Dempsey, James

James Dempsey is currently Administrator of Literature and Adjunct Instructor of English in the Department of the Humanities and Arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and in the Department of English at Clark University where he teaches courses in journalism, writing, and literature. He is also active in the field of journalism, having been a newspaper columnist for twenty years and winning awards from the Associated Press and United Press International.

Court Poetry of Chaucer

2007 0-7734-5434-9
This work offers facing-page translations of lesser-known poems by Geoffrey Chaucer. The modernization of Chaucer’s verse to date has been restricted largely to the longer poems such as The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. While these works demonstrate Chaucer’s mastery of the epic and narrative forms, it is in the court poems that we hear what is closer to the actual voice of Chaucer speaking to his contemporaries. The introduction discusses the “complaint,” a popular medieval genre that Chaucer often used in his verse, sometimes with a straight face, sometimes not. Providing these poems in both their original Middle English and in Modern English, this work will be an attractive addition to the library of any scholar interested in Chaucer and the poetry of his time.