Browse Items (15540 total)

Provides links to online samples of Chaucer's works, "read by professors" and intended to "help students improve their pronunciation of Chaucer's Middle English." Includes passages from CT, TC, and other works. Formerly hosted at Virginia Military…

Four connected webpages that introduce Chaucer's language by focusing on the pronunciation and vocabulary of the GP descriptions of the Cook and Shipman, with an audio link, an image from Caxton's first edition, and exercises in vocabulary…

Digital reproduction of William Caxton's two editions of CT that enables onscreen comparison of them, with links to background information on Caxton and print history.

Pedagogical website that focuses on CT but includes internal links to descriptions of Chaucer's other works and to background information. Individual webpages provide descriptions of the Tales that comment on themes and critical issues, accompanied…

Traces in biblical, classical, and political sources the development of the idea that the Pope and other rulers gain sovereignty through "mystical marriage" to their respective institutions, arguing that WBT "bears a striking similarity to [this]…

Introduces pronunciation of Chaucer's English, offering a series of general rules, explained in relationship to Modern English, both "British and American" and designed for "teachers and students." Also includes transcriptions of nine passages in…

Describes Chaucer's rhetoric and style in CT, exploring his orchestration of narrative economy, climax, pace (especially in relation to rhyme and meter), and verisimilitude, Identifies "flaws" in SumT and PhyT, and admires the symbolic…

Influential biographical discussion of Chaucer as the "first poet" of England "in the high culture of Europe," and the "most courteous to those who read or listen to him." Considers Chaucer's individual works in light of his life, medieval literary…

Assesses "unsavory" details of the GP description of the Summoner, the "bad feeling" between the Friar and the Summoner (WBP 3.829ff. and FrP 1265ff.), and concerns that link the GP Summoner and the summoner of FrT, clarifying the Friar's "attack" on…

Brief introduction to Chaucer, his age, and his language, with samples in Middle English and modern translation, followed by a dramatization of adapted portions of GP and PardPT, in stylized modern English, prose and verse.

A discursive review of Chaucerian scholarship and research published in 1955 divided into four sections: General, CT, TC, and Other Works.

Reads PF as a thematic exploration of Christian love infused with Neoplatonic thought and imagery, and influenced by Cicero, Macrobius, Alain de Lille, John de Meun, and Dante. Demonstrates the poem's tight verbal structure and its allusiveness,…

Suggests that Chaucer was in 1345-46, with several rejoinders in ensuing correspondence: Margaret Galway, May 10, p. 289 and July 12, p. 427; C. E. Welch, May 17, p 305; and G. C. G. Hall, June 28, p. 397.

Argues that the Host's mention of "half-wey pryme" in RvP 1.3906 refers to the canonical hour of prime rather than "modern clock time" and means 6:30 am, rather than 7:30 as it is often explained. Compares other chronological references in CT…

Assesses the "artistic role" in TC of the narrator--a commentator and a "historian [who] meticulously maintains a distance between himself and the events in the story." Explores "temporal, spatial, aesthetic, and religious" devices in the poem…

Identifies "Boethian sentiments" in an eight-line stanza appended to TC in St. John's, Cambridge, MS L.1, fol. 119v.

Revisits Carleton Brown's 1910 suggestion of source relations between the "Alma Redemptoris Mater" in PrT and the "Gaude Maria," offering a liturgical explanation for Chaucer's use of the former.

On contextual and linguistic grounds, rejects Marion Montgomery's suggestion (1957) that "for the nones" in LGW-P (F 292-96 and G 194-98) is a "reference to the canonical hour of Nones, with its attendant services."

Identifies various instances of irony in MerT, arguing that its "persistent irony" distinguishes the tale from Chaucer's comic fabliaux and aligns it with the "moral fable" of PardT. A poem of "clarity, critical observation, and disgust," MerT also…

Excerpts and re-titles a portion of chapter two of Chute's 1946 "Geoffrey Chaucer on England," describing the nature of Chaucer's education and the books he likely encountered in his early studies.

Identifies previously unrecorded allusions to Chaucer, most of them reflecting his "reputation as a religious leader and reformer," some based on works attributed to him falsely.

Considers possible sources and analogues for three passages in FranT (5.721-25, 829-34, and 1113-15), explaining how diction, style, and rhetoric indicate the likely influence of Alanus de Insulis's "Anticlaudianus" (Alain de Lille's "Anticlaudian")…

Identifies parallels between the characterizations of January and May in MerT and those of Pluto and Proserpine in Claudian's "De Raptu Proserpinae." Anticipating the role of the fairy deities in Chaucer's Pear-Tree episode, Claudian's "myth of…

Provides "some scholarly background information" about the Pardoner intended for teachers of high school senior English classes, summarizing studies by Tupper, Kittredge, Curry, and Patch, and focusing on why Chaucer may have invested this Canterbury…

Describes Chaucer's life and works in a brief subsection of chapter two (pp. 47-56), offering appreciative commentary that characterizes the poet as one who "loved life," despite awareness of the "faults, sins, crimes, follies, and vanities of…