Chance, Jane, trans.
Newburyport, Mass. : Focus Information Group, 1990.
In her introduction, Chance treats the life and works of Christine de Pizan, the origins of Pizan's "gynocentric mythography" and the debate over the "Rose," medieval genealogy of the gods, and the "Letter of Othea" as a mythographic text, with…
Chance, Jane, ed.
Gainesville : University of Florida Press, 1990.
A collection of articles covering mythographic art in the literature of early France, early England (Chaucer), and Renaissance England (Shakespeare). Chance defines mythography as "the explanation of classical mythology that often involves…
Chance, Jane.
Jane Chance, ed. The Mythographic Art: Classical Fable and the Rise of the Vernacular in Early France and England (Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 1990), pp. 3-44.
In ParsP, the Parson vehemently rejects the "lies" of pagan fables, as in the scandalous ManT. Yet, medieval poets often used "unseemly stories of the gods"--especially stories dealing with love, sex, and immorality--for their own political or moral…
Carruthers, Mary (J.)
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
In an interdisciplinary study drawing upon "modern hermeneutical theory; art history and codicology; psychology and anthropology; the histories of medicine, education, and of meditation and spirituality," Carruthers posits that "medieval culture was…
Busby, Keith, and Erik Kooper, eds.
Amsterdam : John Benjamins, 1990.
Forty-five selected papers on courtly literature. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for Courtly Literature: Culture and Context under Alternative Title.
Brody, Saul N[athaniel].
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 133-48.
Discusses "Chaucer's feeling for the openness of questions, his distrust of final answers" in TC, NPT, and PF. Chaucer has an "unsettling ability to make every alternative attractive, even clearly sinful ones."
Canfield, J. Douglas.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
Treats selected major figures and works of English literature from "Beowulf" to Congreve, concentrating on the feudalistic idea of the "pledged word," as a shaping "master trope." By elevating the word to sign, Canfield applies theories of Derrida,…
Brewer, Derek.
Uwe Boker, Manfred Markus, and Ranier Schowerling, eds. The Living Middle Ages: Studies in Mediaeval English Literature and Its Tradition (Stuttgart: Belser, 1989), pp. 115-28.
Certain characteristics of Chaucer's poetry resulted from the influence of the court of Richard II, but paradoxically "in reaction against Richard." Brewer refutes Gervase Mathews's claim for a high state of culture and its influence in the reign of…
Reading CT through the lens of the postmodern text suggests certain Derridean and Bakhtinian parallels, illuminating the polysemic and polyphonic characteristics of Chaucer's text. Like the postmodernists, Chaucer tends to question authority; to…
Boitani, Piero, and Anna Torti, eds.
Cambridge : D. S. Brewer, 1990.
Twelve essays by various hands. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England under Alternative Title.
Ferster's and Fradenburg's essays problematize the critical act of reading medieval texts: Ferster's examination of "who speaks" in PrT extends to the critic's own voice; Fradenburg's articulation of medievalists' anxieties concerning the status of…
Treats the nature of romance; the evolution of European romance; English romance; the "matters" of England, France, Rome, and Britain; derivatives; the diffusion of the genre; and "The Tale of Gamelyn."
Arens, Werner.
Uwe Boker, Manfred Markus, and Ranier Schowerling, eds. The Living Middle Ages: Studies in Mediaeval English Literature and Its Tradition (Stuttgart: Belser, 1989), pp. 167-81.
Examines a few specimens of "public poetry' (of the type Anne Middleton identified in FranT and MLT), poetry to serve "the common good," dating 1265-1462.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid.
North-Western European Language Evolution 16 (1990): 3-52.
Through a largely comparative approach, the author draws on sources that have remained almost unexploited, whether dialectical or belonging to the standard language. Evidence from Dutch, Frisian, German, and Chaucer's English (a three-year-old boy's…
Minkova, Donka.
Sylvia Adamson, Vivien Law, Nigel Vincent, and Susan Wright, eds. Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Cambridge, 6-9 April 1987 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1990), pp. 313-36.
Reviews scholarly treatment of the subject with reference to Chaucer and Gower.
Higuchi, Masayuki.
Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature 5 (1990): 13-26.
The rare construciton "go + walked" occurs only in BD 387 and SumT 3.1778. No other instances are recorded in the OED, the MED, or Visser. Discussion about this construction will contribute to a more accurate reading of Chaucer's text and to an…
Elliott, Ralph W. V.
Studies in English Literature (Tokyo) 66 (1989): 37-56.
Chaucer created a literary dialect that influenced writers centuries later. Elliott focuses on Chaucer's dialect, pronunciation, and grammar; Hardy's words and syntax; and Garner's rythms and cadences.
Burnley, J. D.
Joseph B. Trahern, Jr., ed. Standardizing English: Essays in the History of Language Change, in Honor of John Hurt Fisher (Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1989), pp. 23-41.
In sociolinguistic terms, Burnley examines orthography among literary scribes of Chaucer's day to find that spelling was far from standardized.
Barber, Charles,and Nicolas Barber.
Leeds Studies in English 21 (1990): 81-101.
Through a computer count of the syllabic length of 15,294 verses of CT, Barber challenges J. G. Southworth's hypothesis that unstresses final "-e" was not pronounced in Chaucer's verse. The results suggest that syllabic symmetry could have been…
