Black, Merrill.
Diane P. Freedman and Olivia Frey, eds. Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines: A Reader (Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2003), pp.85-95.
An autobiographical reading of WBPT by a woman who was for a time an abused wife. Black records three different responses to Chaucer's materials at three different stages in her life, focusing on the Wife's responses to abuse by her husbands.
Millersdaughter, Katherine Elizabeth.
Dissertation Abstracts International 64 (2003): 1245A.
English political claims to Wales depended in part on claims of Welsh incest; Millersdaughter discusses various texts (including MLT) in which this "heterogeneous, colonialist discourse" is evident.
Heng, Geraldine.
Geraldine Heng. Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 181-237.
Heng assesses MLT as an account of a "feminized crusade" that involves "sexual martyrdom" on the part of Custance and reveals the power of her "reproductive sexuality." The fusion of hagiography and romance in MLT is also evident in ClT, but while…
Fichte explores Rome in CT, both as an actual place and as a symbol. Focuses on Rome versus Syria in MLT and Christianity versus paganism in SNT, with comments on the Wife of Bath's and the Pardoner's connections with Rome, as well as orientalism in…
Barefield, Laura D.
Laura D. Barefield. Gender and History in Medieval English Romance and Chronicle (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 37-72.
Barefield contrasts the characterizations of Constance in "Les Cronicles" and MLT, focusing on how female patronage (by Mary of Woodstock) may have encouraged the character's active role in Trevet's version.
Woods, William F.
Chaucer Review 39 (2004): 17-40.
RvT is "concerned with breaking the ranks of social hierarchy" and what causes individuals to desire such breaks. The clerks, the women, Bayard, and especially Symkyn all experience "frustrated desire," which leads Symkyn "to expand into outer or…
Introduces the 2002 Kathleen Williams Lecture on the sexual politics of FQ with an anecdote about a Smith College professor's delicacy with language in MilT and RvT; connects RvT with acquaintance rape.
In light of sociolinguistic categories such as register, distance-solidarity, and dialect, Allman contends, RvPT and the Reeve's portrait in GP stand as sustained examinations of failed sociality and unsatisfied desire at both dramatic and narrative…
Munoz G., Adrián.
Anuario de Letras Modernas 11 (2002-03): 47-52.
A fanciful conversion between Chaucer and the author about MilT, touching on questions of genre and theme. Chaucer's portion of the dialogue is in mock Middle English.
Børch, Marianne.
Marianne Børch, ed. Text and Voice: The Rhetoric of Authority in the Middle Ages (Odense : University Press of Southern Denmark, 2004), pp. 97-120.
Assesses Nicholas's manipulation of language and signs in MilT as Chaucer's embedded analysis of typological or analogical thinking. The references to mystery plays in MilT counterpoint the "poetics of a trickster clerk" whose manipulations embody a…
Thompson, Jefferson M.
Piotr Fast and Wacław Osadnok, eds. From Kievan Prayers to Avantgarde: Papers in Comparative Literature (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Energeia, 1999), pp. 83-98.
Thompson traces parallels among several dichotomies--eros and agape, cupiditas and caritas, love and reason--arguing that Chaucer was unsatisfied with the simple dichotomies he found in the "Roman de la Rose." In KnT, love is "reprimanded" as folly,…
Hamaguchi, Keiko.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004): 331-54.
Explores the "postcolonial uneasiness visible" in KnT, particularly in Hippolyta's subversive mimicry in the face of efforts by Theseus and the Knight to westernize her "Amazon-ness." Emelye's powerful gaze upon the victorious Arcite reveals similar…
Greenwood, Maria K.
Rosalynn Voaden, René Tixier, Teresa Sanchez Roura, and Jenny Rebecca Rytting, eds. The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 189-200.
Dryden's translation of KnT "tidies, clarifies, and modernizes" the text for its eighteenth-century readers, turning Chaucer's "subversive parodies back into the illusory heroic idealizations" of Statius and Boccaccio. Greenwood focuses on the…
Cooper, Helen.
Takami Matsuda, Richard A. Linenthal, and John Scahill, eds. The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya (Cambridge: Brewer; Tokyo: Yushodo, 2004), pp. 71-80.
Examines manuscript variants in KnT 1.2616-17 in relation to Chaucer's awareness of alliterative tradition and its lexicon, suggesting that "hurtleth" is preferable to "hurteth" at 2616 and that "born" (D Group) for "hurt" at 2617 may have been…
Bowers, John M.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34 (2004): 279-307.
Three variants of KnT--Sir John Clanvowe's reading of the story of Palamon and Arcite, Chaucer's KnT, and "The Kingis Quair" of James I--provide insight into the shifting ideologies of chivalric performance and the establishment of Chaucer as a…
Zangen, Britta.
Britta Zangen, ed. Misogynism in Literature: Any Place, Any Time (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 39-58.
Antifeminism is prevalent throughout CT in depictions of women, assumptions about them, and attitudes toward female-male relations. Nevertheless, CT is still considered a "master-piece" of literature, evidence that critics have not completed the work…
Ward Mather, Lisa Jeanette.
Dissertation Abstracts International 64 (2004): 2503A.
Discussing MilPT, ShT, WBP, and SumT, Ward Mather argues that "Chaucer engages with the medieval genre of fabliau" to "develop a new theory of identity and social order."
Utz, Richard [J.]
Zygmunt Mazur and Richard Utz, eds. Homo Narrans: Texts and Essays in Honor of Jerome Klinkowitz (Krákow: Jagiellonian University Press), 2004, pp. 193-206.
Chaucer's male narrators and characters are obsessed with ideas of linear/finite time, progression, arrival, and teleology. His female characters either silently subscribe to the male obsession or are dominated by cyclical/monumental and transcendent…
