Palmer, R. Burton.
In R. Barton Palmer and Burt Kimmelman, eds. Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), pp. 271-96.
Reviews and extends arguments for recognizing the intertextual relations of Chaucer's LGW and the works of Guillaume de Machaut, emphasizing their explorations of the "poetics of authorship." Extends this notion to the fiction of Philip Roth and…
Hanna, Ralph,III.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 10 (1988): 23-40.
Focusing on Chaucer's 'Truth', Hanna examines external evidence, individual variations, and the condition of the manuscripts themselves to illustrate the difficulty of distinguishing authorial revisions from scribal errors and alterations in…
Robertson, Kellie.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 441-58.
Robertson explores effects of the English labor laws of 1349 on attitudes toward writing, surveying reactions by various writers and using Chaucer's GP "as a lens through which to view the critical stakes in thinking about" work--particularly the…
Nakley, Susan.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Argues that ClP "confronts the social politics of translation and accessibility" after which the "re-vernacularization" in ClT "progresses . . . toward class and gender accessibility," "addresses the politics of tyranny and class," and engages issues…
O'Brien, Timothy David.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42.09 (1982): 3993A.
"This study argues that, in major Middle English works, authority is the central issue involved in concepts of character and of relationships beween characters. 'Havelok the Dane,' 'King Horn,' 'Sir Orfeo,' Malory's works, and 'The Canterbury Tales'…
Powell, Jason E. and William T. Rossiter, eds
Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013. ix, 256 pp.
"Examines the duality of the roles of author and ambassador through a study of the connection between the discourses and practices of authority and diplomacy in the literature of the late medieval and early modern periods." Essays "argue that…
Grace, Dominick M.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1992): 492A-93A.
Although critics have generally seen Mel as a simple allegory in fairly close translation, the Tale departs from Renaud in significant ways to question the nature of authority (good advice can be wrong; authorities can disagree; motivations can…
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
David Lyle Jeffrey. House of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (Waco, Tx,: Baylor University Press, 2003), pp. 87-110.
Considers the three-part structure of HF, the poem's references to Virgil's "Aeneid," and its allusions to Dante's "Divine Comedy" and to Ezekiel, arguing that, thematically, it abandons history as a source of truth, considers the potential of…
Martin, Carol A. N.
Theresa M. Krier, ed. Refiguring Chaucer in the Renaissance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 40-65.
Assesses the presentation of HF in Speght's edition as an example of "Renaissance uneasiness" with the poem. Explains this uneasiness by contrasting HF with Sidney's "Apologie for Poetrie" (and Boccaccio's "Genealogie deorum gentilium libri"),…
Newman, Barbara.
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22 (1992): 121-57.
Because Heloise is canonized in Jankyn's "Book of Wikked Wyves" between Jerome and Ovid, her authentic voice is overwhelmed by their reinforcing discourses; the Wife of Bath is similarly contained between Chaucer and Jankyn. Chaucer and Jean de Meun…
Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn.
Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker, with the assistance of William Green, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 413-33.
Kerby-Fulton looks at autobiography and "writing the self" in medieval literature, with particular focus on how and to what extent political constraint prompts expression of self. Draws examples from Chaucer, Langland, Christine de Pizan, Thomas Usk,…
Destabilizes the notion of a progression of "identifiable movements" in English vernacular writing culminating in Chaucer in the fourteenth century, arguing that "The Owl and the Nightingale" (c. 1200) should be taught as an early foundational…
Stillinger, Thomas Clifford.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1988): 3108A.
Following treatment of Peter Lombard, Dante, and Boccaccio, analyzes Troilus's two "cantici" (TC, bks. 1 and 5) for strategy, structure, and significance.
HF advocates an "ethics of reading" as the narrator struggles to accommodate contradictions found in literary texts. Book 1 ponders the legend and textual transmission of the Dido and Aeneas story. Book 2 learns about the suspect nature of language…
Keller, Wolfram R.
Hoofnagle, Wendy Marie, and Wolfram R. Keller, eds. Other Nations: The Hybridization of Medieval Insular Mythology and Identity (Heidelberg: Winter, 2011), pp. 185-205.
Interprets Geffrey's encounters with the story of Troy in HF as analogous to Chaucer's own struggle with poetic authority, contrasting the account with that of Guido delle Colonne in his "Historia Destructionis Troiae," and linking it with Chaucer's…
Moulton, Carroll.
Upper Saddle River, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 2000.
Twelve chapters on British works and writers, designed for juvenile audience. Includes "Geoffrey Chaucer in Depth" (pp. 24-43), which comprises a biographical introduction, a timeline, selections from PardT and KnT (translated into modern verse by…
Augustyn, Adam.
New York: Britannica Educational Publishing. in association with Rosen Educational Services, 2014.
Describes the lives and accomplishments of some 100 international writers. The section on Chaucer (pp. 84-92) summarizes his life and career as a public servant, integrating discussion of his major works in chronological order and emphasizing CT,…
Kamath, Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs.
Cambridge: Brewer, 2012.
Chapter 2 analyzes CT briefly, and connects Chaucer's allegorical tradition with Thomas Hoccleve, John Lydgate, and earlier pilgrimage allegories of Guillaume de Deguileville. Discussion of Chaucer's "mediation" of Rom.
Watt, Caitlin G.
Dissertation Abstracts International A79.11 (2018): n.p.
Assesses Antigone and Cassandra in TC--characters who are themselves "literary creators"--to explore meta-level consideration of reader identification and authorial status.
Moon, Hi Kyung.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 14 (2006): 431-46.
Compares and contrasts the strategies and outspoken polemics of WBP with those of Speght's "A Mouzell for Melastomus" (1617). Speght exposes antagonist Joseph Swetnam in ways similar to those used by Chaucer to expose the Wife.
Gillespie, Vincent.
Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 137-54.
Describes classical and medieval concerns with authorial intention and readerly control, commenting on Dante, the "Roman de la Rose," Hoccleve, and Lydgate in particular, and exploring how and where in HF Chaucer "puts in the spotlight the…
Matthews, David.
Adam Smyth, ed. A History of English Autobiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 27-40.
Surveys the "presentation of self" in late medieval English literature, gauging the relative degree of "truth value" and describing how authors "entwine life-writing into their larger projects." Uses Ret and Chaucer's ironic "playful portrayal of…
Gerke, Robert S.
Bulletin of the West Virginia Association of College English Teachers 14 (1992): 23-33.
In plot and dominant ideas, PardT reflects the opposition between avarice and mercy common in the medieval vices-virtues tradition. The avaricious Pardoner lacks mercy, and the recurring notion of voluntary poverty in PardPT can be linked with mercy…
Cooper, Helen.
Vincent P. McCarren and Douglas Moffat, eds. A Guide to Editing Middle English (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 79-93.
Describes the problems of editing Chaucer's works (especially CT), observing that modern editions tend to ignore them.
