Chaucer Studies – serie

This book is designed to explore the various kinds of association found in Chaucer's lexical usage, and so to alert the reader to the wider implications of particular words and phrases. By concentrating on the `architecture' of the language, Dr Burnley offers what is in some respects an antidote to the skilled contextual glossing of the editor, whose activities may often obscure important connections. Such connections are vital to the interpretation of anywork as a whole, and awareness of them is what distinguishes the scholar from the student who can `translate' Chaucer perfectly adequately without being aware of deeper meanings. Even apparently simple words such as cruel, mercy and pity can often carry subtle echoes and overtones. Dr Burnley is particularly concerned with words which carry some conceptual association, and thus with moral stereotypes inherited from classical and earlymedieval philosophy, which formed the currency of both secular and religious ideals of conduct in the Middle Ages. His prime concern is to identify the themes and symbols and their characteristic language, and thus to provide a firm basis for critical investigation in Chaucer's literary use of this material.

This volume makes available in translation the texts that lie behind Chaucer's dream poems - The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, The House of Fame and Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. Chaucer's dream poems are now being increasingly studied and appreciated. With their attractively bookish dreamer figure and their graceful use of conventions and traditions, they have their distinctive place in Chaucer's work. But the nodernreader of these medieval poems particularly needs a sense of their literary context in the tradition of comparable narrative poems - largely in OId French - which Chaucer knew and drew upon. None of these French poems has ever been made available in English translation before, and many of the texts are difficult to access, being available only in dated French scholarly editions. The authors represented are Froissart, Machaut and Deschamps, as well as someminor and anonymous poems, and there are also relevant translations from Cicero and Boccaccio. The book gives an idea of what Chaucer's sources were in themselves, and in what ways the English poet was inspired to use and go beyond them, and this presents a picture of the poet at work. Some of the French poems are translated carefully by Chaucer, while with other poems he is selective, interested in certain sections of his sources only. In further cases, the original material can be seen to have provided a more general point of departure for Chaucer's own developments on his work.

The purpose of this book is to give an outline of structural features of Chaucer's poetic syntax that are relevant to the study of style, and to define some general tendencies in his construction of sentences. What emerges is a fondness on Chaucer's part for discontinuity in the order of words and phrases and for certain forms of expression which have a wider application t:han their modern counterparts. In order that Chaucer's usage may be seen in its historical context, comparative material is drawn from the writings of his contemporaries - Langland, Gower, and the Gawain-poet - and from the body of early English rhyming romances now taken to represent an influent:ial nativepoetic tradition. I In an introductory chapter Dr Roscow questions the familiar description of Chaucer's syntax as colloquial, and argues for attention to a wider range of literary functions in studying the relationship between syntax and style in nedieval poetry

Professor Minnis argues that the paganism in Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight's Taleis not simply a backdrop but must be central to our understanding of the texts. Chaucer's two great pagan poems, Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight's Tale, belong to the literary genre known as the `romance of antiquity' (which first appeard in the mid 12th century), in which the ancient pagan world is shown on its own terms, without the blatant Christian bias against paganism characteristic of works like the Chanson de Roland, where the writer is concerned with present-day rather than classical forms of paganism. Chaucer's attitudes to antiquity were influenced, but not determined, by those found in the compilations, commentaries, mythographies and history books which we know that he knew. These sources illuminate the manner in which he transformed Boccaccio. Much modern criticism has concentrated on the medieval veneer of manners and fashions which are ascribed to the heathen protagonists of Troilus and The Knight's Tale; Dr Minnis examines the other side of the coin, Chaucer's historical interest in cultures very different from his own. The paganism in these poems is not mere background and setting, but an essential part of their overall meaning.

