Essays and Explorations: Studies in Ideas, Language, and Literature.

Seventeen reprinted essays and an unpublished one are contained in this collection and organized under five headings: History of Ideas, Approaches to Medieval Literature, Chaucer and Fourteenth-Century English Literature, Language and Linguistics, and Essay-Reviews. Topics discussed include the origin of the concept of the Seven Cardinal Sins; Chaucer's sense of history; the medieval idea of perfection; understanding Old English poetry; symbolism in medieval literature; episodic motivation and marvels in epic and romance; an appraisal of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"; "Piers Plowman" as a 14th-century apocalypse; realism in Chaucer; distance and predestination in "Troilus and Criseyde"; Canadian English and its relation to 18-century American speech; final root-forming morphemes; a grammatical approach to personification allegory; the syncategorematic in poetry; and essay-reviews of four books: "The Structure of Beowulf,""The Pardon of Piers Plowman,""Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition," and "Design in Chaucer's 'Troilus'." (LH)