White explores the role of literature in "peace studies," traces pacifist theory through the ages, and surveys pacifism in English literature from the Middle Ages to modern prose, poetry, and film. The chapter on the Middle Ages comments on Old…
Zilleruelo, Art.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 194-208.
Reads KnT as "historical narrative constructed upon a foundation of misleading anachronism . . . to lend strength to the potentially objectionable sociopolitical agenda of its narrator."
Bishop, Kathleen A.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 16-26.
Asserts several parallels between the window scene in MilT and reports of the sodomitical execution of Edward II.
A series of essays and translations written between 1877 and 1886, Mary Eliza Haweis's work on MilT constitutes a large and uniquely positive chapter in the reception of MilT in Victorian England.
Eyler, Joshua R., and John P. Sexton.
ANQ 21.3 (2008): 2-6.
Nicholas's door in MilT (knocked off of its hinges in one moment and then closed on its hinges a few minutes later) is a semiotic hinge in the play between public and private space, echoing Theseus's attempts to control space in KnT.
In MilT, Alison resists Absolon's efforts to compel her to perform courtly behavior and chooses her "own predicates" of behavior, thus establishing her identity and coercing Absolon to abandon his failed courtly role.
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye, and E. Ann Matter, eds. Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe. The Middle Ages Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 211-24.
John's incantations to protect Nicholas in MilT would have been considered licit uses of medicinal magic according to strictures of John Peakham, the Archdeacon of Canterbury. Kelly also comments on FranT, SqT, and ParsT.
Edwards, Elizabeth B.
Exemplaria 20 (2008): 361-84.
Edwards discusses the rites and purposes of mourning in KnT in relation to the psychological theories of Freud and Derrida. Contrasts the Freudian account with medieval practices of theology and Purgatory. Tthe pagan setting is necessary to…
Ganim, John M.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages: Archipelago, Island, England. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 191-208.
The War of the Maidens, a founding myth of Czech history, may have come to England via Anne of Bohemia and may be part of the "political unconscious" of several of Chaucer's works, particularly his depiction of the Amazons in KnT.
Chaucer's uses of parliamentary terminology throughout KnT, but especially in Saturn's counsel to Venus and in Theseus's "First Mover" speech, establish a parallel between divine and human realms, revealing "the abuse of power and authority" in…
Hammond, Paul.
Seventeenth Century 23 (2008): 142-59.
Hammond compares and contrasts Dryden's "Palamon and Arcite" from his "Fables Ancient and Modern" with its source, Chaucer's KnT, finding that Dryden reworked religious and political concerns to create a "macaronic fabric" that combines classical, …
Johnston, Andrew James.
Andrew James Johnston. Performing the Middle Ages from "Beowulf" to "Othello." Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies, no. 15. (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2008), pp. 94-123.
Revises the author's earlier study "The Keyhole Politics of Chaucerian Theatricality: Voyeurism in the Knight's Tale" (SAC 27 [2005], no. 183), placing it in the context of a parallel discussion of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
Kim, Hyonjin.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 16 (2008): 77-111.
Surveys critical approaches to KnT, particularly New Critical, Feminist, and New Historical, focusing on discussions of order and disorder in the Tale. KnT functions as a "second prologue" to CT and, with GP, asserts and affirms the diversity of…
Lee, Dongchoon.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 16 (2008): 43-76.
Through various devices of style and narrative technique, Chaucer undermines the Knight's (and Theseus's) efforts to find or impose order on human and cosmic disruption and violence.
Together, Chaucer's two references to the Alexandrian crusade in CT, along with his portrait of the Knight and depictions of Custance and the Sultaness in MLT, expose similarities between missionary work and crusading. The Knight's participation in…
Nohara, Yasuhiro.
Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku Kirisutokyo Ronshu (St. Andrew's University Journal of Christian Studies) 40 (2004): 61-108.
Considers the impulses to go on pilgrimage in late medieval England and assesses the GP descriptions of the pilgrims in light of contemporary motivations for pilgrimage.
Nohara, Yasuhiro.
English Review (Momoyama Gakuin University) 11 (1996): 27-47.
Argues that the intensive use of "wel" in "wel nyne and twenty" (GP 24) helps account for the apparent discrepancy between the phrase and the number of pilgrims in CT.
Reale, Nancy M.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 256-80.
Chaucer's CT, particularly GP, offers "as its 'utilitarian' value or 'worth' exemplary lessons on constructing social identity in the context of an emergent market system." This "bold step paved the way for modern ways of understanding the self,"…
Strohm, Paul.
Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown, eds. Lydgate Matters: Poetry and Material Culture in the Fifteenth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 57-70.
Strohm assesses historical implications of the concern with civic and personal cleansing in Lydgate's "Troy Book" and comments on Chaucer's imagery of cleansing in GP, his concern with civic orderliness in KnT, and his personal experiences with…
Casey, Jim.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 209-27.
The price of love for Palamon and Arcite in KnT is violence and death, a feature of the "gender/violence/courtship paradigm" of medieval courtly literature that continues into the present, as evident in Brian Helgeland's "A Knight's Tale."
Curtis, Carl C. III.
Christianity & Literature 57 (2008): 207-22.
Biblical analogies embedded in KnT constitute an implied critique of the pre-Christian setting: Palamon and Arcite's first sight of Emelye accords with David's first sight of Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:2); loving Emelye reorganizes Arcite's psyche and…
Curtis, Carl C. III
Lewiston, N. Y.: Mellen, 2008.
The first two chapters of this book look at the Knight and KnT in the context of the "heroic life." The Allegory of Rule and the Allegory of Love offer ways to understand Palamon and Arcites's fight in the wood. The second two chapters examine the…
Dor, Juliette.
Guyonne Leduc, ed. Réalité et représentations des Amazones. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2008, pp. 257-72.
Feminist and postcolonial reconsideration of the figure of Emily that focuses on the Knight's adjustment of traditional material; Emily has not submitted to patriarchal values, despite the Knight's modifications. In French.
Harry Bailly's remarks about his wife Goodelief constitute a community among the husbands along for the pilgrimage; they also call attention to various affiliations of wives in CT, e.g., the Clerk's "archewyves." As outlets for complaints about…
Woods, William F.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008.
Woods discusses the effect and significance of space and place in seven tales of CT, exploring place as an index of character and space as a site of characteristic potential. In KnT, Theseus and the narrator consider chivalry analogous to nature; in…
