Rudd, Gillian.
New York: Manchester University Press, 2007.
Explores relationships between humankind and natural landscapes through critical readings that combine ecological emphases with literary analysis. In a chapter titled "Trees," Rudd suggests that the eventual fate of the forest in KnT illuminates the…
Medieval allegory "prefigures cinematic consciousness." In Wegener's film "Der Golem," "Judaeo-Christian figural allegory, coupled with the narratology and the phenomenology of film," shifts "the deep past into the present in centrifugal, shocking,…
Violence and all excess reveal the uncontrollable nature of the world Theseus tries to order. Chaucer makes his story less chivalric than Boccaccio's to emphasize that humans, completely at the whim of Fortune, are incapable of maintaining any…
Kowalik, Barbara.
Maria Edelson, ed. Studies in Literature and Culture in Honour of Professor Irena Janicka-Świderska Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2002), pp. 100-110.
Increased concern with female characters in KnT distinguishes it from traditional epics, and its presentation of women and gender relationships embodies "evolutionary changes" in the romance genre. Nonetheless, Emily is imprisoned at the end "in yet…
Jardillier, Claire.
Bulletin des Anglicistes Médiévistes 71 (2007): 35-41.
Explores connections between text and places (landscapes, architecture, textual architecture) in KnT, focusing on Theseus's efforts to organize space and events and on the narrative's introduction of original motifs and discrepancies.
Examines Theseus as political hero in light of the literary history of KnT. The character combines wisdom and chivalry and reflects the Tale's narrator, including his attitude toward women.
Chaucer employs ekphrasis ("verbal representation of a visual representation") in the temples in KnT to comment on the social contexts and cultural production of art. The paintings and sculptures aesthetically justify Theseus's own authority, but…
Robertson, Kellie.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 441-58.
Robertson explores effects of the English labor laws of 1349 on attitudes toward writing, surveying reactions by various writers and using Chaucer's GP "as a lens through which to view the critical stakes in thinking about" work--particularly the…
Daróczy outlines the Latin rhetorical tradition as background to Chaucer's techniques of characterization in GP: groupings of pilgrims, omitted details, the order and juxtaposition of the portraits, epithets, and summarizing lines. Emphasizes…
An, Sonjae (Brother Anthony).
Jacek Fisiak and Hye-Kyung Kang, eds. Recent Trends in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Young-Bae Park (Seoul, South Korea: Thaehaksa, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 283-308.
The compassion for human failure and potential failure in Chaucer's GP reflects Christian awareness of sin and grace. Like later poets Christopher Hill, Seamus Heaney, and Ko Un (Korea), Chaucer is a "prophet-poet" whose recognition of human…
Explores the "kinship" between hypertext theory and the mode of analysis in Donald Howard's The Idea of the "Canterbury Tales" (1976), commenting on memory and associative thinking, nonlinearity and closure, and the technology of the book. Also…
GP, KnT, MilT, RvT, WBT, SumT, ClT, FranT, PardT, and NPT in comic-book style, with watercolor-and-ink drawings and synoptic modern English text. Middle English phrases included in illustrations. Designed for children / early readers (grades 3-7).
Watson, Nicholas.
Andrew Hass, David Jasper, and Elisabeth Jay, eds. The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 363-81.
Watson summarizes the theocentrism of the late Middle Ages, examines Langland's critique of formal theology in "Piers Plowman," and discusses how CT disclaims theological authority in exploring truth and moral utility. Argues that Mel may be the…
Surveys 115 books threatened with censorship in the United States because of objections to their social (rather than political, religious, or sexual) depictions. Arranged alphabetically by title of the work, each entry includes a plot summary, a…
Sandidge, Marilyn.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic. (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 357-73.
Youthful attitudes toward old age in the works of Boccaccio and Chaucer differ strikingly, perhaps because of demographic changes caused by the Black Plague. In Boccaccio, youth respects the wisdom of age, whereas in Chaucer young people resent the…
Describes a pedagogical experiment featuring a mock trial of Chaucer--asking students to prosecute and defend Chaucer on the charge of perpetrating medieval antifeminism through his characterization of women in CT and TC.
Patterson, Lee, ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Ten previously published essays or excerpts from longer works by various authors, with an introduction and a brief bibliography of suggested readings. Topics include GP and estates literature (Jill Mann); design and chaos in KnT (Robert W. Hanning);…
Discusses CT, especially WBP, in a study of the construction of the "self" in the late medieval and early modern periods. Focuses on how a complex sense of the self is constructed in "The Book of Margery Kempe" and developed into the seventeenth…
Miller, Mark.
Peter Brown, ed. A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c.1350-c.1500 (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 554-69.
Miller presents CT as a series of case studies on how social and ideological formulations shape subjectivities. He focuses on "aristocratic formalism" in KnT, sexuality and commodification in WBP, and notions of ethical perfection and moral purity in…
The "structural features" of GP reflect "the medieval philosophical debate over universals" and the epistemology of the "via moderna." Chaucer's number and arrangement of pilgrims suggest the "inadequacy of categories," whereas the balanced…
Examines food imagery in MilT, RvT, CkT, and GP. These portions of CT threaten, but do not quite achieve, the collapse of Lévi-Strauss's "culinary triangle."
Chaucer reconceptualized CT in response to a challenge levied in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Shaping the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner to embody the Seven Deadly Sins, Chaucer responded to Gower's taxonomy in the "Confessio" and, in doing so,…
Kruger, Steven F.
Gail Ashton and Louise Sylvester, eds. Teaching Chaucer (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 30-45.
Pedagogical approach to CT combining traditional "high-stakes" formal writing and "low-stakes" informal writing, incorporated in a broader portfolio of student responses and projects.
