Browse Items (15542 total)

Discusses representative examples of book-length studies of Chaucer written in the twentieth century (by Kittredge, Chesterton, Lowes, Dempster, Speirs, Donaldson, Muscatine, Payne, and Robertson); surveys several "main literary topics" in Chaucer…

Describes the literary resources available to Chaucer (and their limitations), comments on the works that influenced him most pervasively, and explores the "close links" between dreaming and reading in his dream visions (BD, PF, HF, and LGWP) and…

Reads Ret as the "culminating moment in the progressive disillusionment" of the Canterbury fiction for poet and reader alike. SNT, CYT, and ManT together "systematically confront" medieval notions of truth and the ability of humans to know it,…

Argues that LGW critiques the rigidity of highly conventionalized literary genres for failing to represent human experience adequately. Chaucer's conflation of hagiography, courtly romance, and epic myth reveals the "flaws" in each genre, especially…

Documents the development of whilom from its origins as an Old English adverb, to a discourse marker associated with orality, to an adjective. Although this development does not challenge the "unidirectionality hypothesis of grammaticalization," it…

Examines the pageant of sins in the first book of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene as a reflection of one stage in the development from the Pauline "theological" notion of sin to a "material-psychological" understanding. Compares Spenser's depiction…

Surveys medieval and modern understandings of honor as background to discussing the concept in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Malory's "Le Morte Darthur," and PhyT. Virginius "rightly kills" Virginia "to protect his own honour as well as her…

Surveys Chaucer's uses of physiognomic detail in descriptions of the Canterbury pilgrims, especially in GP. Chaucer uses these details in various, often ironic ways.

Close reading of KnT, focusing on elements such as syntax, diction, and imagery, shows Chaucer's dexterous use of high, middle, and low styles. The variety and combination of elements produce the tone of the poem and "naturalize" its philosophical…

Challenges traditional distinctions between "auctor" and "scribe," associating their strict separation with New Criticism and affiliating it, in turn, with the methods of George Kane. Calls for a textual method sensitive to medieval notions of…

Calls for an editing approach that attempts to replicate the contextual and intertextual aspects of manuscripts. Suggests various editions for various purposes, each sensitive to the radical differences of variants, the importance of the manuscript…

Critiques Root's and Windeatt's editions of TC for their lack of a clear and consistent theory of textual transmission and explores the problems of producing a valid edition of CT, exposing difficulties by examining the limitations of the Riverside…

Surveys how editions of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and others have banished the notion of authorial revision from their textual methods and replaced it with attention to scribal practice, thereby paralleling deconstructive criticism.

Surveys critical opinion about the narrator of TC, arguing that the narrator is not best regarded as unreliable, that it is difficult to separate narrator from author, and that is is unwise or impossible to construct a single stable narratorial…

Explores how English displaced Latin as a literary language in the court of Richard II and assesses meter, Anglicization, and historical topics as common features of Anglo-Latin verse by Gower and Thomas Barry.

The romances of Chaucer and of the "Gawain" poet are similar in treating the genre as a decaying or decadent form. Chaucer treats the genre and its traditional themes lightly, at times parodically, while the "Gawain" poet seeks to redeem the genre…

Belief in the salvation of virtuous pagans (the "'facere quod in est' principle") has been associated with nominalist thought. Minnis examines Chaucer's praise of Cambuyskan in SqT to argue that there is no real evidence of nominalist influence on…

Documents the medieval legal understanding of "trouthe" as an aspect of personal "oathworthiness" rather than of verifiability of facts; argues that this early sense obtains in MLT 2.630 even though it was fast becoming an archaic sense.

Summarizes Usk's life and career. While assessing the fusion of various levels of meaning in "The Testament of Love," Medcalf observes what Usk borrows from Chaucer (HF and TC) and Langland, as well as from Boethius and Anselm.

Addresses issues of the order of CT and, following the discussion of Charles A. Owen, Jr. (1977), argues that ParsT was once intended to complete the work. However, Chaucer revised his plan when he "evolved a new and impossibly grandiose scheme for…

Traces the history and reception of J. A. Burrow's term "Ricardian" as an alternative to "Age of Chaucer," considering its use and its future in light of the present critical climate.

Argues that Chaucer was familiar with the realities of female monastic existence but chose to create his GP sketch of the Prioress from literary satire. The spirituality of PrT, however, is particularly apt for females, and many discussions of the…

The Dantean aspects of HF, especially its invocations, not only recall the "Divine Comedy" but also reflect contemporary Italian reception and performance of Dante's masterpiece.

Assesses aspects of the social and political exchange between France and England as background to their poetic exchange. Focuses on how lyric refrains (especially "Qui bien aimme," found in PF and elsewhere) were "common currency" between the two…

Considers WBP as a compilation, "pieced together of verbatim translation" from a fuller text by Jerome. WBP represents "Englished" Latin, cut free from "control and indoctrination" of a closed Latin tradition and thus "seditious and dangerous,"…