Browse Items (16035 total)

Largely ignored for forty years, Manly and Rickert's "The Text of the 'Canterbury Tales'" is being reconsidered because it favors the Hengwrt. Chaucer's text is now being reconstructed by "Hengwrtism." The soft approach takes Hengwrt as a guide but…

Although twentieth-century editors of Chaucer have produced increasingly sophisticated and tasteful editions of CT, their practices reject methodology dependent on purely objective criteria.

Since the late 1970s, manuscript study has become a major part of Middle English scholarship, but such study has not affected edditorial practice. The "Riverside Chaucer," for example, "is scarcely revolutionary in its method and biases."

Robinson's first edition (1933) is founded on unsound editorial practices, most notably an overreliance on Skeat (Robinson's true base text, not Ellesmere as usually claimed). Even in his second edition (1957), Robinson failed to profit from the…

Discusses the medieval practice of selling "Canterbury signs" to the visitors of Beckett's shrine (as mentioned in 'The Tale of Beryn'), the archeological finds, and the possibility that Ellesmere portraits may have been modeled on the signs. The…

Manly and Rickert were unable to trace the provenance of MS Phillipps 6570, now University of Texas Library 46, Austin. From the handwriting in notes, Wright deduces that Samuel Pegge the elder (1704-96) had MS Phillipps 6570 in his possession from…

Explores Chaucer's interest in the Bible and assumes that he possessed his own copy and read it seriously. Suggests that Chacuer's piety may be connected with the late-fourteenth-century courtly interest in Carthusian ideals.

Ovid's views on humanity's decline from the first age influence Chaucer's "Former Age": Chaucer's use of Lamech in WBT, SqT, and Anel; and his distrust of rhetorical ornament (as evidenced by the Franklin and BD, for example).

Payne first considers the question of Dante's influence on fourteenth-century English poets and the ways it can be studied. In the following four chapters, she examines the relationship of the "Divine Comedy" to "Pearl" and to HF, studies the…

Examines classical sources for HF, LGW.

Chaucer was indebted to Dante for turns of phrases, images, stories, and poetic and philosophical aims. Chaucer's most pervasive use of Dante was as "a spur and a background against which he defined his own, very different poetic and moral vision."

The "formes fixes" lyrics of Middle French, especially the ballade, are almost as influential for Chaucer's works as was the "Roman de la Rose." The "formes fixes"--ballade, rondeau, and virelay--were highly musical and connected with dancing.

Conjectures that, while Deschamps may have met Chaucer in 1360, his "Ballade to Chaucer" was probably written in 1391 and reflects the association of Chaucer and Deschamps with the Order of the Passion of Jesus Christ in the late 1380s and early…

Discuses the complex response to Chaucer in Jonson's annotations on his copy of Thomas Speght's 1602 edition of Chaucer, especially the affinity of ethical and poetic thought, concentrating on two poems, "The Remedie of Love" and "Of the Cuckow and…

Blake's catalogue of his 1809 exhibition describes his famous painting of the Canterbury pilgrims and includes modernized quotations from Chaucer. Blake probably used Speght's 1687 edition.

Studies the national and regional prominence of the Gloucestershire magnate Sir Thomas Berkeley (1352-1417) in relation to his literary patronage, especially of John Trevisa and of John Walton's verse translation (partly based on Chaucer's Bo) of…

Chaucer's "modernity" and "humanity" are experienced through his lyrics, says Prescott, who, as composer and librettist, has drawn her own original libretti from CT, HF, LGW, and TC and had them set to music by Roger Nixon.

Refutes the view that Shakespeare used the Legend of Thisbe or Th in writing his "Midsummer Night's Dream."

Gives positive evidence of final "-e" in Chaucer's rhyme, especially in thirty-two rhyme sequences in which the distinction between two successive rhymes is made only by presence in one and absence from the other of final "-e".

Briefly surveys Chaucer's use of the medieval "art poetical," which he learned from his predecessors and realized in his own poems.

Reviews scholarship on meter and suggests that the verse of Chaucer's followers is more interestingly variant in context than is sometimes thought; emphasizes the central role of Hoccleve, some of whose work is available in holograph.

The search for Chaucer's puns has increased dramatically in modern scholarship, particularly John Gardner's. By adopting some conservative principles, we can curb the "extravagence of pun-hunting." First, puns should be distinguished from innuendo…

Chaucer's expanded forms are mostly adjectival, as in Old English, though many of them are used appositively with intervening modifiers. He also uses them with verbs denoting durability or knowledge and with the point-action verbs, probably for…

This distillation of modern scholarship traces not only the causes and conduct of the Hundred Years' War but also its effects and reflections, including literature, in both societies, England and France.

Boardman traces Chaucer's humanism in BD, HF, and PF, "where he evolved a language capable of serving both tradition and experience while reserving a critical, even skeptical, attitude toward them.... Chaucer is 'involved yet objective, detached yet…