Abstract: The moment that voice emerges from silence, it reaches toward meaning. But in what form does it emerge, in its passage "between nothing and the pure event"'1 This question, prompted by Mladen Dolar's definition of voice as the "material element" that "does not contribute to making sense," despite being "an opening toward meaning,"2 finds an unlikely respondent in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer. The central "demonstration" of his response, in the middle of the second book of his apparently unfinished House of Fame, imagines voice in the primal scene of its emergence, by way of an analogy of air and water, as circular, self-procreating, and wavelike in form.In strictly physical terms, these qualities are not ... Read More Keywords: English language; Chaucer, Geoffrey,; French prose literature; English poetry PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In the second book of the Knight's Tale, Arcite, in the guise of a squire, quits the duke's court and plunges into a grove on his horse, wearing a "gerland of the greves" (I 1508) he has fashioned in "observaunce to May" (I 1500).1 The air is filled with the songs of birds, and that music, as seen in multiple examples of the locus amoenus, immediately brings to mind love, or more specifically, his love for Emelye.2 Overcome by great emotions, he is compelled to sing:And loude he song ayeyn the sonne shene:"May, with alle thy floures and thy grene,Welcome be thou, faire, fresshe May,In hope that I som grene gete may."(I 1509-12)The song's content, participating in a continental "debate" between those ... Read More Keywords: English language; Chaucer, Geoffrey,; French prose literature; English poetry PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: On October 12, 1399, the day before he would be crowned King of England, Henry Bolingbroke processed from the Tower through the streets of London with a column that included as many as nine hundred knights of the realm, as well as numerous members of London's elite: burgesses, merchants, guildsmen, and various servants. The coronation march of Henry IV proved a remarkable moment of reverence and festivity, yet, at the same time, uncertainty loomed for the city. And I would argue that, in spite of the spectacle of this regnal parade, the uncanny nature of the event is best captured in the sounds the procession both made and provoked along the way. As Jean Froissart explains of coronation day, "there were in London ... Read More Keywords: English language; Chaucer, Geoffrey,; French prose literature; English poetry PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The tale of Pyramus and Thisbe is best known to modern readers from the play put on by Shakespeare's "rude mechanicals" in A Midsummer Night's Dream.1 Two unfortunate young lovers are forbidden by their parents to meet. They whisper to each other through a crack in a wall and plot a clandestine meeting, which ends prematurely in misunderstanding and double suicide. First, however, an unwise casting decision makes the anthropomorphized Wall between the lovers the literal butt of a crude joke. As the actor playing Thisbe plants her lips on the nether regions of the actor playing Wall, s/he laments to the unseen Pyramus on the other side: "I kiss the wall's hole, not your lips at all!"2 The line pointedly reminds ... Read More Keywords: English language; Chaucer, Geoffrey,; French prose literature; English poetry PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In the Nun's Priest's Tale, when Chaucer compares the noise of Chauntecleer's rescuers chasing the fox to the shouts of "Jakke Straw and his meynee" (VII 3394), he makes his only topical political reference in the Canterbury Tales.1 This exception seemed for an earlier generation of critics to prove the rule that Chaucer was fundamentally apolitical and invested in human values not bound by time or place.2 But in the last generation this portrait of a humanist Chaucer more invested in the self than in the social became deeply suspect; critics looked for, and found, political and social content throughout his work. Chief among these examples is Chaucer's ballad Lak of Stedfastnesse, a poem whose moral lament and ... Read More Keywords: English language; Chaucer, Geoffrey,; French prose literature; English poetry PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Surprisingly little attention has been paid by modern scholarship to the material forms in which Chaucer's lyrics survive and to the implications of the range of textual, contextual, and codicological issues that are raised by these witnesses. The problem is partly historical: the standard modern edition of Chaucer's lyrics is The Riverside Chaucer, which is to a significant degree dependent on the single published volume of the two originally projected for the Chaucer Variorum.1 Yet, as they survive, Chaucer's lyrics frequently pose a range of problems that requires considerably more scrutiny than they have received. The analysis that follows is focused on a single lyric, but its conclusions may have wider ... Read More Keywords: English language; Chaucer, Geoffrey,; French prose literature; English poetry PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
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