The Yale Companion to Chaucer

The Yale Companion to Chaucer
Author: Seth Lerer
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780300125979

A collection of essays on Chaucer's poetry, this guide provides up-to-date information on the history and textual contexts of Chaucer's work, on the ranges of critical interpretation, and on the poet's place in English and European literary history.

Chaucer: The Basics

Chaucer: The Basics
Author: Jacqueline Tasioulas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2019-08-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1317212185

Chaucer: The Basics is an accessible introduction to the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. It provides a clear critical analysis of the texts, while also providing some necessary background to key medieval ideas and the historical period in which he lived. Jacqueline Tasioulas gives a brief account of Chaucer’s life in its historical and cultural context and also introduces the reader to some of the key religious and philosophical ideas of the period. The essentials of the language and pronunciation are introduced through close reading in a section dedicated to demystifying this often alien-seeming aspect of studying Chaucer. Including a whole chapter devoted to poetry the book also discusses key works, such as: The Book of the Duchess The House of Fame The Parliament of Fowls Troilus and Criseyde The Legend of Good Women The Canterbury Tales With glosses and translations of texts, a glossary of key terms and a timeline, this book is essential reading for anyone studying Chaucer and medieval literature.

Essays on the Art of Chaucer's Verse

Essays on the Art of Chaucer's Verse
Author: Alan T. Gaylord
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134826494

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.

Acts of Union

Acts of Union
Author: Leith Davis
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1998
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780804732697

This book explores the political relationship between Scotland and England as it was negotiated in literature after the 1707 Act of Union. It is built around five discursive encounters between Scottish and English writers: Daniel Defoe-?Lord Belhaven, Tobias Smollett-?Henry Fielding, James Macpherson-?Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth-?Robert Burns, and Walter Scott-?Thomas Percy.

The Cambridge Introduction to Chaucer

The Cambridge Introduction to Chaucer
Author: Alastair Minnis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2014-10-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1316123723

Geoffrey Chaucer is the best-known and most widely read of all medieval British writers, famous for his scurrilous humour and biting satire against the vices and absurdities of his age. Yet he was also a poet of passionate love, sensitive to issues of gender and sexual difference, fascinated by the ideological differences between the pagan past and the Christian present, and a man of science, knowledgeable in astronomy, astrology and alchemy. This concise book is an ideal starting point for study of all his major poems, particularly The Canterbury Tales, to which two chapters are devoted. It offers close readings of individual texts, presenting various possibilities for interpretation, and includes discussion of Chaucer's life, career, historical context and literary influences. An account of the various ways in which he has been understood over the centuries leads into an up-to-date, annotated guide to further reading.