Browse Items (15427 total)

Most people who could read and write in England in the late fourteenth century were capable of doing so in French, Latin, and English. Gower's nearly 90,000 lines of extant poetry--roughly apportioned into thirds of Anglo-Norman French, Latin, and…

Reads Seige as an attempt to provide CT with "a sense of closure and completeness" by supplying the tale of Thebes to balance the plot, style, and themes of KnT. The poem capitalizes on the popularity of CT and acknowledges Chaucer's greatness.

Chaucer's various uses of the "structural, rhetorical, and metaphorical possibilities" of prison imagery reflect Boethian thought and influence later medieval English tradition, in particular The King's Quair of James I of Scotland.

Discusses exemplary use of Medea in classical and medieval traditions, suggesting connections with Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus and Christine de Pisan's Book of the City of Ladies. Also notes comparisons among LGW, Lydgate's versions of the…

Davenport's survey articulates formal, thematic, and verbal influences of PF and HF on a wide variety of late-medieval English bird poems, also mentioning those in which Chaucer's influence is not apparent.

Surveys the metafictional aspects of TC, HF, and NPT, defining narrative and stylistic self-consciousness as recurrent themes. Henryson, Dunbar, Skelton, and James I of Scotland accomplish similar ends through self-reflexive and intertextual…

Explores the "moralitas" of Henryson's poem and conjectures that KnT was a "major shaping force" in it.

Considers The Testament of Cresseid as a "parallel text" to TC 5, arguing that although Henryson echoes various Chaucerian collocations, techniques, and structures, his counterpointing of fickle and stable earthly love is unlike Chaucer's opposition…

Examines the details and style of Beryn, arguing that it was written to complete CT and that it capitalizes on several of its narrative and stylistic features. Suggests that Beryn was composed by a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, perhaps in…

In his rhyme-royal poetry, Gower adapted Chaucerian techniques as well as techniques from his own French seven-line poetry. Dean reviews Cinkante balades, Traitie pour essampler les amantz marietz, In Praise of Peace, and Amans's "supplicacioun" from…

Chaucer's playful attitude toward authority contrasts Gower's serious one; analogously, Henryson's questioning of Chaucer's authority (Testament of Cresseid) contrasts Lydgate's endorsement of it (Seige of Thebes).

The theme of rumor connects Dicken's Dorrit with HF; Dickens's Miss Wade capitalizes on Wade and his boat of MerT 1424 and TC 3.614; and Amy Dorrit recalls Dorigen of FranT, although Dorrit is not "so reckless."

Verbal echoes, connections of character, and other allusive possibilities suggest relationships between Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and TC and parts of CT.

Contrasts the characterizations of Theseus and Emily in "The Two Noble Kinsmen" and KnT, focusing on how the play challenges the principles of romance by manipulating Chaucerian material and perspective. Revised slightly as "(Mis)Appropriating the…

Eliot uses Chaucerian epigraphs as part of a narrative strategy that inscribes allegory in an apparently realistic text.

Explores Henryson's theory of tragedy and what is "tragic" about Cresseid, arguing for an inversion of the traditionally perceived structure of tragic action. Since Henryson anchors his poem in his audience's knowledge of TC,Cresseid's catastrophe…

Indicates the frequency and distribution of pronounced unelided final -e among the parts of speech.

Disputes the traditional view that the English alliterative poetical tradition was consistent from the seventh through the fifteenth centuries and proposes profound differences between Old English meter, early Middle English meter, and Alliterative…

Designed as a supplemental textbook for college courses on Chaucer or English prosody; includes brief exercises at the end of each of seven chapters. Introduces the basics of meter and rhythm and analyzes Chaucer's verse in traditional foot…

Explores lyric and narrative meters in Provencal poetry, Old and Middle French, and Middle English texts--especially Machaut and Chaucer--showing that a poet's intuitive sense of genre affects verse rhythm more directly than does musical notation. …

Applies Deschamps' concept of natural music (i.e., words in verse, from L'Art de dictier) to Machaut's ballade "Tout ensement," to "The Fair Maid of Ribblesdale," and to Chaucer's Ros, demonstrating how the rhythms of Middle French and Middle English…

Five essays, and introduction, and a commentary on accompanying musical selections survey the interdependence of music and poetry in Provencal and medieval French and English: in the troubadour tradition, Old English poetry, French "formes fixes,"…

Enumerative disjunctions, emphasizers, repetition, and variation produce the controlled style of CT. Chaucer's two prose tales, ParsT and Mel, have characteristics that are found less in verse (and that modern readers dislike): cohesive redundancy…

Compares several theories of Middle English pronunciation, arguing that Chaucer's rhymes require pronunciation of final -e (in Korean with English abstract).

Analyzes three manuscript collections (Pennsylvania French 15, Westminster Abbey 21, and Bibl. Nat. Nouvelles acquisitions fr. 6221) to infer their late forteenth-century exemplars.