Studies principally concerned with the nature and source of Chaucerian comedy: 'There is much to profit by here. 'STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER

A clear emphasis on literary antecedents of the Canterbury Tales differentiates this book from most criticism of Chaucer's work. Katharine S. Gittes finds a blending of two frame narrative traditions in the Canterbury Tales, one that originated in India and the Near East and the other in ancient Greece. To illustrate this dual literary tradition, Gittes compares Chaucer's work to a selection of pre-Chaucerian frame narratives that influenced his form directly or indirectly, and other narratives contemporary with Chaucer, that, in their likenesses or differences, illuminate the methodology of the Canterbury Tales. Covering materials written in eight different languages, Framing the Canterbury Tales includes discussion of the Indian-Arabic Panchatantra, Boccaccio's Decameron, Gower's Confessio Amantis, and both Eastern and Western versions of the Book of Sinbad. Gittes addresses the relationship between the framing stories and the tales, the degree of open-endedness in theme and structure, aesthetic principles, didactic elements, the significance of prologues and epilogues, the travel/pilgrimmage motif, the function of the narrator, and the degree of characterization in both Eastern and Western frame narratives. An examination of Eastern and Western elements in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales reveals the existing tension between the two, and the ingenious way Chaucer responds to and makes the most of this tension. Eastern features include the open-endedness, the random ordering of tales, and the mode of narration; Western elements include the dramatic features, the grouping or pairing of tales, the symmetry and the recurring motifs. In examining different cultural outlooks and a variety of different, non-literary disciplines, Gittes expands the field of Chaucer criticism. Her book will interest students and scholars of diverse cultures and literary periods, as well as Chaucer enthusiasts.

Fisher's work is a vivid, lively, and readable translation of the most famous work of England's premier medieval poet. Preserving Chaucer's rhyme and meter and faithfully articulating his poetic voice, Fisher makes Chaucer's tales accessible to a contemporary ear.

A major and original contribution to the debate as to Chaucer's use and knowledge of Boccaccio, finding a new source for the "Shipman's Tale". A possible direct link between the two greatest literary collections of the fourteenth century, Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, has long tantalized readers because these works share many stories, which are, moreover, placed in similar frames. And yet, although he identified many of his sources, Chaucer never mentioned Boccaccio; indeed when he retold the Decameron's final novella, his pilgrim, the Clerk, states that it was written by Petrarch. For these reasons, most scholars now believe that while Chaucer might have heard parts of the earlier collection when he was in Italy, he did not have it at hand as he wrote. This volumeaims to change our understanding of this question. It analyses the relationship between the "Shipman's Tale", originally written for the Wife of Bath, and Decameron 8.10, not seen before as a possible source. The book alsoargues that more important than the narratives that Chaucer borrowed is the literary technique that he learned from Boccaccio - to make tales from ideas. This technique, moreover, links the "Shipman's Tale" to the "Miller's Tale"and the new "Wife of Bath's Tale". Although at its core a hermeneutic argument, this book also delves into such important areas as alchemy, domestic space, economic history, folklore, Irish/English politics, manuscripts, and misogyny. FREDERICK M. BIGGS is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE TED HUGHES PRIZE 2015 Tabard Inn to Canterb'ry Cathedral, Poet pilgrims competing for free picks, Chaucer Tales, track by track, it's the remix From below-the-belt base to the topnotch; I won't stop all the clocks with a stopwatch when the tales overrun, run offensive, or run clean out of steam, they're authentic and we're keeping it real, reminisce this: Chaucer Tales were an unfinished business. In Telling Tales award-winning poet Patience Agbabi presents an inspired 21st-Century remix of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales retelling all of the stories, from the Miller's Tale to the Wife of Bath's in her own critically acclaimed poetic style. Celebrating Chaucer's Middle-English masterwork for its performance element as well as its poetry and pilgrims, Agbabi's newest collection is utterly unique. Boisterous, funky, foul-mouthed, sublimely lyrical and bursting at the seams, Telling Tales takes one of Britain's most significant works of literature and gives it thrilling new life.

Provides teaching strategies, background, and suggested resources; reproducible student pages to use before, during, and after reading--Cover.

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.