Translation of fifteen lyrics marked "Ch" found in University of Pennsylvania MS French 15, along with a detailed inventory of the contents and a study of English and Chaucerian connections.When Chaucer began his service inthe English courts in the late 1350s, the French lyric in the formes fixes of ballade, rondeau, virelay, and chant royal was the poetry of the court. Chaucer no doubt composed such poetry. Among extant anthologies of lyricsin the fixed forms from that time, University of Pennsylvania MS French 15, comprising 310 poems of which about half are anonymous, seems the most likely to contain works written by Chaucer. To add to the likelihood, fifteen of the best anonymous poems - ten ballades, four chants royaux, and a rondeau - have the intriguing initials "Ch" entered just beneath the rubrics. Besides editions and translations of the fifteen lyrics, Chaucer and the Poems of "Ch" provides a record of the numerous filiations of the Pennsylvania MS collection with Chaucer and England. This record includes text of a fascinating exchange of poems between Chaucer's early contemporaries, Philippe de Vitry and Jean de la Mote, the text of Granson's Cinq Balades Ensievans in the closest version extant to Chaucer's Complaint of Venus, and an analysis of the contents of the MS as they relate to Chaucer. Chaucerand the Poems of "Ch" concludes with a detailed inventory of this little-studied MS with particular note of Chaucerian aspects of it.

is one of Chaucer's most intellectually challenging poems, drawing on diverse traditions such as dream poetry and mythology, but unified by the central concept of Fame. It is this concept, and the `imaginary world' which surrounds it, which Professor Boitani explores in this volume in the Chaucer Studies series. He begins with a brief outline and discussion of the poem, showing what problems it poses, and then turns to explore the `history and meaning of the idea of Fame, such as Chaucer might have received from tradition', a quest which leads him into Biblical, classical and Anglo-Saxon literature, into philosophy and into romance. He then examines the view of Fame in Chaucer's Italian, French and English contemporaries, and shows that it is a central theme not only in Dante's Divine Comedy but also in the work of Boccaccio and Petrarch. The second half of the book returns to Chaucer's poem and examines the imaginary world which he constructs around Fame. Professor Boitani demonstrates that The House of Fame is in a sense Chaucer's creative manifesto, centred on Fame as the goddess of language, myth and poetry, with poets as her prophets. In this poem, he defines many of the themes - Love and Nature, order and disorder, fortune and chance, reality and appearance - which occupied him in his other works. Here he deals with them directly rather than obliquely, revealing the formative influences behind his own imaginary world and mythology..

There is fairly general agreement that the modern reader's appreciation of Chaucer's writings can be enhanced by providing the reader with guides to `Chaucerian background' - literary, historical and cultural - and students of Chaucer are fortunate in having at their disposal a large number of books covering various aspects of Chaucerian background. One field which is less well covered is Chaucer's language: it is true that certain aspects of Chaucer's syntax and lexis have been dealt with in fairly recent years, but other subcategories of Chaucerian English, such as phonology and morphology, deserve more attention. The absence of readily available guides to these aspects of Chaucer's English has placed the linguistically-oriented student at a considerable disadvantage compared with his more literary-minded colleague, but the latter is also in need of a more detailed and reliable guide to Chaucerian Englishthan the somewhat scant notes often included in editions of Chaucerian texts. The present book is intended to meet this need. It is largely limited to Chaucerian phonology and morphology, and assumes some familiarity with the rudiments of linguistics, but the technical terminology has been kept to a minimum.

David Wallace's examination of the aims and literary affiliations of Boccaccio's early writings provides an indispensable preface to and context for an informed appraisal of Chaucer's usage of Boccaccio. Previous studies of the relationship between the work of the two poets have tended to consider Chaucer's borrowings without making a thorough study of the traditions which shaped the Italian writer's work. Wallace argues that Boccaccio was not primarily concerned with winning recognition at the Angevin court, but was chiefly concerned with fashioning an identity for himself as an illustrious vernacular author. Chaucer recognised that both the Filostrato and Teseida derived their basic narrative capabilities from popular tradition analogous to that of the English tail-rhyme romance. Following a detailed analysis of Chaucer's translation practice in Troilus and Criseyde, Wallace concludesthat it was Boccaccio's attempt to develop a narrative art occupying the middle ground between popular and illustrious, domestic and European traditions that Chaucer found so uniquely congenial and instructive.

