Browse Items (16038 total)

Richmond, Velma Bourgeois.   New York: Continuum, 1992.
Biographical review; consideration of the fourteenth-century cultural context; and critical discussion of all of Chaucer's works. Half of the chapters are devoted to the CT, divided by subject and tone into secular romances, fabliaux, religious…

Knight, Stephen.   Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
Sees Chaucer's world in the midst of change from feudalism to mercantilism. Threats to society represented by dream visions must yet be integrated into the rational structure. The CT pilgrimage is a Peasant's Revolt in reverse. Knight takes a…

Bloom, Harold, ed.   New York: Chelsea, 1985. Reissued in 1987.
Nine previously published essays or exerpts. Topics include Chaucer's "greatness" (G. K. Chesterton), the ending of TC (E. Talbot Donaldson), the impact of MerT (E. Talbot Donaldson), Wife of Bath as narrator (David Parker), Chaucer in the…

Erzgräber, Willi, ed.   Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983.
Twenty previously published essays, in English or German, and a bibliography (447-69) arranged by individual work. The volume opens with Erzgräber's "Chaucer-Forschung im 20. Jahrhundert: Einleitung" (pp. 1-31), an introduction to the essays…

Dillon, Janette.   Basingstoke and London:
Historicist introduction to Chaucer's life, works, literary context, and influence.

Crepin, Andre.   Premieres mutations: De Petrarque a Chaucer, 1304-1400.
The 12-volume "Patrimoine litteraire europeen" surveys major European authors and works from the early roots of European literature to the present, providing for each an introduction, a short bibliography, and extracts in French translation--some…

Olson, Glending.   David Wallace, ed. The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 566-88
Surveys Chaucer's life and art in light of their cultural contexts, commenting on his status as a court poet, the nature of his audience, his self-consciousness and uses of contemporary literary forms, his relations to his contemporaries, and his…

Ellis, Steve.   Plymouth, U.K : Northcote House, in Association with the British Council, 1996.
An introduction to Chaucer that surveys critical issues and concentrates on how oppositions are posed in his poetry rather than resolved. Topics include the following: The Chaucer Business; Life, Works, Reputation; Dream, Text, Truth; Society,…

Bloom, Harold.   Harold Bloom. Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds. New York: Warner, 2002, pp. 102-9.
Impressionistic praise of Chaucer's ability to combine human sensitivity with comedy, his refusal to be cowed by Dante, his characterizations, and his irony.

Burnley, J. D.   D. Alan Cruse et al., eds. Lexikologie: Ein Internationales Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wortern und Wortschatzen/Lexicology: An International Handbook on the Nature and Structure of Words and Vocabularies. 2 vols. . Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2002, 2: pp. 1468-71.
Describes the historical and regional characteristics of Chaucer's vocabulary, his particular uses of various registers, and how he adapts them to circumstances and contexts.

Staley, Lynn.   David Scott Kastan, ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. 5 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, vol. 1, pp. 450-56.
Treats Chaucer as a "means of entry" into the political and cultural world of late fourteenth-century England, surveying Chaucer's works (CT most extensively) and summarizing his life and reception. Includes a brief bibliography.

Shippey, Tom.   Joseph Epstein, ed. Literary Genius: 25 Classic Writers Who Define English & American Literature (Philadelphia, Pa.: Paul Dry Books), 2007, pp. 8-15.
Comments on Chaucer's life and works, focusing on his narrative timing, depth of characterization, and linguistic subtlety as means to express sympathy for human weakness. Includes three glossed passages from CT and two wood engravings by Barry Moser…

Bloom, Harold, ed.   Broomall, Pa. : Chelsea House, 1999.
Includes a brief biography, bibliography, and introduction to CT; summaries of GP, KnT, WBPT, and PardPT; and excerpts from critical studies of these sections of CT.

Kelly, Stuart.   Stuart Kelly. The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You Will Never Read (New York: Random House, 2005), pp. 105-09.
Comments on implications of the lists of works in Chaucer's Ret and their relationship to the fragmentary nature of CT.

Bloom, Harold, ed. [Cornelius, Michael G., vol. ed.]   New York: Infobase, 2008.
An anthology of eighty-three responses to Chaucer and his works excerpted from commentaries written from the fourteenth through the twentieth centuries: fourteenth (2), fifteenth (9), sixteenth (20), seventeenth (4), eighteenth (10), nineteenth (35),…

Scanlon, Larry.   The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 165-78.
Scanlon introduces Chaucer as the "most monumental of English poets," summarizes Chaucer's biography, surveys his works and their reception, and comments on the difficulties of dealing with his legacy: especially in CT, Chaucer is "eager to disavow"…

Whitehead, Christiania.   Rebecca Lemon, and others, eds. The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature. (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 134-51.
Whitehead surveys Chaucer's engagement with the Bible and biblical texts in CT and suggests a parallel between the poem's dialogic structure and the fourteenth-century debate over Wycliffite ideology. While parts of CT may corroborate certain…

Brewer, Derek, ed.   London: G. Bell, 1974.
Twelve essays on a range of topics that consider Chaucer in light of his contemporary culture and literary tradition. For individual essays, search for Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background under Alternative Title.

Coghill, Nevill.   London and New York: Published for the British Council and the National Book League by Longmans, Green, 1956.
Influential biographical discussion of Chaucer as the "first poet" of England "in the high culture of Europe," and the "most courteous to those who read or listen to him." Considers Chaucer's individual works in light of his life, medieval literary…

Galloway, Andrew.   Oxford Bibliographies Online. http://oxfordbibliographies.com
Updateable, annotated bibliography of Chaucer studies, launched in 2010, available by subscription only. Arranges individual studies alphabetically under 23 categories (plus subsections), providing hypertext links to the original material when…

Riehle, Wolfgang.   Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowoht, 1994.
An introductory biography of Chaucer and chronological commentary on all of his major works in light of social and personal history. Includes a time line, brief selections from critical traditions, a bibliography, an index, and illustrations largely…

Windeatt, Barry   Roger Ellis, ed. The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Volume I: To 1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 137-48.
Surveys Chaucer's career as a translator and the varieties of his "translational practice," focusing on his literal translations and how his "guise of the slavishly faithful translator" sometimes enables his "transformative adaptation." Considers…

Norton-Smith, John.   London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1974.
Studies Chaucer's poetic achievement in major and minor works with recurrent attention to relative chronology, the development of Chaucer's art, sources and analogues, and treatment of genres. Focuses on BD; Ven, Pity, and Mars as complaints; HF; LGW…

Alexander, Michael.   London: Scala, 2012.
A brief guide to Chaucer's life, times, and works, with illustrations.

Brown, Peter.   Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Comprehensive look at Chaucer's life and analysis of how cultural, literary, and historical events affected Chaucer's poetry.
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