A lively microbiography of Chaucer that tells the story of the tumultuous year that led to the creation of The Canterbury Tales In 1386, Geoffrey Chaucer endured his worst year, but began his best poem. The father of English literature did not enjoy in his lifetime the literary celebrity that he has today—far from it. The middle-aged Chaucer was living in London, working as a midlevel bureaucrat and sometime poet, until a personal and professional crisis set him down the road leading to The Canterbury Tales.
This book recovers places appearing in the mental mapping of medieval and A highly original work, which recovers the places that figure powerfully in premodern imagining. Recreates places that appear in the works of Langland, Chaucer, Dante, Petrarch, Spenser, Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, and many others. Begins with Calais peopled by the English from 1347 to 1558 and ends with Surinam traded for Manhattan by the English in 1667.
This volume series aims to provide readers with a convenient source of reliable, scholarly, and accessible information on Chaucer's work, life, and times. It consists mainly of alphabetical entries, ranging in length from 10 to 3,000 words. These cover topics and issues including: Chaucer's works; major fictional characters; historical, social, and political contexts; writers who influenced Chaucer or were influenced by him; people and places of significance in Chaucer's life; genres and traditions; manuscripts, editions, scholars, and editors.
Medievalism, Multilingualism, and Chaucer examines multilingual identity in the writing of Gower, Langland, and Chaucer. Mary Catherine Davidson traces monolingual habits of inquiry to nineteenth-century attitudes toward French, which had first influenced popular constructions of medieval English in such historical novels as Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. In re-reading medieval traditions in the origins of English from Geoffrey of Monmouth, this book describes how multilingual practices reflected attitudes toward English in the age of Chaucer.
Fourteenth-century author, poet, and civil servant Geoffrey Chaucer has delighted readers through the ages with his colorful tales filled with humanity, grace, and strength. He is best known for The Canterbury Tales, a vibrant account of life in England during his own day. That canonical work, along with some of Chaucer's lesser-known works, is thoughtfully presented in this invaluable reference resource. This new volume in the Bloom's How to Write about Literature series assists students in developing paper topics about this frequently studied English author.