The book begins with a brief prefatory discussion of its relation to structuralist and post-structuralist criticism. The first chapter, `Apocryphal Voices', surveys the basis of modern critical approaches to persona and `irony' in Chaucer's poetry, and suggests that such approaches are better suited to unequivocally written contexts. A systematic hesitation between a wholly written and a wholly spoken context requires critical distinctions between types of persona, and a number of distinctions in the range between persona and voice. `Morality in its Context' examines the Pardoner and his tale and argues against a `dramatic' view of the tale itself, while the third chapter, 'Chaucer's Development of Persona', is a study of possible sources for Chaucer's handling of the narratorial '1', looking at the English `disour', the French `dits amoureux', Italian and Latin sources of influence, and the Roman de la Rose. The last two chapters apply the principles outlined so far to Troilus and The Canterbury Tales, with a particular examination of the literary history of the Squire'stale to show that modern interest in dramatic persona has obscured many other important issues and leads to drastic misreading. This is a challenging and lucid work which questions many of the received attitudes of recentChaucer criticism, and offers a reasoned and approachable alternative view.

`Lively and interesting... Complaint and its interaction with its narrative context is explored across the range of Chaucer's oeuvre from the shorter poems to various Tales.' NOTES & QUERIESCounters the view of Chaucer's complaints as exercises in a worn-out French tradition by demonstrating how his effort to fuse lyric and narrative modes led him to experiment with complaint. `His analyses give new perspectives on several of Chaucer's works - an intelligent, original and profitable view.'STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER

These thirteen essays by distinguished Chaucerians deal with the most neglected genre of the Canterbury Tales, the religious tales. Although the prose works are also discussed, the primary focus of the volume is on Chaucer's four poems in rhyme royal: the Clerk's Tale, the Man of Law's Tale, the Second Nun's Tale and the Prioress's Tale.Almost all of Chaucer's tales are religious in some sense, but these four works deal specifically and deeply with faith and spiritual transcendence. They appeal to qualities, such as pathos, not now in critical fashion, but at the same time they seem extraordinarily contemporary in their special interest inwomen and feminist issues. The time is appropriate to recognise their importance in Chaucer's canon, for he is a religious poet as surely as he is a poet of comedy and secular love. These essays survey past criticism on the religious tales and offer new approaches.Contributors: C. DAVID BENSON, ELIZABETH ROBINSON, DEREK PEARSALL, BARBARA NOLAN, ROBERT WORTH FRANK, LINDA GEORGIANNA, CHARLOTTE C. MORSE, A.S.G. EDWARDS, CAROLYN COLETTE, ELIZABETHD. KIRK, GEORGE R. KEISER, JANE COWGILL.

This collection of 32 modernised versions of The Canterbury Tales which appeared in the 18th century offers basic material for studying the history of attitudes to Chaucer, and Chaucer scholarship, duringthe period. Reception data so precise and extensive is available only for Chaucer among English authors. At least seventeen known and anonymous writers produced thirty-two modernised Canterbury tales during the century, plus tale links and adaptations of each other's work. The present collection contains only modernisations that have not seen print since 1796, thus excluding those by Pope and Dryden.Although most works in this collection may be examined further in several British and American libraries, others cannot. Apparently only one copy has survived of an anonymous Miller's Tale (1791) with a thoughtful preface justifying the tale's overt sexuality published just as William Lipscomb was completing his 1795 edition that, in its preface, justifies exclusion from the pilgrimage of the notorious tales of Miller and Reeve. Such contrasting attitudes illustrate the dangers of generalisation about the usual reception or interpretation of Chaucer during this or any other socio-historic period; instead, the collection provides an untapped reservoir of material with which to investigate anew the rich complexity of his poetry and its enduring appeal.BETSY BOWDEN is Professor of English at Rutgers University,New Jersey.

