The Sources of Chaucer's Poetics

The Sources of Chaucer's Poetics
Author: Amanda Holton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 135188168X

Focusing on four aspects of Chaucer's poetics-use of narrative, speech, rhetoric, and figurative language-this is the first book-length study to identify Chaucer's distinctive poetic strategies by making specific comparisons with known textual sources. The author provides a combination of analysis of both poetic stylistics and sources, reading The Legend of Good Women and five of The Canterbury Tales (The Knight's Tale, The Man of Law's Tale, The Physician's Tale, The Monk's Tale, and The Manciple's Tale) against their textual sources, including Ovid's Metamorphoses and Heroides, Boccaccio's Teseida, Virgil's Aeneid, Le Roman de la Rose, and histories by Nicholas Trevet and Guido delle Colonne. Holton provides a picture of Chaucer's habits as a writer, showing that he was consistent in asserting his own techniques against the pressure of his sources and in keeping control over words and their meaning.

Classical Myths and Legends in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Classical Myths and Legends in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Author: H. David Brumble
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 480
Release: 1998-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136797386

While numerous classical dictionaries identify the figures and tales of Greek and Roman mythology, this reference book explains the allegorical significance attached to the myths by Medieval and Renaissance authors. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries for the gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines, and places of classical myth and legend. Each entry includes a brief account of the myth, with reference to the Greek and Latin sources. The entry then discusses how Medieval and Renaissance commentators interpreted the myth, and how poets, dramatists, and artists employed the allegory in their art. Each entry includes a bibliography and the volume concludes with appendices and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

Chaucer's Monk's Tale and Nun's Priest's Tale

Chaucer's Monk's Tale and Nun's Priest's Tale
Author: Peter Goodall
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2009-02-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442691905

Of all the stories that comprise The Canterbury Tales, certain ones have attracted more attention than others in terms of literary scholarship and canonization. The Monk's Tale, for instance, was popular in the decades after Chaucer's death, but has since suffered critical neglect, particularly in the twentieth century. The opposite has occurred with the Nun's Priest's Tale, which has long been one of the most popular and widely discussed of the tales, cited by some critics as the most essentially 'Chaucerian' of them all. This annotated bibliography is a record of all editions, translations, and scholarship written on The Monk's Tale and the Nun's Priest's Tale in the twentieth century with a view to revisiting the former and creating a comprehensive scholarly view of the latter. A detailed introduction summarizes all extant writings on the two tales and their relationship to each other, giving a sense of the complexity of Chaucer's seminal work and the unique function of its component stories. By dealing with these two tales in particular, this bibliography suggests the complicated critical reception and history of The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer

Chaucer
Author: John Leyerle
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 1986-12-15
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1442655755

More than 900 entries, carefully selected, organized, and annotated, and accompanied by informative background material, make this volume a unique and indispensable guide to Chaucer and related studies. The entries are divided into three categories. The first includes materials necessary for the study of Chaucer’s works: complete editions, facsimiles, studies of manuscripts, canon, and dating, works on the poet’s life, language, and learning, and his sources and influences. The second section covers Chaucer’s works. The third contains a selection of secondary works which provide information on the age and the culture in which Chaucer lived; music, the visual arts, economics and politics, rhetoric and poetics, and sciences among the subjects included. Most entries listed are in English, but a few essential studies in French and German are included. Items have been selected not only on the basis of quality but also for importance in the history of scholarship, variety of approach, and specific usefulness to students and beginners.

Critical Companion to Chaucer

Critical Companion to Chaucer
Author: Rosalyn Rossignol
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2006
Genre: Civilization, Medieval, in literature
ISBN: 1438108400

Examines the life and writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, including detailed synopses of his works, explanations of literary terms, character portraits, social and historical influences, and more.

The Myths of Love

The Myths of Love
Author: Katherine Heinrichs
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2010-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0271039205

This study seeks to define the medieval literary conventions governing allusions to certain Ovidian and Virgilian tales of love in the works of Boccaccio, Machaut, Froissart, and Chaucer. Using evidence from the Latin mythographers, it addresses several much-debated critical issues in medieval scholarship: questions of narrative voice, thematic unity, and purpose. Its principal contribution is to the discussion and evaluation of the French and Italian poems of love to which Chaucer was most heavily indebted. The author suggests that the love poems of Boccaccio, Machaut, and Froissart, rather than being ponderous didactic productions designed to instruct medieval audiences in the art of love, are true progeny of the Roman de la Rose,complex jeux d'esprit much closer in spirit and intention to the works of Chaucer than has been supposed.

The Romance of the Rose

The Romance of the Rose
Author: Guillaume de Lorris
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 519
Release: 2023-06-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0691257779

Many English-speaking readers of the Roman de la rose, the famous dream allegory of the thirteenth century, have come to rely on Charles Dahlberg's elegant and precise translation of the Old French text. His line-by-line rendering in contemporary English is available again, this time in a third edition with an updated critical apparatus. Readers at all levels can continue to deepen their understanding of this rich tale about the Lover and his quest--against the admonishments of Reason and the obstacles set by Jealousy and Resistance--to pluck the fair Rose in the Enchanted Garden. The original introduction by Dahlberg remains an excellent overview of the work, covering such topics as the iconographic significance of the imagery and the use of irony in developing the central theme of love. His new preface reviews selected scholarship through 1990, which examines, for example, the sources and influences of the work, the two authors, the nature of the allegorical narrative as a genre, the use of first person, and the poem's early reception. The new bibliographic material incorporates that of the earlier editions. The sixty-four miniature illustrations from thirteenth-and fifteenth-century manuscripts are retained, as are the notes keyed to the Langlois edition, on which the translation is based.