Whereas the GP portrait of the Prioress raises questions about the operation of performances in general, we see in PrPT the efficacy of performative utterances in particular. Details of the boy's murder and postmortem singing demonstrate that the…
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser., 3 (2007): 71-129.
Kelly surveys depictions of non-Christians in Chaucer's works and in works familiar to Chaucer: "Speculum historiale" by Vincent of Beauvais, "Legenda aurea" by Jacob of Voragine, English legendaries, miracles of the Virgin, pictorial tradition, and…
Looking beyond the OED's definition of "span"--a length of roughly nine inches--to a range of medieval senses of the word suggests that the width of the Prioress's forehead "offers no meaningful foothold for objecting to her."
Sheridan, Christian.
Sandra M. Hordis and Paul Hardwick, eds. Medieval English Comedy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), pp. 111-23.
Sheridan assesses the "common logic" of puns and money in ShT. Both pose the threat of vacuity--meaninglessness or lack of value--while simultaneously offering pleasure.
Beidler, Peter G.
Holly A. Crocker, ed. Comic Provocations: Exposing the Corpus of Old French Fabliaux. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 149-61.
When Chaucer used Boccaccio's "Decameron" 8.1 as his source for ShT, he was also influenced by French fabliaux, particularly a garden scene in the thirteenth-century "Aloul" and, more generally, the animal euphemisms typical of the genre in French…
Yvernault, Martine.
Eduardo Ramos-Izquierdo, ed. Seminaria 1--Les Espaces du Corps 1: Littérature (Mexico and Paris: RILMA2/ADEHL [Association pour le Développement des Études Hispaniques en Limousin]), 2007, pp. 9-26.
Focuses on the rich meanings and implications of fragment in PardPT.
Assesses Hoccleve's use of an "enfeebled persona" as a means to compete seriously with the "tasteful silences" of Chaucer and the "guilty fulminations" of Langland on the topic of vernacular poetic identity. Compares Hoccleve's "Male Regle" with…
Pattwell, Niamh.
Kathy Cawsey and Jason Harris, eds. Transmission and Transformation in the Middle Ages: Texts and Contexts (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), pp. 115-30.
Patwell explores how the Pardoner "transgresses the boundaries between lay man and cleric and between lollardy and orthodoxy," focusing on how in PardPT Chaucer exposes extreme views about the Eucharist and how he targets what is being condemned…
Minnis, Alastair.
Lawrence Besserman, ed. Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: New Essays. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 63-82.
Minnis explores medieval attempts to "explain the difficult and dangerous relationship" between "material and spiritual economies" underlying pardons or indulgences, commenting on the explanations of Albert the Great, Aquinas, and Bonaventure and…
Minnis, Alastair.
R. N. Swanson, ed. Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 169-95.
There is a paucity of writing on indulgences in medieval vernacular literatures. Minnis explores depictions of pardoners and indulgences in PardP, Langland's "Piers Plowman, "and John Heywood's "The Foure PP" and "The Pardoner and the Frere."…
Combines psychoanalysis, ethnography, and "queer theory" to examine pilgrimage, travel, and specific locations as narrative devices that undermine and assert masculinities in CT, especially those of the Pardoner, the Host, and the Knight in the…
Sallust's association of avarice with effeminacy in "The War with Catiline" and Aulus Gellius's subsequent reiteration of the link in his "Attic Nights" are two possible sources for the combination of avarice with effeminacy in Chaucer's Pardoner.
Heffernan, Carol Falvo.
Florilegium 22 (2005): 105-20.
Cipolla's tale concludes a set of stories focusing on wit, and PardT ends a fragment that precedes one centered on poetic language. The tales of both speakers coincide in "genre, character, theme, and placement," even though Cipolla improvises his…
Friedman, John Block.
Viator 38.1 (2007): 289-319.
Friedman argues that French comic "trade" literature is source material for PardP, identifying parallels in details and in the hucksterish rhetoric of the works. He suggests that the Pardoner's sexuality may have been influenced by discussion of the…
Kline, Daniel T.
Joel T. Rosenthal, ed. Essays on Medieval Childhood: Responses to Recent Debates (Donington, Lincolnshire: Shaun Tyas, 2007), pp. 108-23.
Chaucer's additions to his sources in PhyT emphasize the "domestic contours" of the story. PhyT is a critique of the "social efficacy of the patriarchal family." Virginius first fails to protect his daughter and then murders her; he is "no better a…
Giaccherini, Enrico.
Silvia Bigliazzi and Sharon Wood, eds. Collaboration in the Arts from the Middle Ages to the Present (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 7-15.
Giaccherini reads PhyT as an experiment in "collaboration"--Chaucer's adaptation of the plot from Livy and the Roman de la Rose--that develops a concern for the private realm while downplaying the public.
Middle English sermons and manuals of vices and virtues indicate that Chaucer's audience would have understood Jephtha's daughter as a figure of a loose woman. Through allusion to her, Chaucer creates a painfully ironic moment that characterizes…
Crafton, John Micheal.
Philological Quarterly 84 (2005): 259-85.
As a treatise on continence, the last chapter of the "Summa virtutem remediis anime" provides significant analogues to PhyT. Virginia represents true virginity and in her martyrdom appears saintly. Virginius represents foolish virginity, especially…
Lipton, Emma.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
Depictions of marriage in a range of late Middle English texts engage concerns with lay and ecclesiastical authority and promote interests of "the lay middle strata." The book opens with a reading of how FranT expresses in its "discourse of…
Lee, Dongchoon.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 14 (2006): 265-300.
Reads FranT as Chaucer's satiric portrayal of the narrator, focusing on the character of the Franklin, contradictions within his narrative, his characters' concern with public show, and legal aspects of Arveragus and Dorigen's clandestine marriage.
Haas, Kurtis B.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 106 (2007): 45-63.
Dorigen and Arveragus of FranT "demonstrate . . . deficiency in the cognitive skills inculcated by the medieval trivium," making them "vulnerable to the Orleans clerk's corruptions of the quadrivium." Weak critical thinking undermines their ability…
Conrad-O'Briain, Helen.
Philip Coleman, ed. On Literature and Science: Essays, Reflections, Provocation (Dublin: Four Courts Press), 2007, pp. 27-42.
Considers FranT rather than CYT Chaucer's clearest contribution to science fiction, a genre here presented with an ancient legacy. In FranT, Chaucer uses the "tension at the heart of science fiction--between the possible and the not necessarily…
Hard and soft analogues to Dorigen's conversations with Aurelius in FranT indicate that she is less a victim than someone playfully complicit in "flirtation." Offering "positive rhetorical models," Boccaccio and Christine de Pizan depict women who…
SqT illustrates how "a poet may come to poetic and prosodic mastery." Chaucer's conscious creation of an inept teller who overuses or misuses rhyme, enjambment, and caesura illustrates the difficult process of maturing as a poet.
The two portions of SqT align the cultural differences between the Mamluk emissary and the Mongol court with the species differences between the falcon and Canacee. Capitalizing on symbolic, metonymic connections between animals and humans and…
