Browse Items (15544 total)

Considers tragedy from the perspective of analytical philosophy, arguing "that tragic literature seeks to offer moral and linguistic redress (compensation) for suffering'; it "involves the balancing of a protagonist's suffering with guilt (and vice…

Ten essays by the author, three of them published here for the first time. Topics include CT, "Pearl," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Shakespeare's "Hamlet." For two new essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Traditions and Renewals under…

Twenty articles on tradition and innovation in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, three specifically on Chaucer.

Essays honoring the extensive career, range, and importance of Derek Brewer's influence on medieval English scholarship. For essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Middle English Literature under…

Horobin exemplifies how Chaucer used traditional methods of word formation to expand English vocabulary, creating new words and meaning by adding prefixes and suffixes, shifting grammatical function, and compounding words.

Investigates the role of "tradition in the literary imagination" and the value of literature, particularly the "value of close and nuanced reading for our understanding of both past and present." Includes discussion of George Orwell's engagement with…

Giaccherini reads PhyT as an experiment in "collaboration"--Chaucer's adaptation of the plot from Livy and the Roman de la Rose--that develops a concern for the private realm while downplaying the public.

Explores Ret, the ending of TC, the claims of accurate reporting in GP 1.730-43, and Chaucer's comments on poetry and the rhetorical arts in HF, LGW, and PF, arguing that Chaucer's "seems to have conceived of the poet" as a "moral realist" who writes…

Reads "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale" as a poem about the power of love and its effects on its lovesick narrator, at points comparing it with works by Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and others, observing likely derivations.

Contends that Chaucer uses and supersedes the conventions of the classical "exordium" and of medieval prologues in HF, the proems of TC, LGWP, and GP.

A collection of Brewer's previously published articles which discuss Chaucer's relationships to the "literary culture of his own times and to our present attitudes." For one new essay, "The Archaic and the Modern," search Tradition and Innovation…

Chaucer's lyric mode developed from the conventional toward the original, from everyman-speaker toward individual voice,from vague to concrete, from realist toward nominalist in philosophical outlook.

In their defense of women, Chaucer and the anonymous author of "The Owl and the Nightingale" seem to have drawn on the same description of the Adulterous Woman of Proverbs 7. Chaucer also uses the image of the Virtuous Woman and gives Alice knightly…

Assesses the opposition between idealized women and overt antifeminism in Christianity, Neoplatonism, and western literary tradition, using it as background to argue that Chaucer maintained in CT a successful "tension of opposing viewpoints," even…

Examines multilingualism in the Middle Ages, in particular its role in medieval literature, and focuses on merchants and their transportation of language as well as goods. Chapters 1 and 2 deal extensively with Chaucer's exposure to "London's many…

An unfinished "Tale" that constantly calls attention to stories it is not telling, SqT epitomizes the poetics of Chaucer's fragments, including CT itself. Successful fragments prompt intensified reader response; they imply infinitude. Medieval…

Considers representations of the Flemish in such works as "Piers Plowman," the Paston letters, and CT, with a particular eye toward the use of negative stereotypes and the use of Flemish people as an Other for the purpose of developing an English…

Characterizing the critics as essentialist, Gross traces views of the Pardoner's sexuality, beginning with Kittredge's and Curry's interests in secrecy and moral scapegoating.

Although Chaucer does not satirize the three estates in CT (there is no high nobility; clerical offenders do not reflect on the church; the peasantry does not speak), he does attack the middle class and its values through the Wife of Bath, who…

Traces the development, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, of a "new trend in western European literature," a concern with trade between Europe and "Farther Asia": i.e., from Iran and the Caspian Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Focuses on…

The return of the ruby ring to Troilus in Henryson's "Testament" can be traced to the traditional exchange of love tokens and to Chaucer's description of Troilus's signet ring with the ruby stone.

Examines the reception of Chaucerian works in manuscripts and print in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with reference to Chaucerian Sammelband.

Cites examples from Chaucer and others to show the demise of the "(slight) person split" evident in earlier English impersonal constuctions.

Argues that "it may well be" that Chaucer's use of the verb "take" in Thopas 7.795 is parodic, meaning "inclination or attraction (towards)" rather than "attach oneself (to)" in a "binding relationship"--the latter sense evidently intended in "Sir…

Argues that "from Chaucer onwards rhyme is used consistently as a prosodic device in English verse." Differentiate systematic rhyme from sporadic rhyme and notes that this fourteenth-century "era of systematization was preceded by an era of sporadic…