Blanche of Lancaster

On the surface King Richard II seems a straightforward depiction of an unfit King’s steady stream towards being deposed. Shakespeare’s lack of favoritism gives a documentary point of view, yet commotional drama of a daytime soap opera. Shakespeare’s elegant style leaves some doubt for the reader to be ‘all in’ with Bolingbroke taking over despite his heroic attributes and the follies of Richard. The play opens with King Richard’s continuing follies: covers up his Gloucester’s assassination,…

emulates the work of other great poets and tries to appease the wishes of his patron, John of Gaunt and the memory of his departed wife, Lady Blanche the Duchess of Lancaster – whilst seeking recognition for his own literary greatness. The Book of the Duchess was a eulogy written at John of Gaunt’s request in order to commemorate the death of his first wife Lady Blanche presumably at one of the later annual commemoration services he held in her memory. Written at the beginning of his career…

Chaucer wrote of The Book Duchess as an eulogy for Blanche of Lancaster, the wife of his friend, patron and employer John of Gaunt. The poem is organized as a dream vision and as such is build in circles that are closed and interlinked with around each other. At the core of the poem is the Man in Black’s lament for his queen and on the most outer circle is the poet, tormented by a personal loss, that remains unexplained within the text. While the Knight is entirely overcome with his grief and…

Dream visions ‘offer an insight into life in this world rather than information about the other world’ (A. C. Spearing) As JoAnna Mink and Jane Ward mention in their study, Joinings and Disjoinings: The Significance of Marital Status in Literature, ‘Chaucer invites each of us to come out of our locked chambers and, through the transforming ministrations of literature, to face even the darkest truth about life.’ The experience of dreaming, then, allows the author to present ideas from his world…

Chapter-1 Introduction Plantains and banana constitute the fourth most important global food commodity (after rice, wheat and maize) grown in more than 120 countries over a harvested area of approximately 10 million hectares. The annual production of banana is about 88 million tonnes (Frison and Sharrock, 1999). It is the crop in superior position due…