Noji, Kaoru.
Bulletin of Yamamura Women's Junior College 3 (1991): 245-62.
Explicates FranT, focusing on the characterization of Dorigen and how it reveals the "social compromises which women are conditioned to make." The "cracks in mutual understanding" between Dorigen and Arveragus also reveal how the values of women and…
Kline, Daniel T.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 107 (2008): 77-103.
Virginius's fatal encounter with his daughter Virginia in PhyT can be seen as an instance of "torture," as Elaine Scarry defines it, the "most extreme" of political situations. In Scarry's terms and from Virginius's perspective,Virginia's existence…
Smith, Kirk L.
Literature and Medicine 27 (2008): 61-81.
PhyT expresses its narrator's concern with "fiduciary" ethics and asserts the principle that "responsible professionals abjure exploitation." Such concerns are part of the late medieval professionalization of medical practice, so the Tale is…
Chaganti, Seeta.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2008.
Chaganti explores the "dialectical interaction between inscription and performance" that underlines the "poetics of enshrinement" in medieval visual art, literature, and discourse on representation. Individual chapters address "Saint Erkenwald," the…
Chaucer may have tapped into traditional knowledge of the Northern god Loki in creating the description of the Pardoner in GP. Links with Loki, who transformed himself into a mare in the Old Norse "Gylfaginning," encourage us to view the Pardoner as…
Croft, Steven, ed.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,2006.
Textbook edition of PardPT and the GP description of the Pardoner. Includes glosses and discursive notes (at the back of the book) and discussion of approaches to the text: sources and analogues, characterization, assessment of theme and topic, and…
Innes, Sheila, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2001.
Middle English text of MerPT and the GP description of the Merchant,with notes, glossary, and discussion questions on facing pages. Includes contextual information concerning Chaucer's life, courtly love, and the rest of CT, particularly the…
MerT, particularly its marriage encomium, was influenced by exegetical treatments of Eve as "helper," drawn from the Augustinian tradition and from Albertanus of Brescia. Chaucer rewrites these two divergent strands, reverses their interpretations of…
Robertson, Kellie.
Literature Compass 5.6 (2008): 1060-80.
Surveys materialist "thing theory" as background on how objectivities and subjectivities interacted in medieval and early modern cultures. Summarizes work to date on the topic and considers how the accoutrements of the Merchant (especially his hat)…
Intertextual relationships among MerT, SqT, and FranT indicate differing attitudes toward perception, loyalty, and treason, particularly focused in the depictions of squires. Chaucer's Squire condescends to the lower classes and their ignorance of…
Heretofore noted for its allusions to TC, the romance "Amoryus and Cleopes" also develops many of the themes, motifs, and stylistic traits of Fragment 5 of CT (SqT and FranT), in particular "its portrayal of pagan religion, its treatment of…
Dor, Juliette.
Florence Alazard, ed. La plainte au Moyen-Âge (Paris: Champion, 2008), pp. 181-93.
Comments on Chaucer's ventriloquist complaints (in LGW and TC) and examines the length, structure, position, tone, and function of the genre in FranT. While they were initially types, major characters gain dimension. Dorigen's second soliloquy…
Finlayson, John.
English Studies 89 (2008): 385-402.
In FranT, Chaucer reshapes the source material found in Boccaccio's "Filocolo" and "Decameron," adding the "pre-story" of a courtly love marriage, increasing the pathos of Dorigen, undercutting Arveragus's "self-serving" views of honor and truth, and…
Beyond her concern to remain bodily faithful to her husband, Dorigen also exhibits a commitment to keep faith with her word. But the Tale's denouement suggests that Dorigen's ultimate interest lies less with honoring her promises than with having a…
Griffith, John Lance.
NTU [National Taiwan University] Studies in Language and Literature 18 (2007): 37-59.
The exemplary value of FrT is rendered complex by its setting within the Canterbury fiction and by the angered antagonism between Friar and Summoner. Chaucer places the story "in a human situation . . . to engage our understanding of the way in which…
Carlson, Cindy.
Cynthia Kuhn and Cindy Carlson, eds. Styling Texts: Dress and Fashion in Literature (Youngstown, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2007), pp. 33-48.
Carlson examines motifs of shame and covering in the two disrobing scenes in ClT, arguing that Griselda's request for a smock to cover herself before she leaves Walter indicates that she has "shown a self that cannot be shamed by Walter, by poverty…
Denny-Brown, Andrea.
Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown,eds. Lydgate Matters: Poetry and Material Culture in the Fifteenth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 35-56.
Denny-Brown explores roots of the medieval legends of Bicorn and Chichevache, examining how Chaucer develops the "themes of beastly appetites" in ClT and how Lydgate expands the theme of appetite in his "Bycorne and Chychevache."
Ding, Jian-Ning.
Foreign Literature Studies [WenGuo Xue Yan Jiu] 29 (2007): 111-17.
Argues that Griselda's "restraint" is a subversive strategy and explores the implications of this subversion for understanding the Clerk as narrator and Chaucer as poet.
Harkins, Jessica Lara Lawrence.
DAI A69.05 (2008): n.p.
Looks at ClT and Boccaccio's "Decameron" 10.10, along with works of St. Jerome, Apuleius, and Petrarch, to examine assumptions about Griselda and versions of her tale, arguing that Chaucer was aware of the Boccaccio text.
Pugh, Tison.
Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 75-99.
The Clerk's submission to the Host's tale-telling game parallels Griselda's submission to Walter: the two are queerly faithful in ways that bring into focus their "contractual hermaphroditism" and deconstruct traditional gender categories. Griselda's…
Rossiter, William.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 166-93.
Complex intertextual relationships among ClT and its multiple sources, as well as the complex political implications of ClT, reinforce the Tale's "habit of returning its readers to the multiplicity of interpretation."
Yoon, Minwoo.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 16 (2008): 113-41.
Although Griselda is "translated" in three different ways in ClT (language, place,and social class), her labor is constant throughout. Her labors (domestic, wifely, and public) define her essential selfhood and grant her a kind of power that Walter…
In the fourteenth century, rape was perceived as "natural," a relatively minor social infraction. In WBT, the ladies of the court do not dispute the verdict assigned the rapist-knight; they dispute only the penalty. The knight is socially…
Martin, Jennifer L.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 60-74.
Cites instances in which the Wife of Bath crosses over between binary sets (male/female, sex/gender, authority/experience), and suggests that she cannot be seen simply as a feminist. Nor is she simply a victim.
