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Mel is "very much about what happens when texts are taken out of one context and put to work in another." Prudence invokes gender in shaping her arguments, and her presentation of her authorities reminds us that the "processes of textual engendering…

Contradictions inherent in medieval social order are evident in the sources of Mel, but Chaucer reconciles these contradictions through his treatment of pity.

Bloomfield considers natural law, an interest in distant geography, and the similarities between magic and technology in SqT as evidence of the "new spirit of the Renaissance" in Chaucer's works.

The wife in ShT refuses to submit to the "comprehensive masculine dominance" of the competitive world of her husband and the monk. The two men understand their manliness in terms of the "image of potency"; like commerce, manliness is based on…

Comments on the upbringing of young people in CT. Mentioned in only three lines, the "mayde child" in ShT exemplifies the late medieval practice of wardship. The words signify the callous immorality of the guardian who, like the governesses…

Like the Valiant Woman of Proverbs 31:10-31, Cecilia brings honor to her husband, manages her household well, works untiringly, and faces danger with fearless self-confidence. In contrast to Harry Bailly, who sets up the rules and pragmatic externals…

Compares the contents of Cambridge University Library MS Additional 4122 with similar contemporary compilations, encouraging further study of such devotional collections. The presence of Chaucer's SNT in such anthologies may indicate his shaping…

As part of a larger discussion of medieval estate management and its literary representations, Morris examines the character of Piers Plowman and Chaucer's Oswald the Reeve.

In the GP description of the Prioress, the term conscience, used to describe her mental operations, implies not sensibility or emotion but rather prescription or governance. The Prioress's display is not emotive but mimetic, and her performance…

Chaucer's ties to Lincoln and the reference to Hugh of Lincoln in PrT make it unlikely that Chaucer was satirizing anti-Semitism in the Tale. The punishment of drawing and hanging in PrT refers to historical cruelty and reflects an attitude prevalent…

The linked anti-Semitism and poetic virtuosity of PrT confront medievalists with a paradox, in which accurately representing the past and combating bigotry in the present are pitted against each other. Resolving this paradox by ignoring aesthetics in…

Reads PrT as satiric, an exposé of the horrors of "institutional ignorance," both Christian and Jewish.

Bauer compares examples of anti-Jewish discourse in the "Ludus Coventriae" ("deicide"), PrT ("ritual murder"), and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament ("desecration of the host"). All three texts criminalize, victimize, and dehumanize Jews,…

The anti-Semitism of PrT is attributable to the Prioress, not to Chaucer, who would have known Jews through the courts of Castile (referred to in MkT) and who presents Jews as "renowned historians and transmitters of knowledge in the field of…

Examines the GP description of Chaucer's Physician, assessing the extent to which the Physician's astrological medicine is satiric when seen in relation to such works as Nicholas of Lynn's Kalendarium.

Although ParsT relies heavily on Raymond de Penaforte's "Summa de poenitentia et matrimonio," Chaucer extracts one chapter from the treatise and substitutes a "tree of life" for Raymond's pilgrimage metaphor. By indicating that one can live a life of…

Chaucer's religion is important even in his secular tales, a reflection of his public stance as a lay penitent, a member of the "mediocriter boni," a category of the religious to be distinguished from the contemplative path of the "perfecti." Reads…

Yvernault explores various levels of the love discourse in PF in relation to the roles played by reflection and silence.

Posits that uncertainty and ambiguity are structuring stylistic techniques of Chaucer's descriptions in PF.

Following Aristotle, medieval poets consider poetry a branch of moral philosophy. Whether or not Chaucer knew Boccaccio's own glosses on the "Teseida," he adapts the Italian work to his own treatment of allegorical figures and so justifies Usk's…

Analyzes Chaucer's characterization of the birds in PF to explore the process of "distanciation," stemming from two coexisting viewpoints in the poem: the author's and the dreamer's.

Four chapters and an epilogue. Chapter 1 establishes the background for exploration of "the late medieval legacy of early Christianity's appropriation of the Hebrew scriptures." Chapters 2-3 assess Dante's "Commedia" and "Sir Gawain and the Green…

"Parapractic" repetitions in PardPT indicate that the Pardoner may be an "unconscious inversion" of Chaucer's own desires for home and for his absent father.

Examines the development of Belial as a personification of the power of rhetoric to deceive; discusses Chaucer's Pardoner as an example.

NPT can best be approached by focusing on form and style rather than on theme and narrator. Attempting to define a central theme or message is frustrated by the Tale's allusive richness and multiplicity of perspectives, and the narrator is largely…