Anderson, Judith H.
Chaucer Review 41 (2007): 271-78.
E. Talbot Donaldson's commentary on FranT in "Chaucer's Poetry" exemplifies his criticism "at its best": "[c]onstructive provocation, rather than dogmatic mastery."
Akahori, Naoko.
Research Reports of the Nagaoka Technical College 32.1 (1996): 3-10.
In Sted and Mel, Chaucer either could not or did not make his attitude about the political and religious problems of his day clear. Akahori examines why he gave his hearty, moral advice to Richard II and what he really intended to say.
Twomey, Michael W.
Hans Sauer and Renate Bauer, eds. "Beowulf" and Beyond. Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature, no. 18 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 205-11.
Scrutinizes Chaucer's use of Latin, demonstrating that his intratextual and extratextual Latin terms, phrases, and sentences are "formulas" and "quotations," not his own inventions. Twomey briefly surveys the development of Anglo-Latin and its…
Sylvester, Louise.
Gail Ashton and Louise Sylvester, eds. Teaching Chaucer (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 81-95.
Explores an apparent disconnect between pedagogical goals of classes that study Chaucer's literature and those that study the history of the English language, suggesting that sociolinguistic approaches can help bridge the gap.
Shackleton, Robert G., Jr.
JEngL 35 (2007): 30-102.
Employing the "standard" ME dialect of the Home Counties of southeastern England as a baseline, Shackleton applies a number of quantitative variational measures (clustering, distance regressions, variant-area regressions, barrier analysis, and…
Peters, Robert A.
Bellingham, Wash. : Western Washington University, 1980.
After briefly placing Chaucer's language in the history of the development of English, Peters describes Chaucer's vocabulary, phonology, morphology, and syntax. The study is presented as a "one-text description of Chaucer's language for the student…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
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. 321-45.
Nakao examines uses of gentil in TC, MerT, and FranT, gauging the level of subjectivity involved on the part of the character, the narrator, and/or the author, modified by the audience's subjective understanding. Poses a "double-prism" structure…
Lerer, Seth.
Seth Lerer. Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 70-84.
Characterizes the language of Chaucer's day and emphasizes his range and synthesis of styles, exemplifying features of Middle English and Chaucer's dexterous uses of it in poetry and prose. Comments at length on the opening of GP, on Astr, on uses of…
Knappe, Gabriele, and Michael Schümann.
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 42 (2006): 213-38.
Chaucer's use of thou and ye usually follows the standard pattern of his day. Some pronoun switching does appear, sometimes because of rhyme or textual variants but often because Chaucer uses a common formula, quotation, or other habitual lexical…
The choices between ye and thou in CT are governed by the "interactional status of the characters," a set of principles differing "considerably from modern address systems." Jucker surveys previous criticism on the topic and assesses exchanges and…
Horobin, Simon.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Discursive description of Middle English, focusing on Chaucer's dialect and usage, divided into eight chapters: (1) Why Study Chaucer's Language?; (2) Writing in English; (3) What Was Middle English?; (4) Spelling and Pronunciation; (5) Vocabulary;…
Bergeson, Anita K.
Dissertation Abstracts International A67.10 (2007): n.p.
Bergeson explores the semantic and dramatic range of Middle English "reden"--advise, counsel, read, interpret--as it is used and enacted in BD, HF, PF, and TC.
Putter compares Chaucer's techniques to the "close control" of syllable counting by alliterative poets. Although the metrical goals of these poets differ from those of Chaucer, the means whereby alliterative poets achieve control are similar to…
"Working within and yet exploding New Critical terminology," E. Talbot Donaldson's studies of Chaucer's irony--exemplified in his writing on Criseyde--are grounded in his deep understanding of rhetoric. They anticipate Linda Hutcheon's theory of…
Bourgne, Florence.
Martine Yvernault and Sophie Cassagnes-Brouquet, eds. Poètes et artistes: La figure du créateur en europe au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance (Limoges: Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 2007), pp. 185-204.
Drawing on BD, TC, and the Gawain poet, Bourgne studies the influence of architecture on poetry.
Weber, Lindsay.
Jon Alexander, ed. American POW Memoirs from the Revolutionary War Through the Vietnam War: The Autobiography Seminar, Providence College, Spring Semester 2006. (Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf & Stock, 2007), pp. 71-78.
Describes the context and content of Hall's 1930 publication, "Flying with Chaucer," focusing on his quotations from CT and their role in his memoir.
Comments on twenty-first century adaptations of CT on stage and screen, in rap performance, and in imitative fiction, e.g., Peter Ackroyd's ""Clerkenwell Tales," Baba Brinkman's "Rap Canterbury Tales," RSC and BBC productions, David Dabydeen's "The…
Simpson, James.
Gordon McMullan and David Matthews, eds. Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 17-30.
Whereas fifteenth-century writers such as Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Skelton wrote texts that engaged in "a kind of conversation" with Chaucer, sixteenth-century writers treated Chaucer as a distant topic of philological study. Simpson argues that this…
In the opening poem of "Fables Ancient and Modern," Dryden draws a parallel between himself and Chaucer. The "fairest Nymph" in that parallel should be identified as the Duchess of Lancaster, as proposed by Walter Scott in 1808, rather than Joan of…
Website designed for students, teachers, and school districts, with emphasis on preparation for college study; includes a search engine. Its Learning Guides includes numerous pages that pertain to Chaucer and his works, each with multiple internal…
Meyer-Lee, Robert J.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Many causes contributed to the change in climate, particularly Bolingbroke's seizure of the throne from Richard II in 1399 and the concomitant changes in relationships between princes and poets, between poets and audiences, and between audiences and…