`Each essay opens up new directions without ignoring past critical trends...an important guide for new approaches to the text and meaning of Troilus and Criseyde and, as such, an important contribution to Chaucerian scholarship.' CHOICE`Are we to take the tone from the ending and read the whole poem ironically? Or read it sympathetically and dismiss the ending...? These interesting pieces share a determination to deal thoroughly with whatappear minor aspects of the poem and see if those offer any guide to the whole.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENTConntributors: ALFRED DAVID, JOHN FRANKIS, ALAN T. GAYLORD, MARK LAMBERT, JOHN McKINNELL, JAMES WIMSATT, BARRY WINDEATT.

Owen investigates what the manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales reveal about the way they came into being.[see revs] This study of the manuscripts of the Canterbury Talescalls into question previous efforts to explain the complexities, the different orderings of the tales and the extraordinary shifts in textual affiliations within the manuscripts. Owen sees the manuscripts that survive, most of them collections of all or almost all the tales, as derived from the large number of single tales and small collections that circulated after Chaucer's death. This theory takes issue with all modern editions of the Canterbury Tales, which in Owen's view reflect the effort of medieval scribes and supervisors to make a satisfactory book of the collection of fragments Chaucer left behind. It is this collection of fragments, the authentic Tales of Canterbury by Geoffrey Chaucer, which reflects the different stages of the plan that was still evolving at his death.CHARLES A. OWEN Jr is former Professor of English and Chairman of Medieval Studies at the University of Conneticut.

The notes are a model of economy... The introduction is quite superb... The volume as a whole is a worthy addition to a series which has already begun to establish high expectations. TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENTChaucer made extensive use of Boccacio's romances as a basis for his major works, and any analysis of his handling of his sources must depend on a knowledge of the Italian poet's work.

Chaucer's translation of Boethius' work is related to medieval intellectual culture, with attention to Trevet's Boethius commentary.This collection seeks to locate the Boece within the medievaltradition of the academic study and translation of the Consolatiophilosophiae, thereby relating the work to the intellectual culturewhich made it possible.It begins with the fullest study yet undertakenof the Boethius commentary of Nicholas Trevet, this being a majorsource of the Boece. There follow editions and translationsof the major passages in Trevet's commentary whereNeoplatonic issuesare confronted, then Chaucer's debt to Trevet is assessed in a detailedreview. The many choices which faced Chaucer as a translator are indicated and the Boeceis placed in a long line of interpreters of Boethius in which both Latin commentators and vernacular translators played their parts. Finally, a view is offered of the Boece as anexample of late-medieval `academic translation': if the Boeceis assigned to this genre, it may be judged a considerable success.

Detailed examination of the evidence linking the authorship of the Equatorie of the Planetis with Chaucer.The Equatorie of the Planetis, a Middle English text on the construction and use of a planetary equatorium, was composed in 1393. The unique manuscript, which appears to be the author's original, belongs to Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1952 it was brought to general attention by Derek Price who argued that the text was written by Geoffrey Chaucer. Whether the Equatorie is indeed Chaucer's has remained controversial ever since.Dr Rand Schmidt's book offers a detailed examination of the literary, linguistic and codicological evidence linking the authorship of the Equatorie with Chaucer. She analyses and compares the manuscript with other specimens proposed asChaucer's hand, and evaluates the available methods of testing. The volume includes a new transcription of the Equatorie, accompanied by a facsimile of the MS, and a KWIC-concordance to the text. Diplomatic transcriptions of three Middle English astronomical texts have also been included and are printed here for the first time.Dr KARI ANNE RAND SCHMIDT is a language specialist, teaching in the Department of English at the University of Oslo.

