Browse Items (16345 total)

Recorded at the Ninth International Congress of the New Chaucer Society, Trinity College, Dublin, 1994. Re-edited and digitally mastered as a CD-ROM by Troy Sales and Paul Thomas in 2003.

Follows the general format of the Variorum Edition with text based on Hengwrt and collations with early manuscripts and most printed editions . Surveys earlier criticism with extensive notes.

Presents NPPT and NPE in Middle English (following Robinson's 1957 edition) with end-of-text notes and glossary. The Introduction (pp. 1-44) considers the tale-teller relations of NPPT, the "digressions" (dreams, sermons, and rhetoric) of NPT, and…

Study guide to the NPPT that includes the Middle English text, with facing-page glosses and commentary that encourages careful reading. The volume includes a summary of CT and an introduction to Chaucer's language, along with discussion of various…

Acknowledging NPT to be "a rhetorical tour de force," assesses implications of its status as a "fable," surveying medieval commentaries on the genre, particularly its ability to teach and/or delight, and commenting on the morality the Nun's Priest…

In his last allusion in NPT, the Nun's Priest reminds us once again of the preaching tradition with which his tale has been playing. The various narrative perspectives shift so frequently that NPT is more than just an idle tale or a tale about a fox…

Reconsiders questions of the number of Canterbury pilgrims, focusing on GP, 1.164 and the ecclesiastical pilgrims. Suggests that the Nun's Priest and the Clerk may be identical or, at least, kindred spirits, and considers what NPT and ClT may reveal…

NPT is a "mock-summa" that skeptically examines how authority is conveyed and parodies "didactic mechanisms." Mocking various kinds of rhetoric and discourse, the Nun's Priest also evokes a laughter of merriment that "laughs without laughing at…

Identifies a variety of tones in NPT, identifying interplay among the voice of the "rhetor," a "sermonizing" voice, and the outlook of a "sophisticated fabulist," exploring the "quality of their combination" by observing their relations with…

Surmises that, as a satiric response to the anti-Semitism of PrT, NPT may reflect Chaucer's possible knowledge of a twelfth-century "Anglo-Jewish collection of 107 animal fables," the "Mishle Shu' alim," generally attributed to Berechiah Ben Natron…

Suggests that Dante's account of Paolo and Francesca underlies the reference to the book of Lancelot in NPT 7.3212.

Presents case studies and historical background of the nuns' priests in medieval society, and interprets literary tradition of Chaucer's Nun's Priest. Includes an appendix on the Diocese of Norwich Nuns' Priests.

Surveys the verbal representation of numerals in Chaucer and elsewhere in Middle English and comments on the Germanic basis of composite representations (e.g., "four and twenty") and development of French-influenced forms (e.g., "twenty-four").…

The observable final total of pilgrims is 33, a symbolically significant sum. The Pilgrim Chaucer's two tales may have been meant as a center-point signifying a shift from game to earnest. The initial statement that there were 29 may demonstrate…

Questions long-established assumptions about the status of Cambridge Gg and examines Kane's methods for solving Gg 126-38. Argues that the G text of LGWP is "a modern and potentially misleading critical fiction"; that Gg should be regarded as a…

Explores the history and utilities of various forms of notebook, emphasizing their commercial roots and widespread uses, claiming in a brief section that Chaucer, on his 1372/73 trip to Florence, "must have seen" there "how plentiful, and cheap,…

Considers WBPT as a "not yet" text, i.e., one that "points to a future resolution" without providing it. Rich in "represented reception" on the pilgrimage and in "contested reception" in manuscript glossing, critical response, and adaptation, the…

A comprehensive edition of all of Chaucer's works (without Rom or Equat), with bottom-of-page notes, side-bar glosses, headnotes to the individual works and each part of CT, and a glossary. The text is based on manuscript witnesses and on E. Talbot…

Selections from Chaucer (pp. 5-20) include NPT, Ros, Truth, Gent, Purse, WomUnc, and MercB in Middle English with notes and glosses.

Despite Tolkien's praise of Chaucer's "accurate observation" of dialects in RvT, examination of the mss of CT reveals that Chaucer's knowledge of northern dialect was in no way exceptional and that many of the northern speech characteristics of the…

Reviews scholarship and corrects mistaken assumptions about medieval tragedy. The first vernacular writer in Europe to consider himself a tragedian, Chaucer was anticipated by several Latin writers but drew mainly from Boethius. The tragic falls in…

Reads MerT as a composite of "various comic attitudes toward lust and marriage," not as the bitter vituperation of an angry narrator, arguing that the latter, conventional view results from seeking to impose "organic unity" on four "strikingly…

The Wife of Bath is neither a comic figure as Donaldson and others see her, nor a tragic figure as several other critics see her. Instead she is, as Beryl Rowland suggests, a neurotic and a misfit.

Evaluates MerT in light of its sources and analogues, including the "Miroir de Mariage," Boccaccio's "Ameto," and the "Elegies of Maximianus," the latter identified here as an analogue for the first time, with its presentation of "amorous senility…

Surveys the importance of classical and medieval rhetorical theories that underlie late medieval poetry, and discusses the "flowering of rhetorico-poetic technique in Chaucer's verse," analyzing samples of his poetry in light of Geoffrey of Vinsauf's…