Browse Items (16012 total)

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,"…

Assesses Bo and its fifteenth-century reception in light of the "well-defined and distinctive" tradition of "academic translation," i.e., as a reflection of the late-medieval interest in semiotics and textual explication. Although Chaucer never…

Surveys scholarly discussion of Chaucer's sources for his extrapolatory glosses in Bo, arguing that he was indebted to "some version of the Remigian glosses," to Jean de Meun's "livres de confort," and to a complete version of Nicholas Trevet's…

Surveys the "history of Gower's reputation," beginning with Chaucer's reference to him as "moral Gower" at the end of TC and his possible allusions to Gower's works in ManT and MLP. The idea of a "quarrel" between the two poets is perhaps…

In an analysis of Gower's combination of confession, "dits amoreux," and concern with old age in the "Confessio Amantis," observes a number of comparisons and contrasts with Chaucer: the individuation of Amans and of the lovers in TC, uses of the…

Compares authorial and scribal versions of passages from Hoccleve's verse, focusing on scribal omission of monosyllabic words, spelling variants, and terminal -e. Assesses what Hoccleve's practice might tell us about Gower's practice, and how the two…

Names written in manuscripts of CT indicate associations between these manuscripts and a number of Austin friars who were scribes; they also indicate that exemplars of some manuscripts were at Clare Priory. Friars may have copied the manuscripts…

Codicological analysis of the two manuscripts, which include works by Chaucer and Lydgate, Chaucerian apocrypha, and related works. Assessment of the booklets in the manuscripts and the habits of the two scribes ("scribe A" and the "Hammond scribe")…

Boffey summarizes the various numbers of legends included in LGW and in references to the work and assesses concern with these numbers. She considers LGW in light of the tradition of nine female Worthies in literature and the visual arts and in light…

Compares punctuation in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts with that of other manuscripts to argue that Chaucer's punctuation survives in the virgules of Hengwrt and Ellesmere, related to his development of the iambic pentameter line.