Myles challenges the convention of the `medieval mind' and perceives new semantic sophistication in Chaucer's language.NB DSB BLURB ON CERTAIN OCCASIONS What is the difference between saying something and meaning it, and saying something and not meaning it? A modern question. A Chaucerian question. Through his analysis of intentionality and the metaphysics of speech, Robert Myles shows why Chaucer's appreciation of the functioning of language and thought could be `modern'. Through his analysis of Chaucer's works, particularly the Friar's Tale, Myles demonstrates that Chaucer's understanding of these is modern and the myth of the medieval mind as other than our own is exploded. The medieval belief in intentionality, the object-directedness of all beings, allowed appreciationof a fact: thought and language areintentional. On a practical level Chaucer deliberately exploits three-level semantics (signs are simultaneously mind-drected and world-directed) to create `realistic' fiction in the modernliterary sense of the term. Myles also argues that Chaucer is a realist in the philosophical sense, a view which goes counter to the current of much recent criticism. This book will not only be a challenging addition to medievaland Chaucerian studies, but has interesting implications for the historical study of intentionality, semiotics and epistemology.DR ROBERT MYLESis senior lecturer at the English and French Language Centre, McGill University, and a research fellow at the Department of English, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Representations of masculinity in Chaucer's works examined through modern critical theory.How does Chaucer portray the various male pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales? How manly is Troilus? To what extent can the spirit and terminology of recent feminist criticism inform the study of Chaucer's men? Is there such athing as a distinct `Chaucerian masculinity', or does it appear in a multitude of different forms? These are some of the questions that the contributors to this ground-breaking and provocative volume attempt to answer, using a diversity of critical methods and theories. Some look at the behaviour of noble or knightly men; some at clerics, or businessmen, or churls; others examine the so-called "masculine" qualities of female characters, and the "feminine"qualities of male characters. Topics include the Host's bourgeois masculinity; the erotic triangles operating in the Miller's Tale; why Chaucer `diminished' the sexuality of Sir Thopas; and whether Troilus is effeminate, impotent or an example of true manhood.PETER G. BEIDLER is the Lucy G.Moses Distinguished Professor of English at Lehigh University.Contributors: MARK ALLEN, PATRICIA CLARE INGHAM, MARTIN BLUM, DANIEL F. PIGG, ELIZABETH M. BIEBEL, JEAN E. JOST, CAROL EVEREST, ANDREA ROSSI-REDER, GLENN BURGER, PETER G. BEIDLER, JEFFREY JEROME COHEN, DANIEL RUBEY, MICHAEL D. SHARP, PAUL R. THOMAS, STEPHANIE DIETRICH, MAUD BURNETT MCINERNEY, DEREK BREWER

Close study of Chaucer's most important works shows how he used gender issues to extend the range of romance.The paradox of romance as a genre is that it contains multiple possibilities, yet remains profoundly constrained by its own terms and conventions. Through a close reading of several of Chaucer's most important works, Dr Weisl examines Chaucer's use of gender issues to explore and challenge this genre. She argues that Chaucer's complex treatment of the romance, following both continental and Middle English traditions, experiments with and tests romance conventions.Each chapter looks indetail at one or more of Chaucer's works, examining their different approaches to the problems of gender, and showing how this is closely connected with genre. Subjects addressed include the feminised private spaces in Troilus and Criseydewhich protect Criseyde, but are inevitably penetrated by male power; the masculine imperatives of the epic which challenge the limits of the feminised romance in the Knight'sTale(and the speech of its heroine Emelye, who questions the assumptions of the genre itself); Canacee in the Squire's Tale, who rejects the stereotyped role of the heroine, and the romance world in the Tale of SirThopas, without a heroine at all.Dr ANGELA JANE WEISLis visiting assistant professor of English and Women's Studies at Wittenberg University, Ohio.

Medieval natural philosophy illuminates Chaucer's use of the motif of sight and the relationship between love and knowledge.In this study, Norman Klassen shows how Chaucer explores the complexity of the relationship between love and knowledge through recourse to the motif of sight. The convention of love at first sight involves love, knowledge, and sight, but insists that the claims of love and the realm of the rational are in strict opposition. In the metaphysical tradition, however, the relationship between love, knowledge and sight is more complex, manifesting both qualitiesof opposition and of symbiosis, similar to that found in late medieval natural philosophy.The author argues that Chaucer is unorthodox in exploiting the possibilities for using sight both to express emotional experience and to accentuate rationality at the same time. The conventional opposition of love and knowledge in the phenomenon of love at first sight gives way in Chaucer's development of love, knowledge, and sight to a symbiosis in his lovepoetry. The complexity of this relationship draws attention to his own role as artificer, as one who in the process of articulating the effects of love at first sight cannot help but bring together love and knowledge in ways not anticipated by the conventions of love poetry.NORMAN KLASSENis a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctorial fellow at the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Minnesota.

