Browse Items (15544 total)

A textbook history of the "phonological structure" of English, i.e., "the history of individual sounds and their representation, the history of syllable structure and word stress." The comprehensive Subject Index lists numerous references to Chaucer…

Discusses the use of the past perfect forms in GP and Mel. In Japanese with English abstract.

Examines words and expressions that generate the "'emotive' or 'lyrical' mood" in Chaucer's works, especially those in TC.

Addresses the status of Chaucer's language in the development of a standard written English, explores grammatical differences between his dialect and "present-day" English, and clarifies the difficulties of understanding the innovativeness of his…

Examines the word "cunning," omission of its sexual connotations in the MED, and the ways in which Chaucer puns on the word in previously unconsidered sexual contexts.

Revises and expands De Gaynesford's essay "Speech Acts, Responsibility, and Commitment in Poetry" (2013), which identifies a type of poetic performative speech-act that he labels the "Chaucer-type," explaining it by reference to the poet's dedication…

Argues that "gnof" (MilT 1.3188) is Chaucer's neologism, clarifying the trouble his scribes had with the word, detailing its later use in English (especially in association with Kett's Rebellion of 1575), and establishing the likelihood that Chaucer…

Cites and quotes a portion of Dorigen's "song" in FranT 4.857-94 as an early, pre-Romantic lyrical example of the "'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' effect" in poetry, a trope by which reference to a physical space links the inner concerns of multiple…

Compares Katherine Mansfield's and Virginia Woolf's uses of personifications of Nature as a feature of their modernism, derived from their familiarity with medieval and Renaissance depictions of Nature as a goddess, including Chaucer's Nature in PF.…

Asserts without explanation that a reference to Chaucer in "To Mr. Creech on His Translation of Lucretius" by "J. A." derives from RvT 1.3992 and that it may help to clarify a crux in Alexander Pope's "Dunciad" Variorum.

Identifies a "pray for Chaucer" trope in fifteenth-century commentary on the poet, observing a "metaphor of literary history" that is based in "guild-like community," underpinned by notions of purgatory, intercession, and friendship. Rooted in Thomad…

Argues that in "Life of Our Lady" and "Life of Saint Margaret" John Lydgate uses the "paradoxical image" of the virginal and fecund "sanctified female body" to distance himself "from the patriarchal Chaucerian poetic model" and assert that his…

Argues that Shakespeare and John Fletcher's adaptation of KnT in "The Two Noble Kinsmen" emphasizes the failure of same-sex friendship, darkens tone, and approaches tragic pessimism--in contrast with Chaucer's "cautiously optimistic philosophical…

Contends that William Baldwin's "Mirror for Magistrates" (1559) was previously seen as linking the medieval literature of Chaucer and Boccaccio with the early moderns.

Argues that FranT provided the "raw material and structures of dramatic feeling" for Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," encouraging critics to adopt a more expansive view of source relations, and observing how and where the tale and the play illuminate each…

Reinforces connections between the prologue to Lydgate's "Siege of Thebes" and CT. Claims Lydgate responds to Chaucer's caricature of the Monk in defense of monasticism; alludes to the Monk's portrait and the person of the Host in GP; borrows…

Suggests that in "Cymbeline," "The Tempest," and "The Taming of the Shrew," Shakespeare sets his work in conversation with the dream visions BD and HF, thereby allowing Shakespeare to claim a place in the Chaucerian line of English canon and to…

Identifies an allusion to HF (lines 703-4) in "King Lear" (5.3.17), arguing that, although Chaucer's poem was "marginalized" in sixteenth-century editions because of its stance on literary fame, Shakespeare read it and echoed it "unconsciously,"…

While examining Thomas Hoccleve, John Skelton, and Ben Jonson, suggests that Hoccleve "channels" Harry Bailly from CT as a demotic voice, drawing upon the routines of London life in the establishment of an "English writerly voice worthy of laureate…

Argues that the glossary and other "editorial apparatus" of Speght's 1598 edition of Chaucer's "Workes" "yokes" Chaucer's language and lexicon "with his position as an English author," and that in his use of Speght's TC as source for "Troilus and…

Argues that Chaucer's "daun Russel the fox" in NPT 7. 3334 belongs to a centuries-long cohort of foxes whose tastes and tendencies Shakespeare applies to his wily Falstaff.

Examines questions of autobiography, authorship, legacy, and the "Fürstenspiegel" genre in Thomas Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes," with attention to its manuscript presentations and to its images of Chaucer and of Hoccleve himself, discussing the…

Identifies characters throughout Shakespeare's canon who "process and engage Chaucer's ideas on theater, authorship and performance," and demonstrate "how Chaucer's poetry is relevant to drama and theatricality."

Argues that the most "tempting objects" in J. K. Rowling's "Deathly Hallows" derive in part from the girdle in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"; the "thirty pieces of silver that persuade" the biblical Judas to betray Jesus; and the "deadly pile of…

Explores how Tudor editions of Chaucer and works by John Gower and John Lydgate "mediate" the presentation of Chaucer and his "authorial identity" in Edmund Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender," arguing that Spenser depicts Chaucer not only as the…