Browse Items (16039 total)

Fowler explores literary character and characterization as processes of the reader's engagement with "social persons" posited by a given text through various habituated devices and understood in light of various historical contexts-psychological,…

In her poem "The Author's Dreame," Lanyer uses the medieval dream vision, allusions to Chaucer (HF) and other poets, and Renaissance and biblical tropes to criticize as well as praise her patrons; however, her authority is threatened by the use of…

HF contains an inordinate number of lists of seemingly disparate materials in random order. Chaucer challenges the concept of authority by suggesting that the lists themselves provide the "authority"--not any one central force. Readers authorize a…

Thirty-four essays in English and French by various hands, arranged under five categories: (1) Configuring the Feminine; (2) Lyric Voice, Poetic Style: From Troubadours to Rhetoriqueurs; (3) Amor: Ethos and Affect; (4) Fictions of Identity and…

The medieval understanding of "translatio" comprises not only recasting in another language but also literary interpretation. In drawing on the "Roman" (already richly allusive), Chaucer adapts Jean de Meun's "mirouer" technique for works of various…

Source study of "Ywain and Gawain," "Sir Launfal," and NPT that explores how the process of appropriation reflects social, economic, political, and ideological continuities and transformations.

Comments on Harry Mileham's painting of the Canterbury pilgrims, depicted in a tavern during the telling of PardPT. Mileham is sensitive to literary and historical detail, derived especially from GP and the Ellesmere illustrations. The painting…

Discusses Scottish poets' uses of Chaucer, both to deepen their own works and to establish their own independent literary tradition. Instances include "Kingis Quair," which incorporates motifs from TC and KnT; Henryson's work; and Gavin Douglas's…

Almost all studies of Middle English language and style are flawed in method or lacking in comprehensiveness. The reaction of the medieval audience to dialectal differences is hard to gauge; e.g., sociolinguistic implications of the Northern dialect…

Studies the historical underpinnings of the GP descriptions of the Knight and Squire and discusses KnT and SqT for the ways they reflect the development of the Squire's "Romantic Chivalry" out of the Knight's "Religious Chivalry," questioning the…

Essays by various hands. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Literary and Historical Perspectives of the Middle Ages under Alternative Title.

Chaucer's catalog of women in LGWP contains attributes specifically chosen to reflect both the themes of the work itself and allusions to other literary works on the respective characters. Chaucer thus demonstrates his knowledge of previous…

Utz's interdisciplinary study parallels the tenets of late-medieval nominalism and the main features of Chaucer's TC.

Originating as a device of classical rhetoric, the exemplum became a genre in its own right through the church. Preachers brought it to a lay audience, and poets (Gower, Chaucer, Hoccleve, and Lydgate) eventually secularized it in various ways.

There are in CT examples of the late medieval attack on the symbolic attitude. The literal use of the Song of Songs in MerT, and the Wife of Bath's scriptural interpretation, are respectively examples of the mockery and parody of analogical thought.

Clarifies "two distinct modes of ekphrasis, the literal and the literary," exploring how and where they are deployed in HF (storm at sea and wall paintings of Dido and Aeneas) and in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (castle description and Gawain's…

In BD, Chaucer uses "the ambiguous status of the dream, as irresponsible fantasy and as vision of truth," to defend poetic fiction. Only in the "context of the figurative" does "the literal possess its full rhetorical power."

The sense of individual authorship and the acceptance of English as a literary language were eventually accomplished by Chaucer, who, though he sometimes assumed authority through his guise of translator, became the model for subsequent English…

The oral-aural traditions of sermon giving and hearing can be illustrated in Chaucer's PardT, where four principles of sermon writing can be seen: strong interaction between the Pardoner and his audience of pilgrims; syntactic patterns such as…

Lists recordings of Chaucer, of Middle English excluding Chaucer, and of Old English. Analyses of elocutive style and evaluations are provided for Chaucer only. Includes a review of Chaucer scholarship relevant to pedagogy as well as a bibliography.…

Treats Chaucer's embedded lyrics as "independent complete structures" that contribute to their respective contexts and can as well stand alone. Comments on the rondel in PF, the ballade in LGW, the envoy of ClT, and the aubades, songs, and letters in…

Early dissertations on Chaucer by women illustrate the limitations faced by early female academics. Critical neglect of Maria Koellreutter's 1908 dissertation on Chaucer suggests little recent social progress.

Deals with the order of CT in group C. Establishes parallels,antitheses, and thematic similarities regarding morality, sacrifice, and characters in PardT and SNT.

Kendrick compares the jocular action and imagery of the links in CT to the marginal imagery of Gothic psalters and Books of Hours.

Görlach surveys a selection of textual cruxes (Old English to Modern) that reflect the importance of linguistic evidence in editorial decisions, including two from Chaucer ("armee," GP 1.60; "Aueryll," GP 1.1) and one "quasi-Chaucerian" example…