An original feminist approach, through a study of Chaucer's treatment of masculinity, to the Canterbury TalesThis volume presents a feminist approach to the Canterbury Tales, investigating the ways in which the tensions and contradictions found within the broad contours of medieval gender discourse write themselves into Chaucer'stext. Four discourses of medieval masculinity are examined, which simultaneously reinforce and resist one another: heroic or chivalric, Christian, courtly love, and emerging humanist models.Each chapter attempts to negotiateboth contemporary assumptions of gender construction, and essentialist readings of gender common to the middle ages; throughout, the author argues that the Canterbury Tales offer a sophisticated discussion of masculinity,and that it strongly indicts some of the prevalent medieval notions of ideal masculinity while still remaining firmly homosocial and homophobic. The book concludes that on the question of gender issues, the Tales are beststudied as male-authored texts containing representations and negotiations revealing much about late medieval masculinities.Dr ANNE LASKAYA teaches in the English Department at the University of Oregon.

Survey of the relationship between music and literature in 14c France, Italy and Britain, with appendix of all songs attributed to Chaucer.An absorbing survey... He is an expert on the French song of the period, consequently his wider view of Chaucer's musical background is well worth reading ... and he has much to say about Italy and England. The music is first-rate, and early music performers will find these songs a welcome addition to their repertory. EARLY MUSICAlthough Chaucer himself was never described as a musician, a number of his poems are based on French models which belongto a well-established musical tradition, and there are also many references to musical activities in his larger works. This is the starting point for Dr Wilkins's book, which explores both the wider question of the relationship between music and literature in the fourteenth century and the specific area of Chaucer `songs'. He surveys the musical and literary scene in France, Italy and Britain during Chaucer's lifetime, with special emphasis on composers such as Machaut and Landini, and on the differences in national styles. The performance of music and the instruments used are also fully explored.The discussion of Chaucer's musical background is illustrated in the accompanyingsettings presented with words by Chaucer - ten ballades, three complaintes (or chants royaux), and one rondeau.Fully illustrated with black and white photographs and musical examples.New edition; first published 1979, 1980.

New readings of Chaucer's dream visions, demonstrating his philosophical interests and learning.Chaucer's Philosophical Visions dramatically extends our sense of the fourteenth-century poet's philosophical interests and learning.Arguing that Chaucer was well acquainted with late medieval English Scholasticism, this book offers new readings of four of his earliest major poems, the dream visions: the Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Parliament of Fowls, and the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. By resituating these poems within the genre of the 'philosophical vision' (epitomized by Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy), these readings demonstrate Chaucer's interest in metaphysics, epistemology, and logic. Indeed, the only intellectual idiom available to Chaucer for exploring the way that the human mind works and the way that words work to express human reality was philosophical language, a language that Chaucer employed with the same technical acumen that he brought to other contemporary learned traditions, like astronomy and natural science.KATHRYN L. LYNCH is the Katharine Lee Bates and Sophie Chantal Hart Professor of English at Wellesley College, Massachusetts.

A study of Chaucer's definition of tragedy - with special reference to Troilus -and its lasting influence on English dramatists.This book is concerned with the medieval idea of what constituted tragedy; it suggests that it was not a common term, and that those few who used the term did not always intend the same thing by it. Kelly believes that it was Chaucer's work which shaped notions of the genre, and places his achievement in critical and historical context. He begins by contrasting modern with medieval theoretical approaches to genres, then discusses Boccaccio's concept of tragedy before turning to Chaucer himself, exploring the ideas of tragedy prevalent in medieval England and their influence on Chaucer, and showing how Chaucer interpreted the term. Troilus and Criseyde is analysed specifically as a tragedy, with an account of its reception in modern times; for comparison, there is an analysis of how John Lydgate and Robert Henryson, two of Chaucer's imitators, understood and practiced tragedy.Professor HENRY ANSGAR KELLY teaches at UCLA.

