Originally published in 1990. This study is of one of the world's great narrative poems and one of the few long poems in English about physical love. Although this work is often overshadowed by the Canterbury Tales, the author argues that it has its own profound multiplicity. Its mixture of genres, styles, characters and other competing elements creates a powerful literary experience for each reader. This book explores the diversity and contradictions produced by the poem without attempting to resolve them. It is accessible to those reading the poem for the first time, but equally stimulating to those who know it well, stressing the importance of the role of individual readers in response to the openness of the poem. Although previous criticism tends to emphasize one or two aspects while ignoring others, Benson argues all critical readings are of interest because they make one aware of the poem's many contrasting layers and possibilities. Beginning with the principal source, Boccaccio's Filostrato, the work examines the many different elements added to this source; which contains internal tensions and thus develops Boccaccio's story in a variety of often contradictory directions. The author considers Chaucer's treatment of setting, characterization, love, fortune and religion, showing how these affect the character of the poem and make it simultaneously more chivalric and comic, more Christian and more pagan.

Originally published in 1990. This study is of one of the world's great narrative poems and one of the few long poems in English about physical love. Although this work is often overshadowed by the Canterbury Tales, the author argues that it has its own profound multiplicity. Its mixture of genres, styles, characters and other competing elements creates a powerful literary experience for each reader. This book explores the diversity and contradictions produced by the poem without attempting to resolve them. It is accessible to those reading the poem for the first time, but equally stimulating to those who know it well, stressing the importance of the role of individual readers in response to the openness of the poem. Although previous criticism tends to emphasize one or two aspects while ignoring others, Benson argues all critical readings are of interest because they make one aware of the poem's many contrasting layers and possibilities. Beginning with the principal source, Boccaccio's Filostrato, the work examines the many different elements added to this source; which contains internal tensions and thus develops Boccaccio's story in a variety of often contradictory directions. The author considers Chaucer's treatment of setting, characterization, love, fortune and religion, showing how these affect the character of the poem and make it simultaneously more chivalric and comic, more Christian and more pagan.

Essays exploring Chaucer's identity as a London poet and the urban context for his writings. Literature of the city and the city in literature are topics of major contemporary interest. This volume enhances our understanding of Chaucer's iconic role as a London poet, defining the modern sense of London as a city in history, steeped in its medieval past. Building on recent work by historians on medieval London, as well as modern urban theory, the essays address the centrality of the city in Chaucer's work, and of Chaucer to a literature and a language of the city. Contributors explore the spatial extent of the city, imaginatively and geographically; the diverse and sometimes violent relationships between communities, and the use of language to identify and speak for communities; the worlds of commerce, the aristocracy, law, and public order. A final section considers the longer history and memory of the medieval city beyond the devastations of the Great Fire and into the Victorian period. Dr ARDIS BUTTERFIELD is Reader in English at University College London. Contributors: ARDIS BUTTERFIELD, MARION TURNER, RUTH EVANS, BARBARA NOLAN, CHRISTOPHER CANNON, DEREK PEARSALL, HELEN COOPER, C. DAVID BENSON, ELLIOTKENDALL, JOHN SCATTERGOOD, PAUL DAVIS, HELEN PHILLIPS

The Book of John Mandeville has tended to be neglected by modern teachers and scholars, yet this intriguing and copious work has much to offer the student of medieval literature, history, and culture. [It] was a contemporary bestseller, providing readers with exotic information about locales from Constantinople to China and about the social and religious practices of peoples such as the Greeks, Muslims, and Brahmins. The Book first appeared in the middle of the fourteenth century and by the next century could be found in an extraordinary range of European languages: not only Latin, French, German, English, and Italian, but also Czech, Danish, and Irish. Its wide readership is also attested by the two hundred fifty to three hundred medieval manuscripts that still survive today. Chaucer borrowed from it, as did the Gawain-poet in the Middle English Cleanness, and its popularity continued long after the Middle Ages.

