Basic Readings in Chaucer and His Time – serie

This compilation of new essays and essays published over the past fifty years explores Chaucer's experiences with the cultural other, especially Chaucer's relationship to Far Eastern, Islamic, and African sources. While studies of Chaucer's orientalism have heretofore focused on the Squire's Tale , Chaucer's Cultural Geography considers many different Chaucerian works in the context of sexual geographies and colonizing and postcolonizing discourses. It comes at a time when critical methodology is being debated and a variety of approaches to Chacuer studies using modes of analyses normally reserved for later periods, including Said's orientalism theories, Dollimore's transgressive proximity and new French feminism. Moreover, the book fits well into the new emphasis in the Chaucer curriculum on globalism and multiculturalism.

This compilation of new essays and essays published over the past fifty years explores Chaucer's experiences with the cultural other, especially Chaucer's relationship to Far Eastern, Islamic, and African sources. While studies of Chaucer's orientalism have heretofore focused on the Squire's Tale , Chaucer's Cultural Geography considers many different Chaucerian works in the context of sexual geographies and colonizing and postcolonizing discourses. It comes at a time when critical methodology is being debated and a variety of approaches to Chacuer studies using modes of analyses normally reserved for later periods, including Said's orientalism theories, Dollimore's transgressive proximity and new French feminism. Moreover, the book fits well into the new emphasis in the Chaucer curriculum on globalism and multiculturalism.

This volume makes available to teachers, students, and scholars a convenient selection of the most provocative and influential articles from the past 20 years on Chaucer's afterlife in the 15th century, one of the most dynamic topics in Chaucer studies today. Much recent work in the field of Chaucer studies has shown how our understanding of Chaucer's poetry is mediated by his 15th-century readers and scribes. Increased scholarly interest in various 15th-century Chaucerian poets-notably Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Henryson-has prompted medievalists to read these sometimes neglected poems anewThe classic essays in this volume, plus two written just for this collection, investigate the scribes, glossators, and poets whose reception and transmission of Chaucer's writings influence our own reading of them today, focusing chiefly on the Chaucerian influence in their poetry. Written by eminent Chaucer scholars, these essays cover not only a wide range of Chaucer's writings, but also touch on the history of the English language, the glosses to Chaucer's poetry, English and Scottish poets' appropriations of Chaucer, the implicit criticism and interpretations of Chaucer's writings in the 15th century, and the first printing of Chaucer's works by William CaxtonTimely and unique, this collection will prove indispensable for research libraries, a convenient and valuable resource for scholars, and an essential introduction for students.

These fifteen essays, four of them commissioned for this volume, along with a discursive introduction which sets each essay into place and comments on its distinctive features, represent a gathering never before attempted: a symposium on Chaucer's craft that concentrates on his poetic forms, his rhythms, his riming, his versification, his prosody. In his seminal essay, Scanning the Prosodists, Alan Gaylord (the editor of this volume) had asked: To show how Chaucer moves, and in moving, moves us: is that not what the study of his prosody should do? Should it not identify a pattern of sounds in motion, a regular and expressive succession which is part of the order of verse and a major component of its effectiveness? In the two decades that followed that essay, a number of distinguished scholars provided a variety of answers for such questions, arising from the authors' work as metrical theorists, or editors of medieval verse, or literary historians, or critics -- but in every case, such work connected to the initiatives and discoveries of the classroom. The best written and most useful of those essays, by recognized authorities in their fields, have been included in this volume. The volume will be of use to the advanced student of Chaucer and medieval poetry, and to the teacher interested in identifying, explaining, and bringing to life the patterns of sound and sense in Chaucer's verse. The extensive master Bibliography for the whole volume comprises a library of references which will have been reviewed and discussed in the essays.

The study of manuscripts is fundamental to the appreciation of Anglo-Saxon texts and culture. Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings provides an introductory collection of materials covering basic terms, techniques, resources, issues, and applications. Focusing on manuscripts copied before 1100 in England, the selections gathered here consider their history, production, analysis, and significance. Drawn from a variety of published sources and new writings commissioned for this collection, these essays offer a thorough background in principles and practices, along with up-to-date coverage of new developments in paleography. This interdisciplinary collection introduces key subjects of research for Anglo-Saxon studies while suggesting potential developments and new directions within the field.

The study of manuscripts is fundamental to the appreciation of Anglo-Saxon texts and culture. Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings provides an introductory collection of materials covering basic terms, techniques, resources, issues, and applications. Focusing on manuscripts copied before 1100 in England, the selections gathered here consider their history, production, analysis, and significance. Drawn from a variety of published sources and new writings commissioned for this collection, these essays offer a thorough background in principles and practices, along with up-to-date coverage of new developments in paleography. This interdisciplinary collection introduces key subjects of research for Anglo-Saxon studies while suggesting potential developments and new directions within the field.