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Contributions to a Chaucer Word-Book from Troilus Book IV
Brewer, Derek S.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 27-52.
A word list from TC 4 shows that Chaucer invented new meanings by combining previously unconnected root words; however, someone else may have introduced those roots into the language.
Singing, Dancing and Playing in Chaucer
Ishizaka, Ko.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 277-88.
Assesses how words of specific actions--such as "sing," "dance," and "play"--operate lexically and how they can help produce a courtly atmosphere by expressing the joy of love.
On the Architecture of Chaucer's Language
Burnley, J. D.
Erik Cooper, ed. This Noble Craft . . .: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics, Utrecht, 19-20 January, 1989. Costerus New Series, no. 80 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991), pp. 43-57.
Drawing on recent socio- and ethnolinguistic insights, Burnley examines the complex stylistic associations of commonly used language in a variety of spoken and written contexts. The structure of Chaucer's English is not neat and orderly but…
A Theatre Image in Poetry: Chaucer's Tragedy
Ebi, Hisato.
Eigo Seinen (Tokyo) 137:7 (1991): 345-50.
Confronting the Latin world, Chaucer established his own theory of tragedy, which had not developed completely in the English vernacular. Ebi explores the meanings of "dite," "theatrum," and "scene," concluding that Chaucer used theater imagery to…
Original Borrowings from the French in Chaucer's Translation of Le Roman de la Rose
Kaufman, Janice Horner.
MIFLC Review 1 (1991): 58-67.
Twenty-five percent of the Old French loanwords in Rom are "new to English or used with a new English menaing'; most reflect influences of aristorcratic, secularized French romances. Includes chart of loanwords.
Middle English Dialectology: Essays on Some Principles and Problems
McIntosh, Angus, M. L. Samuels, and Margaret Laing.
Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1989.
Eighteen essays on dialects, scribes, transmission, word geography, and related topics. Only one essay has not been previously published: Margaret Laing's "Linguistic Profiles and Textual Criticism: The Translations by Richard Misyn of Rolle's…
Imagination: Chaucer and the Philosophers
Reichl, Karl.
Andre Crepin, ed. L'imagination medievale: Chaucer et ses contemporains (Paris: Publications de l'Association des Medievistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Superieur, 1991), pp. 157-76.
Surveys meanings of "ymaginacioun" and "fantasye" in Chaucer's time and discusses his exploitation of their ambivalence.
Companion to Middle English Romance
Aertsen, Henk, and Alasdair A. MacDonald, eds.
Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1990.
Nine original essays on Middle English romance offer the undergraduate reader a range of critical approaches and methodologies. The essays discuss widely studied romances such as Sir Orfeo, Sir Launfal, and particularly, Sir Gawain and the Green…
Romance and Parody
Tigges, Wim.
Henk Aertsen and Alasdair A. MacDonald, eds. Companion to Middle English Romance (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1990), 129-51.
Examines eleven texts, dating from the late fourteenth to the early seventeenth century, that are related to the metrical romance by their metatextual commentary on one or more romance characteristics. Includes discussion of CT, particularly KnT,…
De Ore Domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages
Amos, Thomas L.; Eugene A. Green; and Beverly Mayne Kienzle.
Kalamazoo. Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1989.
Thirteen essays survey topics in the history of medieval preaching from the Carolingian period to the fifteenth century, two focusing on fourteenth-century lives and Christ and Wycliffism respectively.
A Memoir of Chaucer's Institute
Benson, C. David.
Susanna Freer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 213-21.
In 1987, an NEH-supported institute titled "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Medieval Contexts and Modern Responses" addressed concerns that Chaucer's poetry was disappearing from the "standard undergraduate curriculum" and discussed ways to "revivify"…
The Inn, the Cathedral, and the Pilgrimage of The Canterbury Tales
Jonassen, Frederick B.
Susanna Freer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 1-35.
Mikhail Bakhtin's distinction between "carnivalesque abandon and lenten mortification" and Victor Turner's distinction between liminality and "communitas" illuminate the dual nature of the pilgrimage--or of the material and the spiritual, the…
Up and Down, To and Fro: Spatial Relations in The Knight's Tale
Woods, William F.
