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"Poets, English Middle English."
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Death and the Pearl maiden : plague, poetry, England
The plague first arrived in the English port of Weymouth in the summer of 1348.Two years later, half of Britain was dead, but the Black Death was just beginning.In the decades to come, England would suffer recurring outbreaks, social and cultural upheaval, and violent demographic shifts.
eBook
Chaucer : a European life
More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life--yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. To understand his accomplishment, she reconstructs in unprecedented detail the cosmopolitan world of Chaucer's adventurous life, focusing on the places and spaces that fired his imagination. Uncovering important new information about Chaucer's travels, private life, and the early circulation of his writings, this innovative biography documents a series of vivid episodes, moving from the commercial wharves of London to the frescoed chapels of Florence and the kingdom of Navarre, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side. The narrative recounts Chaucer's experiences as a prisoner of war in France, as a father visiting his daughter's nunnery, as a member of a chaotic Parliament, and as a diplomat in Milan, where he encountered the writings of Dante and Boccaccio. At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer's writings, taking the reader to the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde, the gardens of the dream visions, and the peripheries and thresholds of The Canterbury Tales. By exploring the places Chaucer visited, the buildings he inhabited, the books he read, and the art and objects he saw, this landmark biography tells the extraordinary story of how a wine merchant's son became the poet of The Canterbury Tales.
BOOK
The centrality of Medea in Gower’s ‘Tale of Jason and Medea
Showcasing some examples of Gower’s artistic use of form to serve content, this article argues that the formalistic structure of ‘The Tale of Jason and Medea’ is a rhetorical means deployed by the poet to manage his narrative content and highlight its center. The article introduces Medea as the center of the tale under discussion providing a textual reading of the formalistic structure of the lines that are said by or about Medea. Acknowledging the tale’s iambic tetrameter structure and its role in orchestrating the narrative, the article explains how Medea’s narrative centrality gets defined syllabically and accentually. The article concludes that the formalistic structure of ‘The Tale of Jason and Medea’ is not a poetic decoration or part of traditional poetic templates used by Gower unconsciously, but a rhetorical device deployed by the poet to manage the focus of the narrative.
Journal Article
Chaucer's tale : 1386 and the road to Canterbury
A \"microbiography of Chaucer that tells the story of the tumultuous year that led to the creation of The Canterbury Tales\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Who (What) Lies in the Tomb in the Middle English St. Erkenwald?
This article makes the case for an Anglo-Saxon cultural identity for the nameless man in the tomb in the Middle English St. Erkenwald on textual, hagiographic, historical, art historical, and literary grounds. The poem’s historical proem, akin to similar prologues in Middle English lives of pre-Conquest saints, evokes the negative stereotype of the primitive Saxon heathen popular in the post-Conquest era, which the remainder of the poem dispels. The incorrupt corpse and garments, in the guise of a king, signal two abiding markers of Anglo-Saxon sanctity that distinguish it from post-Conquest hagiography, while the body’s social role as a judge announces a primary arena of continuing authority of early English culture. The material culture of the tomb and robes bespeaks Anglo-Saxon design and the social and economic networks that facilitated these artforms. When revived, the body expresses an Anglo-Saxon worldview in terms of time, historical orientation, poetic sensibility, codes of reciprocity, spirituality, and life after death. The poem portrays a golden age of early English society and proposes its acceptance in the contemporary world of the poem.
Journal Article
Geoffrey Chaucer : unveiling the merry bard
A new critical biography of medieval England's most famous poet. For over six centuries, Chaucer has epitomized poetic greatness, though more recent treatments of The Canterbury Tales'lively and often risqu style have made his name more synonymous with bawdy humor. But beyond his poetic achievements, Chaucer assumed various roles including those of royal attendant, soldier, customs official, justice of the peace, and more. In this book, Mary Flannery chronicles Chaucer's life during one of the most turbulent periods of English history, illuminating how he came to be known not only as the father of English poetry but also as England's \"merry bard.\"
Book
British Seafaring, Narrative Empathy, and Religious Instruction in the Middle English Patience
The Middle English poem \"Patience\" by the Pearl Poet expands on the biblical story of Jonah and the whale, particularly focusing on Jonah's disastrous sea voyage. The poet uses familiar maritime language and imagery to ground the narrative in a seascape that would have been recognizable to the audience in fourteenth-century northwestern England. By doing so, the poet creates empathy between the audience and the sailors in the poem, who serve as models for the audience's religious teachings. The poet also contrasts the sailors' heroic struggle to save their lives with Jonah's oafishness and cowardice, highlighting the sailors' moral superiority. The prevalence of seafaring in the Cheshire region, where the poem is set, further enhances the audience's connection to the sailors and their plight. Overall, the poet uses the seafaring narrative to convey important religious messages and encourage the audience to emulate the sailors' virtues.
Journal Article
Disseminal Chaucer
Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale is one of the most
popular of The Canterbury Tales . It is only 646 lines
long, yet it contains elements of a beast fable, an
exemplum , a satire, and other genres. There have been
countless attempts to articulate the \"real\" meaning of the tale,
but it has confounded the critics. Peter Travis contends that part
of the fun and part of the frustration of trying to interpret the
tale has to do with Chaucer's use of the tale to demonstrate the
resistance of all literature to traditional critical practices. But
the world of The Nun's Priest's Tale is so creative and so
quintessentially Chaucerian that critics persist in writing about
it.
No one has followed the critical fortunes of Chauntecleer and
his companions more closely over time than Peter Travis. One of the
most important contributions of this book is his assessment of the
tale's reception. Travis also provides an admirable discussion of
genre: his analysis of parody and Menippean satire clarify how to
approach works such as this tale that take pleasure in resisting
traditional generic classifications. Travis also demonstrates that
the tale deliberately invoked its readers' memories of specific
grammar school literary assignments, and the tale thus becomes a
miniaturized synopticon of western learning. Building on these
analyses and insights, Travis's final argument is that The
Nun's Priest's Tale is Chaucer's premier work of self-parody,
an ironic apologia pro sua arte . The most profound matters
foregrounded in the tale are not advertisements of the poet's
achievements. Rather, they are poetic problems that Chaucer
wrestled with from the beginning of his career and, at the end of
that career, wanted to address in a concentrated, experimental, and
parapoetic way.
eBook
The Middle Ages’ Influence on Women’s Role in Romantic Poetry
Women in the medieval period suffered from abuse and inequality. The pressure on women was so noticeable that they were treated as a marginal component of society in all aspects, an important one of which is the literary aspect. The literary role of women has largely disappeared from the European society in general and the English one in particular. Therefore, women, at every stage, struggled to show themselves amid these great pressures; their struggle led them to reach and succeed in the feminist movement. They attempted to counter the stereotypical image of the medieval women being helpless and subservient in the warrior societies depicted in Old English texts and the evil shrews responsible for men’s failings in Middle English texts. Their new adapted literary role focuses on showing their strength, intelligence, agency in society, and the extent of women’s impact on society and its change, despite the fact that this change came in secret. This study sheds some light on the women’s role in the literary social movement by critically examining the relevant literary works through which the role and effectiveness of women are revealed. This study contributes to dispelling some of the myths surrounding the perspectives assumed about women by providing greater clarity for their cultural and historical settings. Also, this study offers a feminist reading to the female characters in the selected works which clearly illustrates women’s role and the impact of feminist literature on English literature and English society at that period using the famous old legendary epic in English literature, Beowulf.
Journal Article