Examines illustrations as cues to engage non-professional readers of the Ellesmere manuscript and the Kelmscott Chaucer. These techniques may suggest ways of engaging present-day non-professional readers of Chaucer as well.
Traces the history of the metaphor of Satan as a "fowler" who seeks to trap souls as he would trap birds. Discusses examples from the time of the Church fathers to Shakespeare, including three instances in which Chaucer employs related metaphors: WBT…
Ruud, Jay.
Michelle Sauer, ed. Proceedings of the 11th Annual Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature (Minot, N.D.: Minot State University, 2003), pp. 43-55.
The dawn song in TC (3.1415-1526) stresses "contrast between the mundane love of the two lovers and the heavenly love associated with the dawn and the light in a Christian context."
Considers the acceptance of "spousal homicide" in ManT and the "perfunctory dismissal" of the Tale in ParsP, arguing that the shift from legal to penitential concerns eludes indictment for the murder.
Watt, Diane
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
Reads John Gower's Confessio Amantis as a work that "encourages its audience to take risks in interpretation, to experiment with meaning, and to offer individualistic readings." The work pursues a "negative critique of ethical poetry" and enables…
Sauer, Michelle M., ed.
Minot, N.D.: Minot State University, 2003.
Twenty essays by various authors on topics in British literature before 1800: five essays on Shakespeare; three on medieval uses of Christ's death (in Beowulf, Song of Roland, and El Cid). Other topics include Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe,…
Saul, Nigel.
Fourteenth Century England 2: 131-45, 2002.
Criticism of warfare at the end of the fourteenth century focused on greed and pride as "evils of the times," rather than on burdens of taxation, an earlier preoccupation. In Sted, Form Age, Mel, and Th, Chaucer's dislike of war is evident, and his…
Assesses the debate between psychoanalytic and historicist critics, arguing that psychoanalytic assumptions and interpretations are embedded in historicist analysis, despite historicist claims of rejecting psychoanalysis. Considers works by major…
Schlaeger, Jürgen.
Werner Röcke and Helga Neumann, eds. Komische Gegenwelten: Lachen und Literatur im Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Paderborn: Schningh, 1999), pp. 123-31.
Short introduction to various theories of laughter, followed by a brief analysis of laughter in MilT and TC.
Schutz, Andrea.
Jean E. Godsall-Myers, ed. Speaking in the Medieval World (Boston: Brill, 2003), 105-24.
Language itself is important in FranT, but so is the intention of the speaker. Moreover, authorial intention in CT as a whole affects how we use language for our own ends, because we learn from everything we read. Authors must consider consequences…
Semenza, Gregory M. Colón.
Chaucer Review 38: 66-82, 2003.
Members of the aristocracy and the middle class engaged in wrestling. Thus, Chaucer's reference to the Miller as a wrestler cannot be dismissed as a reference to the lower class.
Sepherd, Robert K. .
Sederi: Journal of the Spanish Society for English Renaissance Studies 4 : 229-36, 1993.
Considers Shakespeare's Cressida to be a "delicate literary graft" of the ambiguous aloofness of Chaucer's Criseyde and the "frankness personified" of Henryson's Cresseid.
McDonald, Rick.
Journal of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 75: 76-8, 1998.
Chaucer's version of the Ceyx-Alcyone story differs from its predecessors in ways that emphasize how love can transcend death, helping to make the consolation of the poem particularly Christian.
McGarrity, Maria, ed. and introd.
Appendix 2 in William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum, eds. Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures (New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll; London: British Library, 2003), pp. 379-422.
Edition (with notes) and brief introduction to Carey's "assessment and portrait of Stothard's visual interpretation" of CT.
McGowan, Joseph P.
Chaucer Review 38 : 199-202, 2003.
The Prioress's ambiguous motto--"love conquers all"--is only half of a quotation from Virgil. The remainder--"and we must give in to it"--does not lessen the equivocal nature of the portrait.
Mehl, Dieter.
Boika Sokolova and Evgenia Pancheva, eds. Renaissance Refractions: Essays in Honour of Alexander Shurbanov (Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2001), pp. 47-54.
Compares how Chaucer's Criseyde and Shakespeare's Cressida reflect each respective author's concerns with literary and historical authority.
Examines CT structurally in the context of the fourteenth-century popular view of games and gaming. Also deals with the rules of CT, its game in action, violations of the rules, and Chaucer himself as the game's most important piece.
Minkova, Donka, and Robert Stockwell.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 129-39.
Of roughly 30,000 lines of Chaucer's iambic pentameter, only a tiny subset are variant. The majority of his lines follow a template of ten syllables, each foot beginning with a weak syllable. The essay refers specifically to FranT.
Minkova, Donka, and Theresa Tinkle, eds.
Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003.
Twenty-three essays by various authors examine intellectual currents in medievalism, arranged in six categories: Text, Image, and Script; Text and Meter; Reception; Chaucer; Hagiography; and Lay Piety and Christian Diversity. For the nine essays that…
Noting the heritage of critical commentary about the Pardoner's sexuality, Minnis calls for refocusing attention on the central issue: the Pardoner's immorality. The Pardoner, probably a lay person, is placed within the context of medieval indulgence…
Mooney, Linne R., and Lister M. Matheson.
Library, 7th ser., 4 : 347-70, 2003.
The Northumberland manuscript of CT (Alnwick Castle 455) shows evidence that the scribe had access to a manuscript of CT that included the Prologue and Tale of Beryn and that he worked in a scriptorium that produced multiple copies of popular texts.
Moore, Stephen G.
Chaucer Review 38 : 83-97, 2003.
The narrative structure of Mel compels the reader to read backward and forward between scenes and episodes, encouraging affective involvement in the universal sentential wisdom of the Tale. The purpose is not that Melibee learn, but that the reader…
Morgan critiques modern claims for Chaucer's innovation in GP, arguing that Chaucer's methods resulted from the moral and artistic training of his time. We should read the pilgrim Chaucer both as earnest and as effective in displaying the sins of his…
Charles Cowden Clarke, Charles Knight, and John Saunders were the most effective popularizers of Chaucer for the common reader in nineteenth-century England. These individuals translated Chaucer into modern English and bowdlerized his language in…