Susanna Freer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 37-57.
In KnT, vertical movements are associated with universal cosmic cycles, while horizontal movements are associated with social containment. As Palamon and Arcite move physically and emotionally closer to Emelye, each moves "toward either the…
Clerkly Rivalry in The Reeve's Tale
Cowgill, Bruce Kent.
Susanna Freer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 59-71.
Unlike the homogeneous portrayal of the two clerks in its two closest analogues--De Gombert et les II clercs and Le Meunier et les II clercs--RvT not only differentiates Aleyn from John but also suggests that John dominates their relationship,…
'Lat the Children Pleye': The Game Betwixt the Ages in The Reeve's Tale
Fein, Susanna Greer.
Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 73-104.
Chaucer utilizes the medieval icons of the wheel, the stream, and the vessel to represent the life cycle, the passing of time, and an individual's "fluid allocation of vital spirits that gradually dries from cradle to grave." In RvP, the Reeve's…
The Wife of Bath: Chaucer's Inchoate Experiment
Hagen, Susan K.
Susanna Freer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 105-24.
WBP is Chaucer's attempt to formulate a "gynocentric hermeneutic" that challenges "standard patriarchal hierarchies." Yet, WBT demonstrates the inevitable failure of the attempt since Chaucer was a product of his time, "a fourteenth-century male…
Lords, Churls, and Friars: The Return to Social Order in The Summoner's Tale
Georgianna, Linda.
Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 149-72.
In SumT, exchanges between the friar and the lord of the manor illuminate the friar's bourgeois relationship with Thomas. When Thomas "pays" the friar with a fart, and the friar appeals to the social hierarchy represented by the feudal lord of the…
'My Spirit Hath His Fostering in the Bible': The Summoner's Tale and the Holy Spirit
Ruud, Jay.
Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 125-48.
Examines the multiple meanings of "spirit" in SumT as clarified by scriptural and patristic tradition, exposing satire of friars.
The Falcon's Complaint in The Squire's Tale
Owen, Charles A., Jr.
Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 173-88.
Unlike its two closest analogues--Mars and Anel--the falcon's lament exceeds its own generic and linguistic constraints and functions as both narrative and complaint.
The Portrayals of Fortune in the Tales of The Monk's Tale
Braeger, Peter C.
Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 223-26.
Abstract of an article unfinished because of the author's death, examining the more than thirty verbal contexts for "Fortune."
And Pave It Al of Silver and of Gold': The Humane Artistry of The Canon's Yeoman's Tale
Raybin, David.
Susanna Freer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 189-212.
CYP offers an earthly perspective that counterbalances the heavenly perspective in SNT. Moreover, the structure of CYP/T affirms artistic striving for "something higher and more beautiful" while suggesting the "tendency to corruption that threatens…
Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, and Timea Szell, eds.
Ithaca, N. Y: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Adopting a variety of critical approaches, the fourteen essays range from detailed analyses of religious discourse to theoretical inquiries into the forces that shaped ideas of sanctity. Essays discuss representations of sainthood in the Middle…
Saints, Nuns, and Speech in the Canterbury Tales
Sherman, Gail Berkeley.
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, eds. Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 136-60.
By allowing the pilgrims no comment on the hagiographic discourse of the faceless, feminine "Second Nonne," and by allowing the Prioress to identify with the Word and the bearer of the Word, CT interrogates the doctrines on which it rests:…
Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval English Literature
Boitani, Piero, and Anna Torti, eds.
Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1991.
Examines theory and practice of poetics in medieval English literature, including author-centered, text-centered, and modern theoretical approaches.
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval…
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval…
Generic Variations on the Theme of Poetic and Civic Authority
Cooper, Helen.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval English Literature (Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 83-103.
Examines the equation of political and poetic authority in the works of Chaucer and his contemporaries. Historical romance tends to legitimize political authority and to cite poetic authority, while the fabliau pretends to chronicle true occurences…