A range of medieval literary portraits derive techniques from rhetorical memory devices and, in turn, shape notions of subjectivity. Mulligan considers Langland's Lady Meed, the Green Knight, Henryson's Cresseid, and various Chaucerian characters,…
Reads Theseus as a uniquely dynamic character in KnT and in CT more generally--able to "change over time in response to experience." In the course of the Tale, Theseus achieves some of the detachment and insight that characterize the Knight.
Myerson, Jonathan, dir.
Cardiff: S4C and Christmas Films, 2000.
Animated versions of SqT (with a completed plot), CYPT, and MilT and RvT (with plots interpolated), presented as tales told on each of three days as the pilgrims return from Canterbury to London. Includes a teacher's guide (pamphlet). Distributed by…
Nachtwey, Gerald R.
Essays in Medieval Studies 20: 107-20, 2003.
Nachtwey applies the "vertical" social relations of chivalry as understood by Geoffroi de Charny to MLT and FranT. As a perfect Christian, Constance "muddles" the chivalric ideal of a wife, and Dorigen's rashness makes her somewhat inconsistent with…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
ERA [English Research Association of Hiroshima] 6.1: 14-49, 1988.
Discusses Chaucer's ambiguous use of words such as "sely," "gentil," and "pite" in LGW, clarifying the gap between efforts to define "good women" and their human weaknesses.
Nardo, Don, ed.
San Diego, Cal.: Greenhaven, 1997.
Seventeen previously published essays and excerpts, accompanied by an introduction, a biography, a chronology, and a brief bibliography intended for student use. Contributors include Donald Howard (on structure and on social rank), Glending Olson (on…
Examines how women are presented in medieval satire as gossips, scolds, and cursing witches, all manifestations of women with orality. Assesses works by Chaucer, Dunbar, and Kempe and material from cycle plays.
Newman, Barbara.
Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds. Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 2003, pp. 135-55.
Traces two medieval constructions of Nature as goddess: the antifeminist tradition that runs from Alan de Lille through Jean de Meun to Chaucer's PF, and the relatively profeminist legacy of Heldris of Cornwall ("Roman de Silence") and Christine de…
Kim, Jae-Whan.
Journal of English Language and Literature (Korea) 44: 255-74, 1998.
Chaucer prompts his readers to recognize that the Wife of Bath misreads and adapts the authorities she confronts, reminding us that multiple meanings are everywhere possible. This deconstruction of meaning prompts deconstruction of the male/female…
Using numerous small allusions to TC, Spenser situates himself within the English literary canon through a strategy of association with an "uncouthe, unkiste" Chaucer.
Knight, Stephen.
James Bothwell, P. J. P. Goldberg, and W. M. Ormrod, eds. The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 101-22.
Knight considers Chaucer's Plowman (among other figures) in an effort to construct a "structure of feeling" pertinent to late-medieval English labor. As in the mystery plays and in Piers Plowman, the depiction of labor in CT is first idealized, then…
Kolve, V. A.
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. 31-71.
Kolve investigates the iconic importance of Criseyde's dream of the eagle and Troilus's dream of the boar and their embedded affiliations with the sun. In TC, these images illustrate the gap in the worth of two men and underscore the poor choice…
Krier, Theresa M.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Treats Chaucer's topoi of bird song, maternal goddess Nature, voice, mother tongue, and biblical gardens in PF. Argues that the movement from aggressive plot to lyric in the poem and its male protagonist's oblique approach to the maternal draw the…
Kuczynski, Michael P.
Chaucer Review 37: 315-28, 2003.
Scriptural injunctions underlie Chaucer's apology in MilP 1.3172-81 and his encouraging the audience to be cautious when judging his poetic enterprise.
Lawler, Traugott.
Robert G. Benson and Susan J. Ridyard, eds. New Readings of Chaucer's Poetry (Rochester, N.Y., and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 75-90.
Lawler argues that Chaucer privileged simplicity and disapproved of decadence and over-refinement. Lexical examination demonstrates Chaucer's preference for "delicacy," evident most clearly in Griselda of ClT and supported by evidence from KnT and…
Lawton, Lesley.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 157-74.
The Wife's discourse is on the cusp between the clerkly and the carnivalesque. She is the unstable product of the interplay of various intertexts, creating the illusion of a complex personality. Though sometimes championed by feminists, she at once…
Leech attempts to formulate a context for understanding medieval body images, using Rolle, Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and Kempe along with Chaucer. Chapter 5 considers KnT, GP, WBT, and ParsT.
Lee, Brian S.
Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 10 : 31-48., 2003.
The absence of details of physical dress or adornment applied to Custance in MLT coincides with the presentation of her as a virtuous, Christian heroine. Though descriptive details are conventional in romances, their relative absence here is…
Discusses the idea of the anthology as a fundamental characteristic of medieval literature, using CT as an example because individual tales were often copied into other anthologies.
