Browse Items (15542 total)

Chaucer expresses the dialectical tension between subject and history, between the inner and the outer self, between canon and parody in CT and TC. He represents this conflict through dramatic dialogue and theatrical performance, making the…

Contrasts MerT, PrT, and PardT with their respective analogues, contending that Chaucer's Tales are inconsistent in time, setting, and character motivation, reflecting "Chaucer's lack of concern for real people and real objects." Similarly in TC,…

Twelve short dramas for oral reading, including a Modern English prose adaptation of CT (pp. 161-83) that retells portions of GP, KnT, WBT, NPT, and PardT, with narrative transitions between them. Designed for juvenile audience; reading time…

Vásquez describes her assumptions and practices in producing a scholarly edition of "The Tale of Gamelyn," an outlaw narrative assigned to Chaucer's Cook in a number of manuscripts.

Examines the British illustrator and sculptor Elisabeth Frink's 1972 illustrated version (with nineteen etchings on copper plates) of Nevill Coghill's 1951 translation of CT. Analyzes several engravings and provides modernist visual interpretation of…

Twenty-two b&w drawings (plus two cover illustrations) by Armitage accompany Urry's 1721 text of RvPT, with same-page modern poetic translation in by Nevill Coghill (1951). Each drawing has a title.

Although Chaucer scholarship generally exaggerates the poet's learning, it seems to have missed his use of Huon de Méri's "Tornoiemenz" in LGWP. Scholarship also overemphasizes the visionary features of Chaucer's dream poems, while underestimating…

Lyric poem about a dream within a dream. An accompanying note mentions that both Langland and Chaucer "often described a dream within a dream."

Includes BD, HF, PF, LGW, Anel, ABC, Adam, MercB, Ros, Truth, Gent, Sted, Scog, Buk, and Purse, with a general preface, an introduction for each of the longer works, selected background works and critical assessments (focusing on the dream visions),…

Kruger summarizes medieval dream theory and argues that Chaucer exploits "the complexities, ambiguities, and uncertainties of dreams, their causes, and their interpretation." Dreams pose interpretive problems in NPT and TC. As dream visions, BD, HF,…

Questions whether Chaucer's deviations from traditional literary standards disguise or disclose personal messages.

Analyzes medieval theory of dreams, tracing development from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages. In theory, in literature, and in life, dreams were regarded as both potentially deceptive and potentially illuminating. The work concentrates on…

Argues that Gavin Douglas's construction of Honour and Venus in the "Palyce of Honour," though misogynistic, constitutes a complex allegorical response to Chaucer's model of literary renovation in the HF.

Explores how Chaucer's adaptations in PF of Macrobius's Neoplatonic commentary on Cicero's "Dream of Scipio" anticipate "the humanist recovery of Ciceronian ideals," particularly the "ideal of marriage and mating as civic duty" and the "possibility…

Assesses relations between dreams and determinism (fate, providence, and prophecy) in three medieval narratives: Kriemhild’s dream in the "Nibelungenlied," the dreams in" Der Nonne von Engeltal Büchlein von der Gnaden Überlast," and Chanticleer's…

Considers BD in a larger survey of dream visions, with particular attention to "connections [to] the conventions of medieval mystical texts."

Argues in Freudian terms that dreams in TC disclose psychological aspects of the characters. Criseyde's dream (II, 925-31), added by Chaucer to his source, Boccaccio's "Filostrato," indicates her desire for ravishment and marks her early submission…

Describes medieval dream psychology, both medical and Macrobian, and summarizes the realism of dreams as narrative frame in Chaucer's dream visions (BD, HF, PF, and LGWP) and as device of characterization and dramatic irony when dreams are otherwise…

Hacking describes cultural assumptions about dreams in Western tradition (biblical, Cartesian, Freudian, etc.), noting especially dreams' presumed separation from "reality" and the complexities of their relationships with narrative. He briefly…

Kruger investigates the ambivalent nature of dreams in light of various classical and medieval dream theories, as well as actual accounts of dreams. The "middle vision," neither divine nor satanic, figures in Langland, Nicole Oresme, and Chaucer (BD…

Compares Charles's "Fortunes Stabilnes" with James I's "Kingis Quair," focusing on their dream visions and the narrators' responses to dreams. James's poem is more distinctly Chaucerian in its political and philosophical implications, while Charles's…

Considers dream visions in the works of Chaucer and his successors (Hoccleve, Lydgate, Skelton, and Spenser), arguing that these dreams break down "binary" notions, including those of body/mind, gender, and text/reader.

Highlights prominent connections among dreams, medicine, and literature in Chaucer's poetry. Argues that dreams and medicine are integral aspects of Chaucer's works and that the poet shows how they can be experienced through literature to bring…

In Chaucer and other fourteenth-century writers, dreams often prompt the dreamers to try to assert intellectual control over their mysterious experience by classifying the possible causes or truth values of dreams. Earlier classifications of this…

In context of a larger study of dream visions, uses HF as an example of the ironic dream vision, arguing that it treats authority ironically, whereas other dream visions (e.g., Macrobius on Scipio, Julian of Norwich's mystical visions) offer other…