Browse Items (16043 total)

Explores ways that John Dryden's notions of congeniality and the value of the vernacular in his commentary on Chaucer help to clarify Gloria Naylor's adaptations of Dante's "Inferno" in "Linden Hills" and of CT in "Bailey's Café, "identifying in the…

Spenser and Chaucer both composed subtle, complex closures, spreading out before the audience several endings, like sections of a fan. Many medieval poems ended almost interchangeably in a formulaic prayer for salvation.

Imitative indirect discourse in the portraits of the Monk, Friar, and Parson presents attitudes not Chaucer's in language not his. Examining personae in early tales may alter the pilgrim's portrait or the tone, as when the Merchant's ironic praises…

Aligns Chaucer's depictions of classical culture and his attitudes toward pagan belief, arguing that his "remarkable degree of cultural relativism" and his "reluctance to resort to simplistic forms of Christian triumphalism" are "delimited" only by…

Three paradigms of the Celtic universe made their way, through either oral or literary tradition, into early English literature, as is shown in "Sir Orfeo," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," passages from four of the tales in CT, Spenser, and…

Fourteenth-century English Breton lays, such as "Sir Degaré," "Sir Orfeo," and FranT, displace "Celtic" otherworlds to Brittainy and depict them as exotic, feminine, and supernatural-places of self-discovery that contrast with the domestic and…

Encourages medievalists to recognize the realities of academic institutions and to participate in administrative processes.

Advocates imitative role-playing as a way to teach Chaucer. Students select pictures from newspapers and magazines, create characters from the pictures, and develop stories for the characters to tell. Stories are told during an imaginary journey,…

A personal memoir recording a childhood experience of reading about "Dan" Chaucer in "The Book of Knowledge," leading to an early understanding of the unchanging drives and characteristics of human nature. A childhood neighbor was like the Wife of…

Questions some of critics' claims about the Pardoner (particularly rejecting the claim that he is drunk), and argues that the Pardoner's character and his performance cohere and exhibit his "craft and talent" as well as his efforts "to entertain and…

Almost all Chaucer's poetry specifically addressed to Mary includes translation, adaptation, or quotations from disparate sources brought together via "collage" technique. This layered effect has precedent in church liturgy and macaronic lyric.

Invoking "Derridean models," Leicester examines the problem of evolution of medieval manuscripts. With its possibility of "univocal meaning," "logocentric" oral literary culture flattens out the difference between composer and audience; the scribal…

Includes a modernized poetic translation of ManT 9.163-80, under the title "Take Any Bird," accompanied by a pen drawing of a caged bird.

Classical and medieval allusions in Jonson's masque, particularly to Chaucer's HF, suggest a complicated, ambivalent understanding of fame.

Contemplates the notion that "space travel helps us to see what we have on earth," musing upon the Apollo 11 moon landing and a number of literary representations of travel through space, ancient and modern, including Troilus's rise through the…

Focuses on the "outcast" lyrics of the Findern manuscript (Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.1.6), i.e., those "“overlooked" poems as they appear among works by Chaucer and others. Analyzes how the lyrics "respond" to the works they accompany…

The relation of Lydgate and Henryson to Chaucer is anxious and competitive; their retellings of TC help canonize Chaucer but also subvert "his authority by criticizing or outdoing him." Lydgate associates Chaucer with Criseyde's falsity and "stands…

Collects 100 poems and excerpts from poems on views of outer space, including NPT, 3187–99. In Middle English with no indication of edition.

Studies the depiction and reception of historical and literary outlaws in England from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, focusing on how borders of various sorts--legal, ethnic, political, social, and religious--define the outlaw identity. Jones…

Chaucer scholarship provides an example of the need for the correction and reassessment of texts, authorship, chronology, and influences on Middle English literature.

Reviews canon, allusion, and literary influence in English literature. Refers to Chaucer as the head of the English canon, discusses Matthew Arnold's thoughts on Chaucer, and reveals limited attention to Chaucer in the 1909 "Harvard Classics"…

Argues that spoken recordings of Chaucer's works (and other Middle English writings) are useful in the classroom. Surveys critical attitudes toward such recordings and comments on the products produced by the Chaucer Studio.

Clarke discusses the motif of eavesdropping in TC, KnT, and BD. Overhearing (both deliberate and accidental) places speaker and listener in a dialectic relationship.

Thaisen illustrates how a distribution of orthographical variants can be an "internal standard of reference," using as an example the Ad3 manuscript of CT. He comments on the order of tales in the manuscript and on various features of the…

Examines the "nature and extent" of Ovid's influence on CT, identifying wide-ranging allusions to various Ovidian works and providing parallel passages, assessing Chaucer's emulation of Ovidian techniques and considering Chaucer's uses of…