Browse Items (15544 total)

Describes the methods and goals of a volume projected as a supplement to the author's Complete Concordance to the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Hildeshiem: Olms-Weidmann, 1991).

Constructs an Augustinian "rhetoric of youth" to assess the depictions of infancy, childhood, and youth in Boethius's "De consolatione philosophiae," Innocent III's "De miseria condicionis humane," and the "Roman de la rose." Then considers how…

Traces the development of body-soul relations in Western intellectual tradition as they are reflected in LGW, in book 1 of Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene," and in Richard Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." Uses St. Augustine as a point of departure…

Analyzes the 125 instances of the modals “shall” and “will” in GP, KnT, and WBPT in their “syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects,” gauging degrees of modality, contingency, futurity, grammaticalization, speech-act functions (e.g., prediction,…

Although much medieval English writing is verse rather than poetry, Chaucer's poetic skill is an important and distinctive part of his narrative. Pearsall examines a number of passages (KnT, MilT, RvT, WBP, and PardT) to show how poetic adornment…

Explores aspects of medieval literary studies and Native American studies, including examination of 'the trickster figure" in the works of Chaucer, particularly the GP descriptions and characterizations, and MilT, RvT, SumT, PardT, and ManT. Also…

Examines "tectonics and compositional strategies" in Chrétien's "Yvain" and in TC, focusing on "disposition" and the relationship between orality and textuality in each work.

Chaucer's remarks in the Prologue to LGW provide a guide to his poetic. The basic poles of reference are the inner point of the narrative itself and the outer details of the tradition in which it is realized, but Chaucer also introduces the…

In a section on directness and indirectness in plotting, discusses Boccaccio and Chaucer works as antecedents to modern short-stories, contrasting the directness of "Decameron" 3.5 with the "indirect mode" of CT, particularly NPT (pp. 17-23).

Discusses Chaucer's use of humor in describing the "thieving millers" in GP and RvT. Looks at class and social issues among food providers, including cooks, bakers, and taverners, and civic governing entities responsible for overseeing production of…

Argues MLT does not ultimately offer (English) land and (Christian) civilization as images of stability or "legal fixity" but the sea and Constance's paleness as images of an "exemplary fluidity," emphasizing that the tale is about "global ethics"…

Post-structuralist analysis of Chaucer's use of Dante as a source in HF and TC, and Spenser's use of Chaucer's BD in his "Daphnaida" and HF in his Mutabilitie Cantos.

Variations in spelling of words for "yes" and "no" are systemic in the literate language of Chaucer in that they distinguish the meanings of "no" and "nay," "yes" and "yea." As such, they are manifestations of visible language. Variant spellings of…

In an analysis of the question of literary value, argues for a pragmatic approach to understanding the value of literature, especially at present when that value is on the decline. References GP as general example of medieval literary valuing.

Discusses lyric genres of Machaut, Froissart, Chaucer, and others to show that late-medieval society saw lyrics as "recreation, as conversation, as personal expression, as music." Treats TC, BD, GP, Buk, Purse, Truth, and Sted.

Outlines a method for describing Chaucer's verse forms as syllabic, with accent overlaid secondarily on this base. Dane argues that this method is more simple than descriptions that give priority to accent and the iamb, as well as more useful in…

Discusses significance of tables and "narrative 'tabulae'" in late-medieval England. Addresses the tabular text in HF.

In TC, Chaucer attempts to recreate the Oriental atmosphere of Troy and its environment: the maze of walls hiding wealthy rooms and pleasant gardens, the secret corridor, the Greeks' tents, Sarpedon's entertainments, the wiles of Pandarus, and…

Chapter 5 focuses on comic uses of brutality in CT, particularly in MilT and KnT. Also addresses how Chaucer refers to torture in MLT, but rejects excessive brutality in PrT.

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate this is a translation of TC into Japanese, with a translation of Anel, both based on the Riverside Chaucer.

Looks at Rome's classical geography and topography within Petrarch's "Letter to Colonna" and Chaucer's SNT. Argues that these "medieval topographies" create ways of "taxonomizing space" and deepen an understanding of the material history of medieval…

Petrarch's "Letter to Colonna," twelfth-century handbooks for travelers and pilgrims, and SNT exhibit a characteristically medieval historiography that displaces a model of loss and recovery with one representing historical difference through spatial…

Argues that lack of historical evidence prevents us from learning much about the composition of BD. An examination of its topoi, however, reveals that the poem begins as a lament, turns into a consolation, and finally becomes an encomium designed to…

A play in two acts that depicts the meeting of various women from fiction and history, including Patient Griselda, who tells her life story in a version of ClT. First produced and published in 1982; this is a fully revised, post-production edition.

Argues that fourteenth-century English allegories and dream-visions "open up utopic spaces" and enable proposals for social change. Considers a variety of texts, including HF, which "discusses the potential inherent in both art and language to shape…