Hoccleve's authorial identity develops through "borrowings and echoes" derived from TC: "Boethian dialogue; diseased language; and gendered subjects." These allusions work as conjurings--understood as both invocation and exorcism--of the "spectral…
Explores literary allusions used in the courts of law in Britain and Ireland, revealing how literature conceptually informs practical life. Osborough briefly mentions Chaucer when discussing etymology in a nineteenth-century case involving…
Norris tallies and assesses the major and minor sources of Malory's "Morte Darthur," suggesting that Malory was more widely read than is usually assumed. Chaucer's influence (especially WBT, FranT, and KnT) is neither close nor sustained in plot,…
Suggests that Chaucer's TC influenced Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" before serving as the source of the playwright's "Troilus and Cressida." Shakespeare explores ways to respond to source material in the two works. His "Troilus," in particular,…
Hutchins, Christine E.
Ben Jonson Journal 15 (2008): 248-70.
Late sixteenth-century Elizabethan reception of Chaucer focused as much on his "recreational" talents as a vernacular poet and stylist as on his doctrinal or philosophical themes. Constructed as a "prodigal" poet as well as a laureate, Chaucer was…
Guy-Bray, Stephen.
Buffalo, N.Y.; and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
Argues that poetic influence can be regarded as an erotic or romantic relationship between male couples, focusing on literature of Dante, Spenser, and Hart Crane and questioning notions of literary influence promulgated by T. S. Eliot and Harold…
Describes the unique copy of portions of "Sidrak and Bokkus" found in Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam, MS M199, an early modern alchemical miscellany. Accompanying the selections, manuscript annotations refer to a wide variety of…
Gray, Douglas.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Gray surveys "literature written in English from the death of Chaucer to the earlier sixteenth century," with numerous references to Chaucer's legacy and influence during the period. Introductory chapters on intellectual and cultural history are…
Fresco, Karen.
Juliette Dor and Marie-Élisabeth Henneau, eds. Christine de Pizan: Une femme de science, une femme de lettres. Études christiniennes, no. 10 (Paris: Champion, 2008), pp. 289-300.
Fresco draws attention to the imitation of Chaucer's enchâssement (encasement, enshirement) in Christine's Enseignemens moraulx BnF fr. 1551.
Cullen, Dolores L.
McKinleyville, Calif.: Fithian, 2008.
Narrative autobiography of the author's fascination with Chaucer, recounting the writing and publishing of three books on allegory in CT. Includes Cullen's thoughts about the reception of Chaucer among academic and popular audiences.
Depictions of Fortune and Fortune's effects in Malory's Morte Darthur have much in common with depictions in works by his English predecessors. Corrie comments on Chaucer's Bo, TC, KnT, and MkT.
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 42 (2008): 223- 43.
Considered in the light of key themes of Victorian medievalism and of her own early identification with Chaucer's Emily, Davison's actions--especially those leading to her untimely death--stand as expressions of her ethical commitment, rather than as…
Chance, Jane.
Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, eds. The Lord of the Rings, 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 2006), pp. 153-68.
In his fiction, Chance contends, Tolkien subverts traditional class distinctions, and his studies of Chaucer reflect a similar sensibility.
Blandeau, Agnès.
Bulletin des Anglicistes Médiévistes 74 (2008): 71-90.
Comparing Chaucer's and that of Peter Ackroyd in "The Clerkenwell Tales," Blandeau shows Ackroyd's indebtedness to Chaucer's use of images and sense of detail.
Anderson, Judith H.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
Anderson considers intertextuality to be both a result of authorial intent and an inevitability of language, assessing various kinds of influence, imitation, allusion, and citation. Allegory is a "process of thinking," a kind of metaphor that is…
Williams, Deanne.
Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner, eds. The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 205-26.
Williams considers adaptation of the Consolatio for courtly audiences in a number of works, including HF, WBT, and the "oft overlooked Boethian poems" Form Age, For, Truth, Sted, and Gent. These overlooked poems were particularly popular in…
Studies the "Boethian dialogue model in literature concerned with courtly love," treating the literature as examples of dialogue rather than dream vision and examining the relationship between the hierarchical, upward-leading erotics of this…
Justman considers the transmission of Eastern narratives (especially Petrus Alphonsi's "Disciplina Clerica," but also "Thousand and One Nights" narratives) to Western Europe--particularly to Boccaccio and Chaucer--exploring how the "category of…
Medieval vernacular literature, which inherits and deeply re-elaborates themes and modes of Latin culture, is at the origin of "European" literary production. Italy followed soon after France in establishing a vernacular literary tradition, anchored…
Azinfar, Fatemeh Chehregosha.
Atheism in the Medieval Islamic and European World: The Influence of Persian and Arabic Ideas of Doubt and Skepticism on Medieval European Literary Thought (Bethesda, Md.: Ibex Publishers, 2008), pp. 233-65.
Azinfar reads the comic treatment of Dante in HF as a skeptical rejection of religious authority and discusses depictions of theological contradiction in Mars, Venus, and WBP. Chaucer's rationalism aligns him with other skeptics and atheists,…
Thaisen, Jacob.
Margaret Connolly and Linne R. Mooney, eds. Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England (York: York Medieval Press, 2008), pp. 41-60.
Linguistic analysis of the two copies of CT made by the copyist known as "Scribe D" (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 198, and British Library MS Harley 7334). Thaisen focuses on orthography, especially the distribution of common lemmata, and…
Oxford, Christ Church College, MS 152 encloses Gamelyn in an inserted quire and supplies the long ending of MerT and Link 17 on substitute bifolia. Considered in relation to corresponding "fault lines" in Hengwrt and Ellesmere, this evidence suggests…
Tavormina, M. Teresa, ed.
Tempe: ACMRS (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies), 2006.
Edition and comprehensive study of Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.14.52, which was produced by the Hammond scribe. Includes five essays by various authors on physical features of the manuscript, an edition in ten sections by various editors,…
Reis, Huriye.
Çeviribilim ve Uygulamalari Dergisi (Journal of Translation Studies, Hacettepe University) 11 (2001): 47-58.
Two translations of Chaucerian works into Turkish--GP (1993), by Barçin Erol, and CT (1994), by Nazim Ağil--illustrate the "cultural approximation necessitated by the act of translation." Reis assesses specific passages from these translations,…