David Benson's lively new interpretation of Chaucer's great story collection attributes the variety and contrast of the tales to the unique literary style of each narrative. In contrast to the popular "dramatic approach," which assumes that the diversity of the tales comes from the supposed psyches of the pilgrim tellers, Benson argues that each tale is a fully formed expression of an individual kind of poetry. Each is constructed on its own distinct literary principles so that the "Canterbury Tales" is best seen as a drama of poetic styles, not personalities.
After introducing his approach and discussing the two tales Chaucer assigns himself, "Sir Thopas" and "Melibee," Benson supports his argument with evidence from close readings of the major tales. He demonstrates that the "Pardoner's Tale" is more powerful when read as a defense of Christian poetry than as an expose of the pilgrim Pardoner. He then explores the striking literary conflict between the "Knight's Tale" and the "Miller's Tale," which goes far beyond the two tellers. Concluding his work with a detailed analysis of four fabliaux and two religious tales, Benson shows Chaucer's creation of absolute poetic variety even among tales of the same genre. By creating a new poet for each tale, Chaucer allows his reader to experience many different kinds of arts and so appreciate the achievement -- and limitation -- of each.
Benson sees the "Canterbury Tales" as a complex dialectic of variety and contrast. Although general precedents for the stylistic experiments of the "Canterbury Tales" can be found in such works as Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" and the "Roman de la Rose," Benson considers Chaucer's stylistic drama new and daring in its creation of different poetic voices. With an ambition reminscent of Dante, Chaucer is attempting to be both moral teacher and true poet, using the full resources of his art to instruct and delight in order to explore and revivify Christian truth.
Originally published in 1988.
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These thirteen essays by distinguished Chaucerians deal with the most neglected genre of the Canterbury Tales, the religious tales. Although the prose works are also discussed, the primary focus of the volume is on Chaucer's four poems in rhyme royal: the Clerk's Tale, the Man of Law's Tale, the Second Nun's Tale and the Prioress's Tale. Almost all of Chaucer's tales are religious in some sense, but these four works deal specifically and deeply with faith and spiritual transcendence. They appeal to qualities, such as pathos, not now in critical fashion, but at the same time they seem extraordinarily contemporary in their special interest in women and feminist issues. The time is appropriate to recognise their importance in Chaucer's canon, for he is a religious poet as surely as he is a poet of comedy and secular love. These essays survey past criticism on the religious tales and offer new approaches. Contributors: C. DAVID BENSON, ELIZABETH ROBINSON, DEREK PEARSALL, BARBARA NOLAN, ROBERT WORTH FRANK, LINDA GEORGIANNA, CHARLOTTE C. MORSE, A.S.G. EDWARDS, CAROLYN COLETTE, ELIZABETH D. KIRK, GEORGE R. KEISER, JANE COWGILL.

Influential scholars from Britain and North America discuss future directions in rapidly expanding field of manuscript study. The study of manuscripts is one of the most active areas of current research in medieval studies: manuscripts are the basic primary material evidence for literary scholars, historians and art-historians alike, and there has been an explosion of interest over the past twenty years. Manuscript study has developed enormously: codices are no longer treated as inert witnesses to a culture whose character has already been determined by the modern scholar, but are active participants in a process of exploration and discovery. The articles collected here discuss the future of this process and vital questions about manuscript study for tomorrow's explorers. They deal with codicology and book production, with textual criticism, with the material structure of the medieval book, with the relation of manuscripts to literary culture, to social history and to the medieval theatre, and with the importance to manuscript study of the emerging technology of computerised digitisation and hypertext display. The essays provide an end-of-millennium perspective on the most vigorous developments in a rapidly expanding field of study. Contributors: A.I. Doyle, C. David Benson, Martha W. Driver, J.P. Gumbert, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Linne R. Mooney, Eckehard Simon, Alison Stones, John Thompson. DEREK PEARSALL is former Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies, York, and Professor of English at Harvard University.

