Gariano, Carmelo.
Sacramento : Department of Foreign Languages, California State University, 1984.
Comparative analysis of the themes, techniques, and intertextual relationships of Ruiz's "Libro de buen amor," Boccaccio's "Decameron," and CT. Topics include world view, love and passion, nascent humanism, satire and irony, and narrative structures.…
Pakkala-Weckstrom, Mari.
Helsinki : Société Néophilologique, 2005.
Explores the relationships between power ("maistrie") and gender in CT as these relationships are reflected in conversation and the dialogue of spouses and lovers in seven Tales: MilT, WBT, ClT, MerT, FranT, ShT, and Mel. Using techniques of…
Manuscript compilations, especially the Auchinleck MS, are structural analogues to CT. Manuscripts segmented into booklets parallel the fragments in CT in four ways: segments vary considerably in size and shape; common subjects and themes link…
Behrman, Mary Davy.
Dissertation Abstracts International 65 (2005): 2981A.
CT--in part a reaction to Gower's conservative conception of vernacular literature in "Confessio Amantis"--is a text encouraging interpretive autonomy.
DeSpain, Jessica.
Journal of the William Morris Society 15.4 (2004): 74-90
In his Kelmscott Chaucer, Morris presents Chaucer as a proponent of anti-capitalist socialism, consistent with Morris's own arts and crafts movement. The essay comments on the heteroglot voices of the Canterbury pilgrims and the Kelmscott…
Griffith, John Lance.
Dissertation Abstracts International 66 (2005): 173A.
Anger "rises to the level of a philosophical and ethical problem for Chaucer." An understanding of the role anger plays in the formation of self and community is useful in understanding the communities Chaucer creates and examines in CT.
Scott-Macnab, David.
Leeds Studies in English 36 (2005): 175-94.
Critics generally gloss "embosen" as either "concealed in the woods" or "exhausted from the hunt." Examination of the word determines its precise meaning as a hunting term and also sheds light on Octovyen's hunt.
Burrow, J. A.
Anne Marie D'Arcy and Alan J. Fletcher, eds. Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005), pp. 65-75.
Explores the concept of "civil inattention" ("a desire not to intrude on privacy") as it helps to explain the behavior of the dreamer toward the Black Knight in BD. The concept is described in modern sociology and occurs in several medieval romances…
Stock, Lorraine Kochanske.
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. 97-114.
Reads descriptions of the bedchamber in the Roman de la Rose as a source for the bedchamber scene in BD, arguing that Chaucer's "visual/verbal intertextuality" reveals his preference for civilization over primitivism.
Kensak, Michael.
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. 83-96.
Assesses the narrator's digressions and "digression-returns" in BD, arguing that they are part of Chaucer's indications of the inexpressibility of grief.
Quinn, William A.
David F. Johnson and Elaine Treharne, eds. Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 323-36.
Quinn defines the genre of dream vision, surveys "standard readings" of BD, and offers a "re-vision" of the poem that reconciles its humor and sadness by imagining it as a performance some years after the death of Blanche. The poem may have been…
Yvernault, Martine.
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. 187-95.
Considers BD as a partition between the mythical and fictional worlds and reality, as a textual space of transition where poetic experience and real life are intertwined.
Foster, Michael.
Janne Skaffari et al., eds. Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005), pp. 199-213.
Chaucer constructed a self-deprecating narrator in BD and in HF in response to audience expectations. These constructions, in turn, shaped how people in Chaucer's own society regarded Chaucer and how his personality has been recorded historically.
Examines the manuscript and editorial traditions of BD to argue for a new edition, based on MS Tanner 346, sensitive to the poem's octosyllabic meter and aware of scribal contamination. Suggests a number of emendations.
North, John
Giancarlo Marchetti et al., eds. Ratio et Superstitio: Essays in Honor of Graziella Federici Vescovini (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales, 2003), pp. 263-83.
North summarizes medieval arithmetic theory and practice, describes Chaucer's professional familiarity with arithmetic, and explores arithmetic allusions and structuring in BD, particularly its shape as an abacus.
Long, Rebekah.
Dissertation Abstracts International 66 (2005): 2206A
Considers BD and Pearl as case studies in the search for "an appropriate, adequate language of commemoration," as opposed to prior models of elegiac language.
Horowitz assesses the aesthetic value of BD by focusing on three "transcapes" (through visions): that of the narrator as a literary medium; that of the work's interwoven sources and time spans; and that of the gendered landscape, which is both…
Windeatt compares several of Chaucer's works and their sources to show that through variations in narrative pace and increased attention to pinpointing time, Chaucer makes something quite new. Considers PF, MLT, TC, KnT, and several of the tales in…
Murphy, James J.
James Jerome Murphy. Latin Rhetoric and Education in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Variorum Collected Studies Series; Collected Studies, no. 827. Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2005.
First published in 1964, the essay is reprinted here with original pagination, along with a number of other essays by Murphy. Murphy argues that Chaucer was not likely to have been directly influenced by rhetoricians such as Geoffrey of Vinsauf.
Examines manuscript evidence and compares the verse of TC with that of Boccaccio's "Filostrato," arguing that Chaucer's decasyllabic lines, adapted to rhyme-royal stanzas, are characterized by greater flexibility of caesura than in English…
Zonneveld, Wim.
Paula Fikkert and Haike Jacobs, eds. Development in Prosodic Systems. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003, pp. 197-247.
Zonneveld examines factors associated with iambic stress in the octosyllabic Dutch poem "Het Leven van St. Lutgart" [Life of St. Lutgart], comparing them with conditions in early English. Considers the "uncertain status of schwa syllables" in…
Correale, Robert M., and Mary Hamel, eds.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y. : D. S. Brewer, 2005.
An anthology of the sources and analogues for selections from CT. Each section comments on source-and-analogue relations, edits the materials in a form close to what Chaucer might have known, and provides facing-page translations of non-English…
Argues for the continuity of English literary tradition from Beowulf to the present by exploring several "great speeches" in Chaucer's works and in previous literature. No one disputes the continuity from Chaucer to the present, and the presence in…
Minnis, Alastair.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 27 (2005): 25-58.
Traces late medieval "vernacular secularity," particularly the influences of Aristotle's "Ethics," "Politics," and "Economics" and Boethius's "Consolation" as transmitted to England by Giles of Rome, Nicole Oresme, Nicholas Trevet, Jean de Meun,…
