingual literary experience in fourteenth-century…
Explores how Chaucer's prologue to Astr engaged "new models of English translation" from the 1380s, including Wycliffite translations. Traditionally, critics have focused on Chaucer's continental models of translation.
Borroff, Marie.
Peter S. Baker and Nicholas Howe, ed. Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson (Toronto, Buffalo, and New York: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 223-42.
Defines kinds of rhyme by their varying degrees of "richness," from "simple rhymes" to "triple rhymes" (in which three successive terminal syllables rhyme).
Gorlach, Manfred.
Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 4 (1978): 61-79.
Virtually all aspects of Chaucer's English need further work. Some of these are the poet's idiolect, word-formation, syntax and its adjustment to oral presentation, learned and "lewed" words, social dialect, and polysemy and synonymy. Much…
Ikegami, Masa, Ryuichi Hotta, and Koichi Kano.
Koichi Kano, ed. An Invitation to Chaucer's Cosmos (Tokyo: Yushokan, 2022), pp. 93-124.
A brief introduction to Chaucer's vocabulary compared to present-day English, his grammar, his pronunciation and spellings, and his versification. In Japanese.
Ahl, Frederick.
Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager, eds. Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 267-86.
Citing rhymes, wordplay, puns, and anagrams, Ahl proposes that Chaucer produces the "kind of wordplay found in classical Latin poets." Ahl compares Chaucer's uses with examples from Shakespeare and Milton, showing that such wordplay in Chaucer is not…
Wuest, Charles.
Studies in Philology 113 (2016): 485-500.
Argues that the enigmatic "thing" thrice referred to in PF is a "structuring device" but also a "reflection on the process of translation, specifically Chaucer's translation of Boethius's 'Consolation of Philosophy'." PF depicts "translation as an…
Besserman, Lawrence [L.]
New Literary History 22 (1991): 177-97.
Chaucer intended to entertain and edify Bukton by means of a network of biblical allusions that also provide an oblique comment on late-fourteenth-century biblical interpretation.
Bertolet, Craig E.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 66-89.
Chaucer's envoys should be examined not within the context of history but within the context of the art of letter writing, the medieval concept of friendship, and the description of late medieval diplomacy. Chaucer's is a "public stance," which…
KnT offers a reflection of several problems in late fourteenth-century society and of a judge and commentator, Theseus, who is free because he can rationally interpret history. Through KnT and its inversion in MilT, Chaucer offers a mythos of peace…
Haigney, Catherine Reisky.
Dissertation Abstracts International 50 (1990): 2046A-2047A.
Although earlier dream visions aimed at revelation of universal truths, Chaucer's poems in this mode present individuals who achieve no direct answers to their questions. William of Ockham, not necessarily a direct influence, provides methods for…
Horvath, Richard P.
Chaucer Review 37 : 173-89, 2002.
Rather than personal comments to private friends, Buk and Scog may be seen as Chaucer's experiments with "[t]urning the relationship between writer and reader into a poetic subject of its own." The characteristic sense of play and seemingly…
Norton-Smith, J[ohn].
Roger Fowler, ed. Essays on Style and Language: Linguistic and Critical Approaches to Literary Style (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), pp. 157-65.
Explores Chaucer's "reading and use" of the genre of verse epistle, drawing on evidence from LGW, the two letters in TC, Scog, and Buk. Considers the influence of Ovid's "Heroides" and Horace's "Satires" to argue that Chaucer was adept in the Ovidian…
Cox, Catherine S.
In Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, eds. Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2918), pp. 97-118.
Reasons that just as a parchment leaf bears traces of its animal origins and can bear evidence of writing and rewriting, Chaucer writes the Summoner, the Cook, and the Wife of Bath with attention to their skins and the ways in which they communicate…
Murton, Megan.
Clíodhna Carney and Frances McCormack, eds. Chaucer's Poetry: Words, Authority and Ethics (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 48-60.
Argues for an "ethical" reading of Chaucer's view of poetry in CT distinct from didacticism, examining Chaucer's engagement with sententiae of Plato and St. Paul and suggesting that, for Chaucer, poetry's value is in the process of interpretation it…
Stone, Gregory B.
Gregory B. Stone. The Death of the Troubadour: The Late Medieval Resistance to the Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 143-98.
Deconstructs BD as an example of a work that resists the Renaissance impulses to individualism and the rise of narrative. In BD, lyricism is asserted by the failure of narrative to console, and individualism is undercut by recurrent verbal play on…
Defines "exemplum" and describes the history of the genre before Chaucer; then focuses on Chaucer's innovative uses of the device to produce comedy in MilT, SqT, and SumT, also commenting at length on exempla clusters in HF and FranT.
Henderson, Jeff.
Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 14 (1988): 13-24.
Argues that Chaucer perhaps intended to allow the GP pilgrims to serve as the "'dramatis personae' of the Tales themselves" and to move among the complicated levels of reality in CT.
