The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry Before 1600

quest in a drunken rage. Before they have gone far, they encounter a mysterious old man, completely muf- fl ed except for his fa ...

Summoner. He says the Pardoner has a high voice like a goat’s, no beard, and long, thin, fl axen-colored hair. Of his sexuality ...

there has been an assumption that the poem was written for an engagement (perhaps that of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia), but n ...

himself to love but instead commits himself voraciously to further reading. Focusing on the common good as the poem’s core leads ...

argument is that “kirtle” (l. 11) could refer to either a woman’s gown or a man’s tunic. However, Marlowe uses the fi rst sense ...

work. Passus comes from the Latin word of the same spelling, meaning “step” or “pace.” The use of the term in English literature ...

usually on terms set by the patron. In historical periods such as classical antiquity or the High Middle Ages, in which there wa ...

In the dramatic fi fth part of the poem, the dreamer addresses the pearl, asking her, “art thou my perle that I have playned, / ...

Section 13 expounds on the concept of innocence; everyone must enter the kingdom of heaven “as a chylde” (l. 723), guiltless and ...

enation, in which a word from the last line of a stanza is repeated it in the fi rst line of the next one. For exam- ple, the la ...

The rebels were, in the main, laborers, peasants, and serfs, but their number included craftspeople and even some relatively pro ...

contains many famous instances of personifi cation. Within eight lines, its narrator attributes sweetness to rain, forcefulness ...

distinct parts. The fi rst is a young girl’s lament for the death of her pet sparrow, Philip, who was killed by a cat. Her chara ...

“The Phoenix and Turtle” does not fi t any particular genre, though the narrator’s rhetoric on love alludes at times to a BEAST ...

that Carmelites were founded by Elijah himself. For a contribution to the order, the Carmelite promises to help the narrator. Wh ...

completed by 1387, as Thomas Usk, who was executed in 1388, cites it in his Testament of Love. Recently, two scholars have posit ...

connect through the personage of the Good Samaritan, who describes his active charity and demonstrates how it alone can heal the ...

hazard portraits is the Parable of the Tares from Mat- thew 13: 24–30, which advocates the urgency to work, accumulate righteous ...

is Wrong, father of falsehood. Humans owe Truth loy- alty and Wrong nothing. He is faithless, and those who trust in him are bet ...

meanings for falseness encompasses wrong or error— that is, falseness in the perception of something or falseness in knowledge, ...