ManT reflects Chaucer's awareness of the dangers of challenging authority, yet he repeatedly challenges Christian and Boethian orthodoxies concerning evil. KnT does not reconcile the existence of evil, and the orthodoxy of Christian Providence in MLT…
Spearing, A. C.
Marianne Børch, ed. Text and Voice: The Rhetoric of Authority in the Middle Ages (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2004), pp. 21-45.
Critiques "dramatic" or Kittredgean readings of the prologues in CT, especially those "newly oiled by Lacan," and considers the prologues in light of the French dit--loosely defined as "speech imitated in clerkly writing" or the "illusion of speech…
Peck, Russell A.
Mediaevalia 7 (1984 for 1981): 91-131.
Biblical Pauline notions of pilgrimage recur throughout CT, evident in imagery drawn from Paul's letters, although often in "parody and travesty": old men and new men, doctrine amidst enigma, iconography of wells, vessels, widows, musical…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Noboru Harano et al., eds. Travels Through Space and Time in Medieval Europe. (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2004), pp. 97-140.
Nakao discusses traveling as physical movement through space and mental movement through time. A dual space-time scheme is central to the structure of CT and contributes to the rise of dualistic interpretations of such words and phrases as "licour"…
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004.
Examines the ethics of exemplarity in "Confesso Amantis" and in CT, arguing that reading for the moral--deliberating ethically--is improvisatory and reflexive and aims at practice rather than theory. Exemplarity involves the reader in its moral…
Six related essays on the interaction of words and images in English literary tradition: a theoretical introduction, plus essays on the Ruthwell Cross, Anglo-Saxon art, the Auchinleck and Vernon manuscripts, the manuscript of "Pearl," and the…
Higgins explores the "incidental affiliations" between CT and "The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy," demonstrating how flyting tradition informs CT, especially Part 1 and the debate between the Wife of Bath and the Clerk. The tale-telling contest is…
A personal travelogue of a walking trip from Canterbury to London following the Pilgrims' Way--interspersed with brief summaries of portions of CT and musings on medieval social history and folk wisdom, the United Kingdom and the United States,…
Dawkins, Richard.
Boston and New York : Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Dawkins uses the frame-and-tale structure of CT to organize a series of excurses on evolution and the development of biological life. Recurrent references to Chaucer and CT, with brief discussion on evolutionary biology as a model in the Canterbury…
Williams, Deanne.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Traces the "representations of, and responses to" France and Frenchness in BD and Chaucer's Prioress, the Corpus Christi plays, Caxton's publishing career, the poetry of Stephen Hawes and John Skelton, and Shakespeare's history plays. English…
Waters, Claire M.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
Conflicted cooperation between authority and authorization is a manifestation of the fundamentally hybrid nature of the preacher's calling, one recognized in medieval handbooks as standing between earth and heaven. Significantly, women's preaching…
Wallace, David.
Malden, Mass., and Oxford : Blackwell, 2004.
Wallace contemplates and reconstructs historical understanding of several locations, using visual and verbal texts to recapture perspectives of medieval and early modern witnesses or visitors.
Twenty-eight essays by various authors selected from the Seventh International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, July 2001, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Topics range from cook books to Lollard arguments. For…
Vitz, Evelyn Birge.
Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter, eds. The Liturgy of the Medieval Church (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute, 2001), pp. 551-618.
Vitz surveys the influences and echoes of liturgical wording and practice in a range of medieval literature--English, French, Italian, narrative, lyrical, parodic, etc. Includes focused treatments of "La Queste del Saint Graal," "The Roman de la…
Troyan, Scott D. ed.
New York and London : Routledge, 2004.
Ten essays by various authors, addressing topics such as rhetorical tradition, accessus, and handbooks, especially their influence on Middle English literature. For six essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook under…
Steinberg, Theodore L.
Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003.
An introduction to the study of medieval literature, with chapters on "Beowulf," "Chrétien de Troyes, the "Lais" of Marie de France, "The Romance of the Rose," "The Tale of Genji," Jewish literature, sagas, Dante, "Pearl," "Sir Gawain and the Green…
Depicting nature as an "active force," Chaucer encourages the reader to explore nature's "effects on social institutions and human drives." In so doing, he balances "a dis-enchanted skepticism about nature's benevolence" with "a canny understanding"…
Simms, Norman Toby.
Lewiston, N.Y. : Mellen, 2004.
Reads details of Chaucer's life and works as evidence that he can be viewed as a "fuzzy Jew," who acquired some kabbalistic knowledge through his travels and contact with Jews in London and who disguised this knowledge in ways that anticipate the…
Schoff, Rebecca Lynn.
Dissertation Abstracts International 65 (2004): 1773A
Examines the works of Chaucer, Langland, and Margery Kempe in the context of the standardization of textual discourse that accompanied the development of printed books.
Sadlek, Gregory [M.]
Washington, D.C. : Catholic University of America Press, 2004.
Bakhtinian analysis of the discourse of love's labor in classical and medieval love literature, focusing on two traditions: one, rhetorical, playful, and concerned with the labor of courtship; the other, serious, philosophical, and concerned with the…
Palmer, James Milton.
Dissertation Abstracts International 64 (2004): 2479A
Explores medieval attitudes toward the medical foundations of the emotions in MerT, TC, Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and Diego de San Pedro's "Cárcel de Amor."
Oliver, Clementine.
New Medieval Literatures 6 (2003): 167-98
Explores the identity and political career of Thomas Fovent (Favent), author of the polemical treatise on the Merciless Parliament--"Historia Mirabilis Parliament"--arguing that the treatise is best regarded as a "pamphlet," an index to the public…
Minnis, A. J.
Marianne Børch, ed. Text and Voice: The Rhetoric of Authority in the Middle Ages (Odense : University Press of Southern Denmark, 2004), pp. 138-67.
Considers the lack of extensive glosses and commentaries on late Middle English literature, including Chaucer, arguing that in England, unlike on the Continent, the concern with "translatio studii" (transferring the authority of the ancients to the…
