Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England

Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England
Author: Corinne J. Saunders
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780859916103

"The study then considers the treatment of rape and ravishment in a range of literary genres: in hagiography, female saints are repeatedly threatened with rape; the stories of Lucretia and Helen underpin legendary history; the acts of rape and ravishment challenge and shape chivalric order in romance; otherworldly rapes result in the conception of romance heroes. The final two chapters examine the ways in which Malory and Chaucer write and rewrite rape and ravishment."--BOOK JACKET.

Chaucer and Clothing

Chaucer and Clothing
Author: Laura Fulkerson Hodges
Publisher: DS Brewer
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2005
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781843840336

A detailed discussion of the meaning and significance of the terms used to describe the clothing of Chaucer's religious and academic pilgrims. Religious and academic dress in the middle ages functioned as a metaphorical signifier of spiritual and intellectual standards, implied a given social status, signalled the rejection or possession of garment wealth, and, in the details, suggested the wearer's spiritual state. This book presents the first sustained analysis of the characterizing dress worn by Chaucer's pilgrims who are in holy orders and/or affiliated with universities; the author uses approaches from a variety of disciplines [received criticism of late medieval literature, developments in political, economic and social history, the visual arts, and material culture] in order to present the complex ideas and rhetoric the pilgrims' dress expresses. She also makes the religious, intellectual, and material culture of Chaucer's day accessible to modern audiences through the reconstruction of the significance of fabrics, dyes, accessories, garments, and assembled costumes, and an explanation of technical details and specialist vocabularies for cloth-making, clothing, accessories, and their images in the visual arts.

Chaucer's Agents

Chaucer's Agents
Author: Carolynn Van Dyke
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2005
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780838640838

Chaucer's Agents draws on medieval and modern theories of agency to provide fresh readings of the major Chaucerian texts. Collectively, those readings aim to illuminate Chaucer's responses to two greta problems of agency: the degree to which human beings and forces qualify as agents, and the equal reference of "agent" to initiators and instruments. Each chapter surveys medieval conceptions of the agency in question-- allegorical Realities, intelligent animals, pagan gods, women, and the author--and then follows that kind of agent through representative Chaucerian texts. Readers have long recognized Chaucer's interest in questions of causation; Van Dyke shows that his answers to those questions shape, even constitute, his narratives. --Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Essays on the Art of Chaucer's Verse

Essays on the Art of Chaucer's Verse
Author: Alan T. Gaylord
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134826427

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.

A New Introduction to Chaucer

A New Introduction to Chaucer
Author: D. S. Brewer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2014-07-15
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1317895371

This new introduction to Chaucer has been radically rewritten since the previous edition which was published in 1984. The book is a controversial and modern restatement of some of the traditional views on Chaucer, and seeks to present a rounded introduction to his life, cultural setting and works. Professor Brewer takes into account recent literary criticism, both challenging new ideas and using them in his analysis of Chaucer's work. Above all, there is a strong emphasis on leading the reader to understand and enjoy the poetry and prose, and to try to understand Chaucer's values which are often seen to oppose modern principles. A New Introduction to Chaucer is the result of Derek Brewer's distinguished career spanning fifty years of research and study of Chaucer and contemporary scholarship and criticism. New interpretations of many of the poems are presented including a detailed account of the Book of the Duchess. Derek Brewer's fresh and narrative style of writing will appeal to all who are interested in Chaucer, from sixth-form and undergraduate students who are new to Chaucer's work through to more advanced students and lecturers.

The Making of Chaucer's English

The Making of Chaucer's English
Author: Christopher Cannon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1998
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780521592741

A substantial reappraisal of the place of Chaucer's English in the history of English language and literature.

A Companion to Chaucer

A Companion to Chaucer
Author: Peter Brown
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 047069274X

Designed as both a contribution to original research and as a stimulating and accessible text, this volume is a helpful, reliable, responsive and adaptable resource for students of Chaucer at all levels.

Chaucer and the Subversion of Form

Chaucer and the Subversion of Form
Author: Thomas A. Prendergast
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108147992

Responding to the lively resurgence of literary formalism, this volume delivers a timely and fresh exploration of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Advancing 'new formalist' approaches, medieval scholars have begun to ask what happens when structure fails to yield meaning, probing the very limits of poetic organization. While Chaucer is acknowledged as a master of form, his work also foregrounds troubling questions about formal agency: the disparate forces of narrative and poetic practice, readerly reception, intertextuality, genre, scribal attention, patronage, and historical change. This definitive collection of essays offers diverse perspectives on Chaucer and a varied analysis of these problems, asking what happens when form is resisted by author or reader, when it fails by accident or by design, and how it can be misleading, errant, or even dangerous.

Chaucer's Humor

Chaucer's Humor
Author: Jean E. Jost
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2019-09-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000681319

Originally published in 1994. Chaucer is considered the first major humorist in English literature and is particularly interesting as he reflects the humor of predecessors and contemporaries as well as defines development for subsequent British humor. This collection presents essays that define the nature of Chaucerian humor, examine Chaucer’s works from a variety of theoretical perspectives, and consider genres of humor within his writing. This is an excellent work of critical discourse that adds important understanding of Chaucer as well as the field of comedy in literature.

Chaucer's Cultural Geography

Chaucer's Cultural Geography
Author: Kathryn L. Lynch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1135309590

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.