Although we know of no sustained aesthetic treatise dating from the Middle Ages, medieval people were lovers of beauty who conceived of worldly beauty as a reflection of divine perfection. Ginsberg comments on Chaucer's leave-taking of his poem in…
Close reading of Jerome's "Against Jovinian" indicates that in WBP the Wife of Bath agrees with Jerome, even though she shifts the emphasis from the superiority of virginity to the acceptability of marriage. At Jankyn's death, she becomes, like her…
Smith, Warren S.
Warren S. Smith, ed. Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage from Plautus to Chaucer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), pp. 243-69.
In WBP and FranT, the uses of Jerome's antifeminist treatise "Adversus Jovinianum" as source material are ironic. WBP presents a more centrist Augustinian tradition than does her acerbic predecessor, and Dorigen's lament prefigures the gentle…
Zaerr, Linda Marie.
Evelyn Birge Vitz, Nancy Freeman Regalado, and Marilyn Lawrence, eds. Performing Medieval Narrative (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), pp. 193-208.
Zaerr explores the concept of "mouvance" (textual variation) as reflected in a performance of "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell," commenting on the process of performance and adaptation and tabulating variants between the manuscript of the…
Koster, Josephine A.
T. L. Burton and John F. Plummer, eds. "Seyd in Forme and Reverence": Essays on Chaucer and Chaucerians in Memory of Emerson Brown, Jr. (Provo, Utah: Chaucer Studio Press, 2005), pp. 35-45.
Reads WBP as an example of genre-bending: a parody of female saints' lives. Surveys Chaucer's uses of the conventions of female hagiography in CT and argues that Alison of Bath "acts in precisely the opposite way to an orthodox saint." The essay…
Traditonal mind (male)/body (female) distinctions are insufficient for discussing WBPT because the Wife celebrates "reason, learning, and open sexuality as rights given to women." In the Wife's relations with Jankin and in the Loathly Lady of WBT,…
Burton, T. L.
T. L. Burton and John F. Plummer, eds. "Seyd in Forme and Reverence": Essays on Chaucer and Chaucerians in Memory of Emerson Brown, Jr. (Provo, Utah: Chaucer Studio Press, 2005), pp. 75-80.
A playful send-up of literary criticism, especially efforts to psychoanalyze characters. Explains features of WBT in terms of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and vice versa.
Robertson, Elizabeth.
Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds. Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 302-23.
The representations of rape (sexual assault and abduction) in WBT and "Kingis Quair" invite consideration of free will and agency as part of a critique of late medieval social formulations of male/female relationships. In WBT, Chaucer indicts…
Haines, Simon.
New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Haines surveys interactions between realist and romantic thought in Western literary and philosophical discourse, commenting on a range of writers but focusing on Homer, Sophocles, Plato and Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Shakespeare, and…
McTurk, Rory.
Ásdís Egilsdottir and Rudolf Simek, eds. Sagnaheimur: Studies in Honour of Hermann Pálsson on His 80th Birthday, 26th May 2001 (Wien: Fassbaender, 2001), pp. 175-94.
McTurk argues that "Laxdaela Saga" is an analogue to WBPT, although the two derive independently from the Irish tale of the Loathly Lady.
Cigman, Gloria.
Leo Carruthers and Adrian Papahagi, eds. Jeunesse et vieillesse: Images médiévales de l'age en littérature anglaise (Paris: Harmatten, 2005), pp. 93-101.
Imaginative re-creation of the Wife of Bath's life and times from childhood onward, expanding on hints in WBP.
Assesses Spenser's Duessa in light of WBT and its Middle English analogues, exploring how Spenser turned the Irish sovereignty motif against the Irish.
Kendrick, Laura.
Marie-Francoise Alamichel, ed. La complémentarité: Mélanges offerts à Josseline Bidard et Arlette Sancery à l'occasion de leur départ en retraite (Paris: AMAES, 2005), pp. 203-19.
Contrasts Chaucer's Wife of Bath with Belle, who is constructed from the tradition of masculine discourse on feminine attractiveness.
Purdie demonstrates that the layout of Th in several key early manuscripts derives from the traditional layout of Middle English tail-rhyme poetry. Chaucer intended to contribute to the Tale's humor with this arrangement, which reflects his…
Markus, Manfred.
Uwe Boker et al., eds. Of Remembraunce the Keye: Medieval Literature and Its Impact Through the Ages. Festschrift for Karl Heinz Goller on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2004), pp. 95-108.
Explores the often-submerged relations between Middle English romances and the Crusades, reading Th as Chaucer's rejection of the "pleasure of indoctrination directed against the pagan enemy." Considers Th "modern, partly even postmodern," in its…
Askins, William.
Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds. Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 271-89.
Askins reads Th for details that reflect Anglo-Flemish relations during the Hundred Years War. He identifies heraldic details, commercial concerns, and echoes of the Ghent war of 1379-84.
Mel interprets and transforms its source. Chaucer's alterations, although slight, tend to undercut the allegorical reading, qualifying Prudence's authority and conclusions. Mel makes explicit concepts that are implicit in the original: the…
Taylor reads ShT and Mel as an opposed pair. In ShT, puns indicate the failure of human attempts at community; in Mel, doublets encourage and iterate a linguistic and aesthetic community. Civil society comes into order in and through Mel, which…
Tchalian, Hovig.
Dissertation Abstracts International 66 (2005): 1011A.
Considers representations of noble counselors to royalty in GP (the Knight), MerT, and Mel, among others, arguing that writers such as Chaucer and Langland demonstrate faith in this "traditional institution."
