Pearsall, Derek.
Robert F. Yeager, ed. Fifteenth-Century Studies: Recent Essays (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1984), pp. 121-36.
Argues that manuscripts ignored by editors "often deserve far more than the total neglect" they receive, drawing examples from manuscripts of Chaucer and Langland, including a number of cruces from manuscripts of Chaucer's CT and TC. Comments on…
Ridley, Florence.
Wolf-Dietrich Bald and Horst Weinstock, eds. Medieval Studies Conference Aachen 1983 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984), pp. 121-36.
Asserts that the label "Scots Chaucerian" clearly does not apply to William Dunbar, documenting the "meagerness of the evidence of Chaucer's influence on him" and demonstrating that Dunbar's poetry is "completely continental" rather than Chaucerian.
An anthology of selections from English poetry, accompanied by pertinent illustrations and social context, with topics ranging from Chaucer to the "Later Twentieth Century, 1934-84." Chapter one (pp. 1-15) pertains to Chaucer, with brief biographical…
Pérez Gállego, Cándido, intro. Juan G. de Luaces, trans.
Madrid: Sociedad General Española de Libreria, 1984
Spanish prose translation of the complete CT, with an introduction to Chaucer's life and the poem, with emphasis on plot summary, and brief bibliography. The Luaces translation was originally published in 1946, 2 volumes.
Brewer, Elisabeth.
Harlow: Longman; Beirut: York Press, 1984.
Summary description of Chaucer's life and social contexts, accompanying by appreciative analyses of each of his major works, especially the CT (each tale summarized and described). Also includes discussion of Chaucer's genres, his uses of rhetoric,…
Green, Richard Firth.
V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds. English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 87-108.
Surveys evidence for the existence of "courts of love" in late medieval French and English culture, considering historical evidence such as Charles VI's "cour amoureuse," and the literary evidence of the love debate, the "demande d'amour," the flower…
Scattergood, V. J.
V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds. English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 29-43.
Argues that Chaucer and Gower were "hardly essential reading " at the court of Richard II, although some evidence indicates that they were being read. Such evidence includes comments on Sted, TC, LGW, Scog, and works by Gower.
Ridge, George Ross, and Benedict Chiaka Njoka.
George Ross Ridge and Benedict Chiaka Njoka. The Christian Tragic Hero in French and English Literature (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983), pp. 73-84.
Impressionistic survey of four Catholic motifs in the CT: the journey of Everyman, fate versus free will, marriage as a sacrament, and the Stoic notion of the "nobleness of man," considering them for the ways that, in Chaucer's presentation, they…
An anthology of translations from Greek and Roman by English writers, including a section on Chaucer (pp. 32-33) with a brief (and erroneous) biography and a selection from Chaucer's Dido legend (LGW 1180-1209), from Virgil's "Aeneid" 4.129-50,…
Originally published in 1966, here revised, corrected, and expanded. Describes Chaucer's grammar and usage, anatomized according to parts of speech, with extensive examples. Topics include verbs (in their various tenses, aspects, and moods), nouns,…
Summary (without text) and commentary on MerT, arranged in sections, accompanied by glosses to Middle English phrases. Also includes a brief introduction to Chaucer and his backgrounds; commentary on themes, characterization, and style of MerT; the…
A selection of Jennings' personal favorites among English poems, beginning with selections from GP (lines 1-78, 101-62, 219-330, 411-76, and 822-35), in Middle English.
Argues that the autobiographical portion of Hoccleve's "Regement of Princes" and its "praise and portrait" of Chaucer indicate that the poem is part of a broader "program of kingly self-representation" undertaken by Henry, Prince of Wales, who…
Berry, Craig A.
Studies in Philology 91 (1994): 136-66.
Reads two sections of Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene" (the opening lines and Arthur's dream, 1.9) as examples of inscripted biographical details and the poetic anxiety of the work. Considers Spenser's adaptations of PF and, especially, Thop, reading…
Mulryne, J. R.
M[arie]-T[hérèse] Jones-Davies, ed. Le Dialogue au Temps de la Renaissance. Centre de Recherches sur la Renaissance, no. 9 (Paris: Jean Touzot, 1984), pp. 169-83.
Places Shakespeare's bird dialogue from the end of "Love's Labour's Lost" in the tradition of bird debates, commenting on other examples of the genre, and noting parallels with PF and Sir John Clanvowe's "The Boke of Cupid," attributed to Chaucer…
Dramatic adaptation of GP, WBT, MerT, MilT, RvT, PardT, NPT, and FrankT, with production notes and extensive stage directions that emphasize frolicsome vitality. Text in modern English, irregular couplets.
Forum letter in which Braxton, disagreeing with Pamela Michaela Paasche, claims that closure is evident in Chaucer's works when his male point of view is recognized, and presents MerT as a "case in point."
Knight, Stephen.
Leeds Studies in English 20 (1989): 87-98.
A "correlative study" of the near contemporaries, Chaucer and Dafydd ap Gwilym, comparing their formal and linguistic innovations, their respective social standings and concerns with mercantilism and politics, and their relative concern with nature…
A history of laughter in Western literature, focusing on the relation between laughter and literature, and surveying ancient, medieval, and modern traditions. In his Introduction, Sanders credits Chaucer with associating the roles of the feminine…
Pope, John C.
Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, eds. Acts of Interpretation (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1982), pp. 345-62.
Explicates tensions within several poetic evocations of mutability in English poetry: the Old English "Wanderer," "Beowulf," the end of Chaucer's TC (5.1835-48), and Spenser's Mutability Cantos. Chaucer and Spenser both use "equivocation" to express…
Anderson, Judith H.
Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, eds. Acts of Interpretation (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1982), pp. 105-18.
Close reading of the uses of the conjunction "but" as an "illogical adversative" in Spenser's Proem to Book 6 of "The Faerie Queene," compared and contrasted with Chaucer's related uses in his GP. Generally, Chaucer's usage "serves narrative…
Neumann, Fritz-Wilhelm.
Hans-Heinrich Freitag and Peter Hühn, eds. Literarische Ansichten der Wirklichkeit: Studien zur Wirklichkeitskonstitution in Englischsprachiger Literatur: To Honour Johannes Kleinstück (Frankfurt am Main: Peter D. Lang, 1980), pp. 41-57.
Assesses the arena and attendant temples in KnT as a squared circle, central symbol in the tale and its concerns with perception and reality.
Benson, L[arry] D.
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 352-72.
Accompanies Benson's discursive "Reader's Guide to Chaucer," included in the same volume (pp. 321-51). Lists selected "critical and scholarly works" (some lightly annotated), and indicates with an asterisk works that are "especially suitable for…