An investigation of Chaucer's thinking about women, assessed in the light of developments in feminist criticism.Women are a major subject of Chaucer's writings, and their place in his work has attracted much recent critical attention. Feminizing Chaucer investigates Chaucer's thinking about women, and re-assesses it in the light of developments in feminist criticism. It explores Chaucer's handling of gender issues, of power roles, of misogynist stereotypes and the writer's responsibility for perpetuating them, and the complex meshing of activity and passivityin human experience. Mann argues that the traditionally 'female' virtues of patience and pity are central to Chaucer's moral ethos, and that this necessitates a reformulation of ideal masculinity.First published [as Geoffrey Chaucer] in the series 'Feminist Readings', this new edition includes a new chapter, 'Wife-Swapping in Medieval Literature'. The references and bibliography have been updated, and a new preface surveys publications in the field over the last decade. JILL MANN is currently Notre Dame Professor of English, University of Notre Dame.

A wide range of new scholarship on Chaucer's poetry.This collection of essays makes available a wide range of new scholarship on Chaucer's poetry. Opening essays address the issues of "Chaucerian representation" and "Chaucerian poetics", arguing for the multiplicity and complexityof what Chaucer "represents" and for the importance of his dual Anglo-French background in enabling him to articulate that complexity. Chaucer's use of Ovidian and Ciceronian sources and ideas is examined, and his pursuit of simplicity and suspicion of "delicacy"; the potent issues of sexuality and spirituality, and money and death (with Chaucer's own ending and his thoughts on last things) complete the collection.Contributors: DEREK BREWER, HELEN COOPER, PAUL DOWER, JOHN V. FLEMING, JOHN HILL, TRAUGOTT LAWLER, CELIA LEWIS, R. BARTON PALMER, WILLIAM PROVOST, JOHN PLUMMER, WILLIAM ROGERS.

A study of the language of Chaucerian manuscripts, printed editions and Chaucer's 15th century followers.Winner of the 2005 Beatrice White Prize for outstanding scholarly work in the field of English literature before 1590The manuscript copies of Chaucer's works preserve valuable information concerning Chaucer's linguistic practices and the ways in which scribes responded to these. This book draws on recent developments in Middle English dialectology, textual criticism and the application of computers to manuscript studies to assess the evidence Chaucerian manuscripts provide for reconstructing Chaucer's own language and his linguistic environment. This book considershow scribes, editors and Chaucerian poets transmitted and updated Chaucer's language and the implications of this for our understanding of Chaucerian book production and reception, and the processes of linguistic change in the fifteenth century.Winner of the 2005 Beatrice White Prize for outstanding scholarly work in the field of English literature before 1590SIMON HOROBIN lectures on English language at the University of Glasgow.

A lively defence of the ethics of exemplary narrative, and a detailed account of its forms and functioning in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower.Why do medieval writers routinely make use of exemplary rhetoric? How does it work, and what are its ethical and poetical values? And if Chaucer and Gower must be seen as vigorously subverting it, then why do they persist in using it? Borrowing from recent developments in ethical criticism and theory, this book addresses such questions by reconstructing a late medieval rationale for the ethics of exemplary narrative. The author argues that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Gower's Confessio Amantis attest to the vitality of a narrative - rather than strictly normative - ethics that has roots in premodern traditions of practical reason and rhetoric. Chaucer and Gower are shown to be inheritors and respecters of an early and unexpected form of ethical pragmatism - which has profound implications for the orthodox history of ethics in the West. Recipient of the 2008 John H. Fisher Award forsignificant contribution to the field of Gower Studies.Dr J. ALLAN MITCHELL teaches in the Department of English, University of Victoria.