The widow's poverty in NPT indicates the cloistered clergy's failure to practice humility, poverty, and charity. Altering his source materials, Chaucer highlights the contrast between the lifestyle of the Prioress and that of the widow and creates…
Houwen, L. A. J. R.
Anne Scott and Cynthia Kosso, eds. Fear and Its Representations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 17-30.
Chauntecleer's responses to the fox in his dream and in his initial sighting of the beast are rooted in Aristotelian traditions of psychology and natural antipathy, here traced from their classical roots through their medieval adaptations. The…
Gaylord, Alan T.
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. 167-80.
A close reading of NPT 7.4347-61 (Chauntecleer on women as men's confusion), seeking to clarify subtleties via "prosodic criticism," i.e., reading the lines as a spoken performance.
Travis, Peter W.
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. 231-47.
Travis explores the Host's "hypermasculine vision of literary genius" in Part 7 of CT, especially the Host's comments in MkP, NPP, and NPE. Using parody rather than satire, Chaucer gently exposes the "phallocentric presuppositions" of Western…
Gillmeister explains "vitremite" as a combination of "uistre" (oyster) and "ermite" (hermit), a Chaucerian coinage for a kind of headwear the poet may have associated with monasteries.
MkP reflects the Monk's anxiety about cross-dressers such as Zenobia, whom he orientalizes in MLT as a monstrous threat to traditional authority. Eventually humiliated and punished, Zenobia trades her helmet for a woman's headdress.
Strohm, Paul.
Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
Explores the political discourse of fifteenth-century England, identifying a "pre-Machiavellian moment" in which awareness of political upheaval and the unreliability of Fortune influenced or produced a variety of vernacular texts. Assesses the…
Scott-Macnab, David.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104 (2005): 373-85.
As used to describe the Monk in GP, the term pricking should not be understood in a sexual sense; review of sources, the OED, and the MED indicates that the term means "hard galloping."
Morrison, Stephen.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. L'Articulation langue-littérature dans les textes médiévaux anglais (Nancy: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2005), pp. 117-32.
Explores the combination of "manly" and "man," as well as the meaning of "manly," in reference to the GP description of the Monk.
Chickering, Howell.
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. 3-18.
Close reading of the GP description of the Monk shows how a "complex interaction of the reader with Chaucer's text" produces a more satisfactory reading than does the positing of a naive narrator.
Arner, Timothy D.
Studies in Philology 102.2 (2005): 143-58
Examines Chaucer's use of Boccaccio's Teseida as a source for KnT. Also argues that by having the Miller parody the story of Palamon and Arcite, Chaucer transforms his own work, as well as Boccaccio's text, into a fabliau.
Biggs, Frederick M.
Review of English Studies 56 (2005): 497-523
Difficulties in dealing with the role of the three tubs (along with other issues) suggest that Chaucer's MilT is the source for the Flemish version. Chaucer may have originated this Tale to reflect on the theme of God's control, an idea also…
In calling the GP Miller a "knarre," Chaucer probably draws on an iconographic tradition illustrated in a pilgrim badge depicting a boar playing a bagpipe and inscribed "Laet knorren."
Pappano, Margaret Aziza.
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. 248-70.
Pappano characterizes late medieval craft guilds and the roles they play in CT, particularly the recurrent concern with "male artisan identity." Through MilPT, Chaucer critiques the exclusionary nature of "craft fraternalism."
Robinson, Peter.
International Journal of English Studies 5.2 (2005): 115-32
Selection from among variant readings should be based on both literary judgment and variant distribution. In the case of MilT, the richest readings are likely to be Chaucer's own. Analysis of them leads to greater appreciation of MilT, "of the…
Chaucer's descriptions of Alison and of Absolon's love of her in MilT parody the courtly diction and conventions found in "Alysoun" of the Harley lyrics. Possibly, Chaucer was influenced by the lyric.
Bodden, M. C.
Susannah Mary Chewning, ed. Intersections of Sexuality and the Divine in Medieval Culture: The Word Made Flesh (Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 51-73.
The carnal quest in MerT has as its goal an erotic union in the "paradys terrestre." This desire is fulfilled in an inverted via mystica, enforcing the ambiguity of mystical language as a mode of knowing.
Sheridan, Christian.
Studies in Philology 102.1 (2005): 27-44.
Discusses how readers of MerT are encouraged to view all texts in mercantile terms and how texts (medieval texts in particular) are formed in the interactions among reader, author, and language. Both a product (a text to be consumed) and a producer…
In light of the mythological tradition of Janus and connections between January and Adam, January's self-deception in MerT is less bitter than funny. In general, the Tale "is one of the great literary celebrations of marriage, albeit a comic one."
Reads ManPT, ParsPT, and Ret in light of the Dionysian/Apollonian opposition posed by Nietzsche in "The Birth of Tragedy Out of Music." Whereas Nietzsche treated the two as irreconcilable, Chaucer combines them in "an ethical aesthetics and an…
Jost, Jean E.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval and Early Modern Literature. (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004), pp. 267-87.
Explores vows and vow-breaking in CT, arguing that ManT brings to tragic crescendo a concern with the transgression of marital vows and presents consequences as horrific as any in Greek drama.
Unlike the character in the sources and analogues, Custance in MLT forcefully confronts her father's authority at times. This confrontation and her willingness to disclose her past inscribe a "lesser version of the incest motif that has supposedly…
Cordery, Leona.
Gudrun M. Grabher and Sonja Bahn-Coblans, eds. The Self at Risk in English Literatures and Other Landscapes: Honoring Brigitte Scheer-Schazler on the Occasion of Her 60th Birthday (Innsbruck: Institut fur Sprachwissenschaft, 1999), pp. 177-85.
Spiritual stalwartness makes heroines of the protagonists in MLT, 'Emaré,' and the 'King of Tars'; the active quality of their faith makes them agents in the conversion of others.
Lee, Brian S.
Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (2004): 23-38
Discusses three topics - Ford Madox Brown's painting of Chaucer reading from MLT to a decadent court at a time of dynastic crisis, the current Middle Eastern situation, and the story of Noah's Flood - in relation to Chaucer's portrayal of Custance's…
Shimodao, Makoto.
Yuko Tagaya and Kanno Masahiko eds. Words and Literature: Essays in Honour of Professor Masa Ikegami (Tokyo: Eihosha, 2004), pp. 181-97.
