Federico, Sylvia.
Laura L. Howes, ed. Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), pp. 171-79.
Federico explores how "Ricardian court culture haunts the chivalric spaces inhabited and visited by" Chaucer's TC and by Gawain in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Parallels between the "moral lapses" of Richard II and those of the two protagonists…
Federico, Sylvia.
Medieval Feminist Forum 43.1 (2007): 72-75.
Discusses, on the one hand, psychoanalytic approaches to literature, femininity, and various aspects of Troilus and the narrator of TC; and, on the other hand, historicism, masculinity, and other features of Troilus and the narrator. Points out…
Edwards, Robert R.
Vinay Dharwadker, ed. Cosmopolitan Geographies: New Locations in Literature and Culture. Essays from the English Institute (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 33-62.
Crossing tendencies characterize the "cosmopolitanism" of the late Middle Ages, and the story of Troy is the "paradigmatic cosmopolitan narrative." Edwards comments on Lydgate's "Troy Book" and addresses the mysterious pagan judge of "Saint…
Cannon, Christopher.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 177-90.
Cannon summarizes medieval theories of literary form, including that of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, as adapted by Chaucer in TC. Applies the theories to various works in Middle English.
Archibald, Elizabeth.
Carolyn Muessig and Ad Putter, eds. Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture, no. 6 (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 222-36.
Archibald surveys Italian, French, and English literary instances of love compared to heaven, hell, paradise, or purgatory, commenting on Chaucer's uses in CT (WBT, KnT, and especially MerT) and LGW and exploring the more sustained use of this set of…
Using the fourteen extant manuscripts of PF as points of reference, Preston questions reductive thematic approaches to compilations and argues that other factors--authorial attribution and class, for instance--are equally plausible as explanations…
Female involvement in construction of the Findern anthology (Cambridge University Library MS Ff 1.6) resulted in "subtle interventions" in thematic concerns of several works included in the anthology: for example, "female eloquence" (in Gower's story…
Kerr, John.
Bruce E. Brandt and Michael S. Nagy, eds. Proceedings of the 14th Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature, April 7-8, 2006 (Brookings, S.Dak.: English Department, South Dakota State University, 2006), pp. 77-93.
Kerr argues that the sixth canto of Dante's Inferno was the model for Chaucer's use of gluttony and alimentary metaphors in PF, particularly the latter's concern with literary transmission and the birds' debate.
Johnston, Andrew James.
Sabine Volk-Birke and Julia Lippert, eds. Anglistentag 2006 Halle. Proceedings of the Conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English, no. 28 (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2007), pp. 147-57.
Johnston discusses the treatment of political concerns in PF and Clanvowe's "Book of Cupid." PF defuses the political conflicts it conjures up through a conscious policy of aesthetic deferral, whereas the "Book of Cupid" openly shows the violence…
Tolhurst, Fiona.
Gail Ashton and Louise Sylvester, eds. Teaching Chaucer (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 46-64.
Describes procedures for incorporating student performances of portions of LGW into classroom activities and using these performances to help students evaluate other Chaucerian texts.
Chaucer's depiction of the legendary battle of Actium likely reflects both his understanding of contemporary naval warfare technology and his awareness of military treatises by Vegetius and Giles of Rome.
Sanok, Catherine.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
Discusses the creation of female audiences, examining LGW and other works (including WBT) to explore how saints' lives shaped literary history, thus making women "visible participants" in vernacular literary culture. Alceste is a metonym for a…
Reis, Huriye.
Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi (Hacettepe University) 20.1 (2003): 140-49.
Reads LGWP as an indication of Chaucer's theory that writing is based largely on the reading of others. Chaucer's narrator is confronted with the implications of this theory.
Phillips, Helen.
Marios Costambeys, Andrew Hamer, and Martin Heale, eds. The Making of the Middle Ages: Liverpool Essays. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007, pp. 71-92.
Phillips gauges Romantic responses to LGW and the "Flower and the Leaf" (attributed to Chaucer in the Romantic age), indicating that Keats, Tennyson, William Morris, Pre-Raphaelite artists, and others admired the poems for their depictions of Nature…
Meyer, Cathryn Marie.
Dissertation Abstracts International A68.05 (2007): n.p.
Meyer examines confessional discourse in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Chaucer's LGW, "The Book of Margery Kempe," and Robert Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," assessing how this discourse "produc[es] truth" and conveys "textualized bodies."
McCormick uses game theory and the debate genre to investigate the structure of LGW and of Pizan's "Le livre de la cité des dames." The former is "a ludic puzzle"; the latter, "an architectural mnemonic."
McCormick, Betsy.
Eileen A. Joy, Myra J. Seaman, Kimberly K. Bell, and Mary K. Ramsey, eds. Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 91-117.
McCormick compares LGW and Christine de Pisan's "Le livre de la cité des dames" with the reality TV show "Manor House," exploring how each poses a "liminal space" from which to "contemplate societal stereotypes and strictures by revisiting the…
Each of the legends makes use of "the metonymic possibilities of objects and bodies" to represent the difficulty of discerning truth from fable in written sources available to the historiographer.
Coleman, Joyce.
R. F. Yeager, ed. On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 46. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007, pp. 104-23.
Coleman considers the first recension of Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and the F version of LGWP for evidence of royal patronage, arguing that both were inspired by Anne of Bohemia and by the popularity of the "Flower and Leaf" conventions that Anne…
Warren, Nancy Bradley.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 369-85.
The "transubstantiation" of the word being made flesh underlies the autobiographical impulse in Julian of Norwich's "Showings," Langland's "Piers Plowman," and Chaucer's HF. Warren also comments on Chaucer's Ret as autobiography.
St. John, Michael.
Carla Dente, George Ferzoco, Miriam Gill, and Marina Spunta, eds. Proteus: The Language of Metamorphosis. Studies in European Cultural Transition, no. 26. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005, pp. 83-92.
Argues that an "individual's knowledge of history" is presented in HF in a way that is metaphorically linked to alchemical transformation--with "tydynges" either substantially transformed or flying into uncontrollable energy. CYT shows Chaucer's…
Kang, Ji-Soo.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 14 (2006): 33-56
Medieval texts interact with their sources as memory operates, according to classical tradition, in individual cognition. Chaucer's depiction in HF of Virgil's story of Dido and Aeneas exemplifies this interaction and lets readers determine what is…
Fumo, Jamie C.
Janet Levarie Smarr, ed. Writers Reading Writers: Intertextual Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature in Honor of Robert Hollander. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007, pp. 89-108.
Fumo compares and contrasts Chaucer's invocation of Apollo in HF to its source in Dante's "Paradiso," arguing that Chaucer shares with Dante a "fundamental interest in defining the poet's role" as a "vessel of prophetic truth." Both poets are…
Lydgate's poetic trial of Brunhilde indicates a conviction that poets have a central role in shaping and transmitting "fama." In sharp contrast, Chaucer depicts fama as a function of "aventure" in HF.
