Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Stories for an Uncertain World understands the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales to communicate a radical uncertainty haunting most human endeavors, one that challenges effective knowledge of the future, the past, or the distant present; accurate perception of both complex, equivocal signifying systems, including language, and the intentions hidden rather than revealed by the words and deeds of others; and successful strategy in dealing with the chronic excesses and arbitrariness of power. This comparative study of Decameron novelle and Canterbury pilgrim tales yields the insight that the key to coping with these challenges is pragmatic prudence: rational calculation issuing in an opportunistic, often amoral choice of ingenious deeds and/or eloquent words appropriate (though without guarantee) to mastering a specific crisis, and achieving the goal of agency in the here and now, not salvation in the Hereafter. An initial chapter explores the Aristotelian antecedents, contemporaneous cultural influences, and narrative techniques that intersect to shape the radically uncertain world of the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales, while succeeding chapters pair, and compare, stories from both collections that illustrate the quest for agency-its successes and its failures—through plots often brilliantly adapted from simpler antecedents, as well as eloquence by turns satiric and insightful. This is storytelling that exposes a culture's fears, as well as its aspirations for mastery over the circumstances that challenge its existence; reading these tales should be a labor of love and the goal of this study is to help assure that the reader's labor shall not be lost.

Recognised on its first appearance as the most comprehensive single-volume guide to The Canterbury Tales yet produced, this third edition brings the Tales up to date in relation both to recent criticism and to the changing expectations of modern readers. The Guide provide tale-by-tale information on textual variations and sources, together with a readable commentary on thematic issues, structure, style, generic affiliations, and the contribution of each tale to the work as a whole. It concludes with a survey of the many imitations of the tales down to the early seventeenth century. This new edition also takes account of the latest scholarship, theory, and criticism and new interpretations of the tales, including such matters as gender identity, consent, and racial and religious difference. The book is the most comprehensive single-volume guide to the Tales yet produced, bringing together a wide range of disparate material and providing a readable commentary on all aspects of the work. It combines the comprehensive coverage of a reference book with the clarity and coherence of a critical account. Since its first publication in 1989, the Guide has established itself as an indispensable aid for any reader looking to develop their understanding of The Canterbury Tales.

Recognised on its first appearance as the most comprehensive single-volume guide to The Canterbury Tales yet produced, this third edition brings the Tales up to date in relation both to recent criticism and to the changing expectations of modern readers. The Guide provide tale-by-tale information on textual variations and sources, together with a readable commentary on thematic issues, structure, style, generic affiliations, and the contribution of each tale to the work as a whole. It concludes with a survey of the many imitations of the tales down to the early seventeenth century. This new edition also takes account of the latest scholarship, theory, and criticism and new interpretations of the tales, including such matters as gender identity, consent, and racial and religious difference. The book is the most comprehensive single-volume guide to the Tales yet produced, bringing together a wide range of disparate material and providing a readable commentary on all aspects of the work. It combines the comprehensive coverage of a reference book with the clarity and coherence of a critical account. Since its first publication in 1989, the Guide has established itself as an indispensable aid for any reader looking to develop their understanding of The Canterbury Tales.

Dante, Eschatology, and the Christian Tradition honors Ronald B. Herzman, SUNY Geneseo Distinguished Teaching Professor of English. Over more than fifty years Professor Herzman has been a major force in the promotion of medieval studies within academe and public humanities. This volume of essays by his colleagues, students, and friends celebrates Professor Herzman’s outstanding career and reflects the wide range of his scholarly and pedagogical influence, from biblical and early Christian topics to Dante, Langland, and Shakespeare.

Modern ways of presenting Chaucer have often made his work seem 'normal' so that The Canterbury Tales and its much-studied General Prologue are seen as archetypes of narrative and prologue. Tony Davenport argues that study of Chaucer's major work alongside contemporary English poems reveals the odd and extreme aspects of Chaucer's writing as well as the daring and experimental qualities in his work. The focus of the book is on strategies of narrative and discourse, but also includes discussion of other much-studied Middle English poems.

An ambitious history of how medieval writers came to terms with paganism From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the "Problem of Paganism," which this book identifies and examines for the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia, and, later, America and China. Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers—philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci—tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. A sweeping and original account of an important but neglected chapter in Western intellectual history, Pagans and Philosophers provides a new perspective on nothing less than the entire period between the classical and the modern world.

This is a masterful historical portrait of the whole movement of Calvinism for general readers and scholars alike.