Marvin, Julia.
Robert Epstein and William Robins, eds. Sacred and Profane in Chaucer and Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honour of John V. Fleming (Buffalo, N. Y.: University of Toronto Press, 2010), pp. 113-28.
Marvin traces a pattern of concern with literary interpretation in LGWP-F and exemplifies that the pattern is also evident in "some of the legends themselves," particularly Dido's. The F prologue and the tale assert bookish authority, question it,…
In HF, Aeneas is a "possible love-traitor," while in LGW the "condemnation" is much clearer. In the "Laud Troy Book," he is a political traitor who is never presented as the founder of Rome. Such depictions of Aeneas reflect how the "threat--or…
Spearing, A. C.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 169-78.
Although Chaucer scholarship generally exaggerates the poet's learning, it seems to have missed his use of Huon de Méri's "Tornoiemenz" in LGWP. Scholarship also overemphasizes the visionary features of Chaucer's dream poems, while underestimating…
Explores treatments of monstrous women in Middle English romance, particularly Melusine, Medea, and Constance. Argues that Chaucer adapts the romance to critique the suffering, violent treatment, and "liminality" of women within the genre. Depicting…
Klassen, Norm.
Holly Faith Nelson, Lynn R. Szabo, and Jens Zimmermann, eds. Through a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory ([Waterloo, Ont.]: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010), pp. 39-53.
Without a shift in tone, Chaucer both appreciates and censures the fruitless love depicted in the Temple of Venus in PF. By fusing "joy and judgment," he evokes paradoxically the "deeper joy" of beauty.
Musical score for a normalized-spelling version of the closing song (rondel) of PF (ll. 680-92). Performance notes suggest harp effects and ways to involve audience participation. Commissioned by the Buck Hill-Skytop Music Festival.
Quinn, William.
Gerd Bayer and Ebbe Klitgård, eds. Narrative Developments from Chaucer to Defoe (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 79-96.
Considers how editorial and critical assumptions have retroactively made the manuscript records of PF conform to post-print expectations about narrative poetry.
Iyeiri, Yoko.
Merja Kytö, John Scahill, and Harumi Tanabe, eds. Language Change and Variation from Old English to Late Modern English: A Festschrift for Minoji Akimoto (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 79-101.
Iyeiri analyzes the "various forms of negation" in the fragments of Rom, commenting on their implications for attribution. Fragment C is more like B than like the Chaucerian A in many of its forms of negation; hence, it is unlikely to be by Chaucer.
Arner, Timothy D.
Medium Aevum 79.1 (2010): 68-89.
In TC, Diomede, rather than Troilus, functions as the second Hector, and Diomede is the only hero who escapes the cycle of Theban and Trojan violence. At a dangerous time in English history, Chaucer desires a healing ideology for England; his turn…
Beal, Rebecca S.
Chaucer Review 44 (2010): 440-60.
Rubrics in "Filostrato" manuscripts label Calkas's bid to trade a prisoner for his daughter as an "oratory." Chaucer's version of the speech fulfills the formal requirements of a speech arguing "for a particular course of action" and in so doing…
Blamires, Alcuin.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 335-51.
Blamires introduces TC as Chaucer's "longest finished poem," commenting on sources, fusion of genres, suppleness of verse form and diction, the characters' sympathies, and the poem's "emotional trajectory."
The "complex" trouthe/routhe rhyme tracks the stages in the lovers' relationship: from its beginnings, when Troilus's trouthe is pledged for Criseyde's routhe; to its consummation, when mutual compassion assures reciprocal honesty and fidelity; to…
Butterfield, Ardis.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 33-54.
Comments on Chaucer's address to his book at the end of TC as an example of the poet's awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity.
Chaucer's evocation of contrasting senses of "frend" sharpens his depiction of Criseyde's precarious state in Troy. Lacking advisors, and thus dangerously dependent on Pandarus and Troilus, she also belongs to a network of relationships devoted…
Argues that the frontispiece to TC in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 61, was modeled on the scene in which Genius addresses Nature in the "Roman de la Rose." Focuses on the "lower register" of the frontispiece, arguing that it depicts Chaucer as a…
Coot, Alexander.
English Studies 91 (2010): 26-41.
In TC and KnT, Chaucer "revises Augustinian and Boethian formulations of "contemptus mundi," pointing out that any ethical system which seeks to address the topic of earthly desires must also address the human subject's endless appetite for desire as…
Fumo, Jamie C.
Robert Epstein and William Robins, eds. Sacred and Profane in Chaucer and Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honour of John V. Fleming (Buffalo, N. Y.: University of Toronto Press, 2010), pp. 68-90.
Fumo reads Criseyde as someone "who does not believe in love" and perhaps "does not believe at all," a representation of fourteenth-century epistemological concerns "reanimated in the context of a Petrarchan psychology of enamourment." Criseyde's…
Explores international cultural exchange and openness in the Middle Ages, commenting on scenarios of medieval cosmopolitanism in three modern fictions: Youssef Chahine's film "Destiny," Tariq Ali's novel "Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree," and Milorad…
Garrison, John.
Medievalia et Humanistica 36 (2010): 25-47.
The friendship between Troilus and Pandarus synthesizes Cicero's "pure friendship" with "potential for mutual gain," emblematized in Troilus's offer to procure any woman Pandarus wants. Portraying friendship in economic terms, TC reveals more…
Considers the frontispiece to TC found in Corpus Christi College MS 61 (which depicts Chaucer addressing a court audience, particularly the court of Richard II). The frontispiece shows that literature was delivered orally (by "prelection") and…
Ingham, Patricia Clare.
College English 72.3 (2010): 226-47.
Ingham uses Freud's meditations on Tasso's knight Tancred as a model for how literary texts mediate between the repetitive and the representational aspects of trauma. Chaucer's TC resonates with trauma in the work's historical context, in the…
Knowles views deployments of the medieval concept of "service" (which encompassed an elaborate network of interpersonal and institutional relationships) in Langland, Julian of Norwich, and TC.
Mieszkowski, Gretchen.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, Its Meaning, and Consequences. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, no. 5 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter), 2010, pp. 457-80.
Mieszkowski contrasts the situational comedy of TC and the structural comedic techniques of MilT, MerT, and SumT. Chaucer generates "all the comedy" of TC by means of Pandarus, whose comic counterpoint compels readers to reconceptualize love without…
Palmer, James M.
Marcelline Block and Angela Laflen, eds. Gender Scripts in Medicine and Narrative (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 292-312.
Investigates in TC Pandarus's attempts to cure Troilus's lovesickness, physically and psychologically. Pandarus's failure to effect a cure indicates that Chaucer rejects determinism and endorses free will, showing that Christian morals are…