Malory's Morte Darthur - text, history and reception - expertly appraised by international scholars. This collection of original essays by an international group of distinguished medievalists provides a comprehensive introduction to the great work of Sir Thomas Malory, which will be indispensable for both students and scholars. It is divided into three main sections, on Malory in context, the art of the Morte Darthur, and its reception in later years. As well as essays on the eight tales which make up the Morte Darthur, there are studies ofthe relationship between the Winchestermanuscript and Caxton's and later editions; the political and social context in which Malory wrote; his style and sources; and his treatment of two key concepts in Arthurian literature, chivalry and the representation of women. The volume also includes a brief biography of Malory with a list of the historical records relating to him and his family. It ends with a discussion of the reception of the Morte Darthurfrom the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, and a select bibliography. Contributors: P.J.C. FIELD, FELICITY RIDDY, RICHARD BARBER, ELIZABETH EDWARDS, TERENCE MCCARTHY, CAROL MEALE, JEREMY SMITH, ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD,BARBARA NOLAN, HELEN COOPER, JILL MANN, DAVID BENSON, A.S.G. EDWARDS

The B-version of 'Piers Plowman', perhaps the only version authorised by Langland, is the one most frequently read today, and the most influential form of the poem. This catalogue of the extant medieval manuscripts, now locaed in Cambridge, London, Oxford, Tokyo, and San Marino, California, offers both individual manuscript descriptions and a record of the annotations. The new and detailed codicological descriptions include information on provenance and ownership, a full list of the contents, and a description of the physical make-up and the presentation of each manuscript. The first published accounts of the various textual annotations on each manuscript (whether produced by the original scribes or later readers) provides the best record available of how 'piers plowman' was understoon by its earliest audience. Professor C. DAVID BENSON teaches in the English Department at the University of Connecticut; Dr LYNNE BLANCHFIELD is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University.

This volume explores the conflicting representations of ancient Rome-one of the most important European cities in the medieval imagination-in late Middle English poetry. Once the capital of a great pagan empire whose ruined monuments still inspired awe in the Middle Ages, Rome, the seat of the pope, became a site of Christian pilgrimage owing to the fame of its early martyrs, whose relics sanctified the city and whose help was sought by pilgrims to their shrines. C. David Benson analyzes the variety of ways that Rome and its citizens, both pre-Christian and Christian, are presented in a range of Middle English poems, from lesser-known, anonymous works to the poetry of Gower, Chaucer, Langland, and Lydgate. Benson discusses how these poets conceive of ancient Rome and its citizens-especially the women of Rome-as well as why this matters to their works. An insightful and innovative study, Imagined Romes addresses a crucial lacuna in the scholarship of Rome in the medieval imaginary and provides fresh perspectives on the work of four of the most prominent Middle English poets.

This volume explores the conflicting representations of ancient Rome—one of the most important European cities in the medieval imagination—in late Middle English poetry. Once the capital of a great pagan empire whose ruined monuments still inspired awe in the Middle Ages, Rome, the seat of the pope, became a site of Christian pilgrimage owing to the fame of its early martyrs, whose relics sanctified the city and whose help was sought by pilgrims to their shrines. C. David Benson analyzes the variety of ways that Rome and its citizens, both pre-Christian and Christian, are presented in a range of Middle English poems, from lesser-known, anonymous works to the poetry of Gower, Chaucer, Langland, and Lydgate. Benson discusses how these poets conceive of ancient Rome and its citizens—especially the women of Rome—as well as why this matters to their works. An insightful and innovative study, Imagined Romes addresses a crucial lacuna in the scholarship of Rome in the medieval imaginary and provides fresh perspectives on the work of four of the most prominent Middle English poets.

Over the course of her career, Elizabeth Robertson has pursued innovative scholarship that investigates the overlapping domains of medieval philosophy, literature, and gender studies. This collection of essays dedicated to her work examines gender in medieval English writing along several axes: poetic, philosophical, material-textual, and historical. Gender, Poetry, and the Form of Thought in Later Medieval Literature focuses on the ways that the medieval body becomes a site of inquiry and agency, whether in the form of the idealized feminine body of secular and religious lyric, the sexually permissive and permeable body of fabliaux, or the intercessory body of religious devotional writing. This collection asks, how do imagined bodies frame literary explorations of philosophical categories such as nature, the will, and emotion? What can accounts of specific historical medieval women-as authors, patrons, interlocutors-tell us about such representations? In what ways do devotional practices and texts intersect with the representations of gender? The essays span a broad range of medieval literary works, from the lais of Marie de France to Pearl to Piers Plowman and the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, and a broad range of methodological approaches, from philosophy to affect and manuscript studies.