|
Showing 1 - 12 of
12 matches in All Departments
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.
|
Chaucer and the City (Hardcover)
Ardis Butterfield; Contributions by Ardis Butterfield, Barbara Nolan, C. David Benson, Christopher Cannon, …
|
R2,184
Discovery Miles 21 840
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
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.
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.
|
A Companion to Malory (Paperback, New Ed)
Elizabeth Archibald, A.S.G. Edwards; Contributions by A.S.G. Edwards, Barbara Nolan, C. David Benson, …
|
R965
R885
Discovery Miles 8 850
Save R80 (8%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
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.
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.
A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the
latest in digital technology to make available again books from our
distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These
editions are published unaltered from the original, and are
presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both
historical and cultural value.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|