Representative British poetry (lyrics and selections from narrative verse), ranging from Middle English lyrics to poetry written in the 1990s. Arranged chronologically, with no introduction or notes, but with indexes of poets, first lines, and…
Capacious anatomy of Middle English literature, with a variety of essays by individual authors; a selection of lyrics, narrative, poems, and dramas; suggestions for further readings, and comprehensive index. The selection includes no works by…
Includes selections from Chaucer's poetry, in Middle English with editorial titles: "The Complaint of Troilus" (TC 5.547-53, 561-81, 638-44, 1688-1901), "Love Unfeigned" (TC 5.1835-48), "Ballade" (LGWP F249-69), and "Madame Eglantine" (GP 1.118-62).
Trigg explores how efforts to introduce philology and recent challenges to canonicity complicate Chaucer pedagogy and its relations with the teaching of other medieval authors, contemplating questions of Chaucer's continuing appeal despite these…
Examines the evolution of the word "humanism" and explores Chaucer's artistic application of fourteenth-century nominalism as it relates to his fusion of medieval ideas of community, tradition, and the emerging figure of the individual. Treats CT,…
Woodward, Daniel.
Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino, Calif.: Huntingon Library; Tokyo: Yushodo, 1995), pp. 1-13.
Describes the new facsimile of Ellesmere and the project that led to its production and the accompanying volume.
Edmondson, George.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011.
Applies psychoanalytical analysis to Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato," Chaucer's TC, and Robert Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," tying "literary neighbor relations to the social and political realities of the late Middle Ages."
Prendergast, Thomas, and Stephanie Trigg.
Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico, eds. The Post-Historical Middle Ages ((New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 117-37.
The authors contemplate the relationship of medievalism to medieval studies, considering several (re)constructions of the Middle Ages, including Brian Helgeland's A Knight's Tale and various critics' efforts to gloss "queynte." Such considerations…
Vásquez Gonzalez, Nila.
International Journal of English Studies 5.2 (2005): 161-73.
Justifies the need for a new edition of the "Tale of Gamelyn" on the grounds that previous editions rely on limited manuscript authority and reflect various editorial biases.
Patterson, Lee.
Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Mindful Spirit in Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth D. Kirk (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 187-210.
Patterson reads ClT in light of negotiations over the marriage of Richard II and Isabelle of France in 1396 and of the texts surrounding those negotiations, especially those concerned with the ideology of sacral kingship. Chaucer knew of the marriage…
Murnighan, Jack, ed.
New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001.
Anthologizes excerpts from more than eighty works of literature, from the Old Testament to the Starr Report, including a selection from WBP (pp. 128-31), modernized by Murnighan; includes an appreciative introduction which refers to the Wife as "a…
Bowers, John M.
R. F. Yeager and Toshiyuki Takamiya, eds. The Medieval Python: The Purposive and Provocative Work of Terry Jones (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 105-17
Dates HF in the mid-1380s, positioning it as a "transitional work" between TC and CT and a reflection of Chaucer's status at the time as a king's man. Argues that LGW was written concurrently with CT, with LGWP-F as early as 1392, and revised as…
Seeks to define "romance" in Western literary tradition, commenting on its development from classical roots up to modern fantasy literature. Common formal features help to define the term, along with recurrent narrative patterns and themes. The…
Knapp, Peggy Ann.
Chaucer Review 13 (1978): 133-40.
Criseyde's characterization and role in Chaucer's fiction define the way Nature herself looks and functions in the world. Troilus and Pandarus as "priests of Nature" cannot reconcile their image of her with a nature that is "slyding of corage."
Horobin, Simon.
Tim William Machan, ed. Imagining Medieval English: Language Structures and Theories, 500–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 147-65.
Considers how manuscript evidence informs our understanding of Middle English, addressing the value of autograph manuscripts and personal letters, the process of standardization, and the importance of sociolinguistics. Includes analysis of the habits…
Smith, D. Vance.
C. M. Woolgar, ed. The Elite Household in England, 1100–1550: Proceedings of the 2016 Harlaxton Symposium (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2018), pp. 110-28.
Unpacks allegorical aspects of "domus" (household, community, regulation, tradition, order) and "lingua" (speech, noise, murmuring, poetry, vernacularity) in Gower's "Vox clamantis" and in HF, using Fredric Jameson's notion of "national allegory" to…
The narrator of the dream poems is not a consistent character,as previously thought, but a progressive one, embodying Chaucer's later preoccupation with experience versus authority. The narrator of BD is a doer; that of PF, a reader. Their…
Opening and closing stanzas of TC combine high, epic style with "sermo humilis," creating a rising and sinking pattern of "unlikeness." The verse and rhetoric reflect the meanings, the sublimest points made in simplest statement. The conclusion…
Assesses the point of view of the "Narrator" of TC, particularly the ironic combination of detachment and involvement established in the openings of the five books and in the epilogue of the poem.
Sommer, George Joseph.
Dissertation Abstracts International 25.09 (1964): A3732-33.
Examines the "compassion" of the narrator of TC as his dominant attitude, "paradoxically allied" to his "helplessness" before "inexorable fate," and modified by his didactic intent, "historical perspective," and "ironic detachment."
Harrington, David V.
Annuale Mediaevale 9 (1968): 85-97.
Resists readings of the CYT that regard the narrator as stupid or unwitting in his self-revelation, contending instead that he is a "newly reformed alchemist" who is, generally, "rational, down-to-earth, and persuasive in his description and…
The narrator of TC, never overtly separated from the author, implicates and disorients the reader by inconsistencies, variations in person and syntax, seeming self-identification now with Troilus's naivete and now with Pandarus's deviousness,…
Analyzes the narrator of TC as a "dramatic" character—one who is known "by what he says rather than what is said about him"--whose shifting perspectives in the poem inflect readers' opinions of the other characters and their actions. The shifts also…
Cherniss, Michael D.
Papers on Language and Literature 8 (1972): 115-26
Argues that the obtuse narrator's misreading of the Ovidian story of Ceyx and Alcyone in BD misleads him and underlies the poem's general encouragement that people must accept misfortune. The narrator within the dream is not obtuse, but he does not…
