Browse Items (16012 total)

A program of thirty-six illustrated lectures on English history, including lecture 29, "Chaucer and the Rise of English," which includes comments on literary and linguistic developments, summarizes CT and GP (a series of "capsule biographies"), and…

Biography of Chaucer written for a juvenile audience, with emphasis on social history. Illustrated by Robert Micklewright.

A revised version of the 1952 publication, with largely revamped discussions of the "Geography of English" and "The American Language," with the latter standing alone in a new section. This revised edition expands the list of works consulted, the…

Includes a chapter entitled "Chaucer's English" (pp. 56-71) that focuses on the growth of the dominance of the East Midland dialect over other dialects of Middle English, with commentary on Chaucer's English and CT, the "Gawain"-poet, Wyclif, the…

A history of the English language that emphasizes sidelights (alphabets, reform movements, etc.) as well as major developments (Old English through Post-Modern English), with a select bibliography, an index, and recurrent attention to literature,…

As the figure of Briseida, Criseyd, Cressida moved from Benoit de Saint-Maure (ca. 1160) and Guido della Colonne (1287), through Boccaccio (1336) and Chaucer (ca. 1385), to Shakespeare (1601-1602) and Dryden (1679), her portrait becomes increasingly…

Discussion of the Alcestis account in Morris's 'Earthly Paradise' and in Ted Hughes's adaptation of Euripedes's 'Alcestis,' including comments on the influence of Chaucer's LGWP on Morris.

Medieval texts interact with their sources as memory operates, according to classical tradition, in individual cognition. Chaucer's depiction in HF of Virgil's story of Dido and Aeneas exemplifies this interaction and lets readers determine what is…

Explores the conventionality/unconventionality of plot, detail, and image in "The Floure and the Leafe," arguing that its depiction of "literary nature" presents "poetry as a shared and participatory tradition: a carefully maintained garden from…

A detective mystery in which a stone-tablet illustration of the Wife of Bath provokes the killing of a Chaucer professor during an auction. The story includes a putative portrait of Chaucer and surmises about his life.

Comments on three "distancing-involving" devices in BD--the narrative pose, structural arrangement, and the "self-reflexive consideration of the poem's poetics." Include a brief Jungian analysis of the dream.

Compares the Wife of Bath's speech in WBP and Otto Jespersen's folk-linguistic stereotyping of women's language, showing that Chaucer replicates stereotypes of women's language, ultimately undermining the Wife of Bath's authority.

Assesses female silence as resistance to masculine power in KnT, arguing that the strategy is limited. In KnT women succeed when they “express their need” for male protection, but not when they oppose or resist patriarchy. Includes an abstract in…

Historical background: assesses the "social and military role of the squire" in England and northern France.

Investigates the historical backgrounds to the "status" of Chaucer's Monk, concluding that he is "probably" Benedictine and "perhaps the prior" of a "dependent cell," with a "reasonably good income." As an "important administrator," he is "qualified…

Statistical analyses, including charted data, of variant readings of CT in (1) a given single tale in pairs of manuscripts; and (2) paired tales in single manuscripts.

Recounts the author's experiences as chair of the English departments at the University of Missouri and the University of Illinois.

Sturges applies Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty to TC, exploring shifting figures of sovereignty in the poem (the people, parliament, Hector) and measuring the extent to which Troilus and Criseyde live in a "state of exception" (an Agambenian…

Two major trends of the past two decades have been the attempt to define the Chaucerian aesthetic and to focus sharply on the poetry itself. Recently, there is a great increase in those critics who read medieval poetry in terms of modern, clinical…

Contrasts the "star system" of contemporary critics (e.g., Derrida) with the previous paradigm of dominant but nonstellar scholars in Chaucer studies. George Lyman Kittredge, John M. Manly, and John Livingston Lowes serve as examples.

Traces the varieties of the stag-hunt motif in the art and literature of the Middle Ages, including classical roots, considering hunting manuals, imagery and fictive presentations, and allegorical uses. Includes recurrent references to Chaucer's…

Contends that the "Joce"/"croce" rhyme in WBP 3.483-84 is not just a convenient rhyme but a set of sexual puns, dependent upon the association of St. Joce with a staff.

Explicates features of the reference to St. Giles in CYT (8.1185), drawing on the various traditions of Giles as patron saint of "'those struck by some sudden misery, and driven into solitude.'"

Explores the GP description of the Yeoman, affiliating him with the Squire rather than with the Knight, and concentrating on details of his dress and equipage that contribute to a "sense of gay holiday panoply" associated with the Squire.

A variorum edition of Chaucer's SqT based on the Hengwrt and built on the model that has evolved over many years: critical and textual introductions, newly established text for SqT, collations providing evidence both of the manuscripts and of the…