In this fresh look at Chaucer's relation to English and French romances of the late Middle Ages, Crane shows that Chaucer's depictions of masculinity and femininity constitute an extensive and sympathetic response to the genre. For Chaucer, she proposes, gender is the defining concern of romance. As the foundational narratives of courtship, romances participate in the late medieval elaboration of new meanings around heterosexual identity. Crane draws on feminist and genre theory to argue that Chaucer's profound interest in the cultural construction of masculinity and femininity arises in large part from his experience of romance.In depicting the maturation of young women and men, romances stage an ideology of identity that is based in gender difference. Less obviously gendered concerns of romance--social hierarchy, magic, and adventure--are also involved in expressing femininity and masculinity. The genders prove to be not simply binary opposites but overlapping and shifting coreferents. Precarious social standing can carry a feminine taint; women's adventures recall but also contradict those of men. This lively study reveals that Chaucer's redeployments of romance are particularly sensitive to the crucial place gender holds in the genre.Originally published in 1994.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Description: This collection of literature attempts to compile many classics that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

(view table of contents)

It is a common belief that in France the study of medieval literature as literature only began to gain recognition as a valid occupation for the scholar during the nineteenth century. It is well known that historians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries looked to the literary productions of the Middle Ages for materials useful to their researches, but it is only recently that the remarkable frequency of this reference has been appreciated and that scholars have become aware of an unbroken tradition of what might best be described as historically ori ented medievalism stretching from the sixteenth century to our own. The eighteenth century has drawn the greatest number of curious to this field, for it is evident that the surprisingly extensive researches undertaken then do much to explain the progress made a century later by the most celebrated generation of medievalistst. Very slowly we are coming to see the value of the contribution made by little known schol­ ars like La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Etienne Barbazan and the Comte de Caylus.

Product Description: While most Chaucer critics interested in gender and sexuality have used psychoanalytic theory to analyze Chaucer's poetry, Mark Miller re-examines the links between sexuality and the philosophical analysis of agency in medieval texts such as the Canterbury Tales, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, and the Romance of the Rose...read more

Product Description: This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work...read more

Product Description: Chaucerian Aesthetics examines The Canterbury Tale and Troilus and Criseyde from both medieval and post-Kantian vantage points. These sometimes congruent, sometimes divergent perspectives illuminate both the immediate pleasure of encountering beauty and its haunting promise of intelligibility...read more

Product Description: This study guide includes a comprehensive collection of interpretive essays that provide expert commentary on 'The Canterbury Tales'. It also includes an introduction by Harold Bloom and a chronology detailing Chaucer's life.

Students with little or no prior knowledge of Chaucer, the Canterbury Tales, or the world in which they were produced, will welcome this lively and concise introduction. Not only does it paint a portrait of the poet against the background of his time, it also considers the major preoccupations of the tales, and provides students with a critical framework for thinking creatively about them. The author inspires students to engage with the tales from a variety of perspectives, setting traditional ways of reading them against other newer approaches. Avoiding the tale-by-tale analysis and focus on individual pilgrims common to old-fashioned introductions, he encourages students instead to consider readings which compare and contrast the tales, emphasizing socially constructed analyses. The book provides the ideal aid to understanding and appreciating Geoffrey Chaucer and his works.

Product Description: This fresh and comprehensive guide to Chaucer's most famous poem The Canterbury Tales introduces readers to Chaucer's life and times and reconsiders both the impact and the context of its inception. It carefully details Chaucer's cultural and literary world, as well as reviewing the publishing history of the Tales and examining some of the issues surrounding the nature of the material production of medieval texts...read more

Product Description: The ten essays selected for this book illuminate the central themes of the most frequently taught Canterbury Tales. These texts are appropriate for undergraduates and general readers and were edited carefully to ensure that references and allusions are explained in footnotes...read more

Product Description: The Old French fabliaux may be notorious for their bawdy content, but few aspects of these medieval comic narratives are as astonishing as their depiction of the parish priest, whose fiscal and sexual transgressions are on occasion so enormous that lay protagonists are driven to inflict graphic punishments ranging from public exposure and communal beating to castration and murder...read more

Product Description: The Old French fabliaux may be notorious for their bawdy content, but few aspects of these medieval comic narratives are as astonishing as their depiction of the parish priest, whose fiscal and sexual transgressions are on occasion so enormous that lay protagonists are driven to inflict graphic punishments ranging from public exposure and communal beating to castration and murder...read more

Product Description: First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

(view table of contents)

Introduces students to a story about a group of pilgrims going to Canterbury

(view table of contents)

Product Description: Marijane Osborn demonstrates that Chaucer structured the Canterbury Tales after the astrolabe, an Arabic Islamic time-keeping device. Chaucer’s fascination with this device also accounts for the sense of time and astronomy in the Tales. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Examines the philosophy, critical reception, and historical context of the Canterbury tales and analyzes the prologue and four of the tales