Straus, Barrie Ruth.
Eve Salisbury, Georgiana Donavin, and Merrall Llewelyn Price, eds. Domestic Violence in Medieval Texts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), pp. 122-38.
Straus explores how ClT, MLT, and PrT adapt and accommodate the traditions and conventions of the family romance to "articulate a profound cultural anxiety about paternity."
Webb, Diana.
Houndmills, Basingstoke; and New York : Palgrave, 2002.
An introduction to pilgrimage in medieval western Europe that describes motives for pilgrimage, kinds of pilgrims, geography, relics and souvenirs, responses to pilgrimage, etc. Webb pays recurrent attention to CT, especially as a depiction of social…
Chaucer's use of the Vulgate parables influenced the frame structure of CT, provided a number of images, and strongly affected PardT. Wheeler tallies allusions to and quotations from the parables throughout CT.
Patristic and scholastic writers condemn flattery as misuse of speech and an activity conducive to fraud. Chaucer's stricture on flattery initially appears comic, yet it is more direct and explicit than Langland's harsh condemnation, which Chaucer…
Zangen, Britta.
Gabriele Genge, ed. Sprachformen des Körpers in Kunst und Wissenschaft. Kultur und Erkenntnis, no. 25 (Tübingen and Basel: A. Francke, 2000), pp. 244-58.
CT is startlingly antifeminist ("erschreckend frauenfeindlich") in its depiction of women and of male attitudes toward women. Recent criticism has begun to recognize this antifeminism but has not fully overcome adulation of the author.
In GP the Parson and the Plowman are polysemic figures that emerge from the expression of conflicting, dialogic voices--not idealized role models. Free indirect speech in the Parson's description allows the audience to suspect that he is a whitened…
Sola Buil, Ricardo J.
SELIM 9 (1999): 111-27, 1999.
The liveliness of characterization in GP and elsewhere in CT derives from theatrical rather than narrative tradition. The interplay between typicality and individuality reflects the dual traditions of narration and drama.
Green, Richard Firth.
Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington, eds. The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England (New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 105-14.
Legal diction and references in KnT reflect concern in the 1380s with the growing influence of the Court of Chivalry and the revival of trial by battle.
Greenwood, Maria Katarzyna.
Roberta Mullini, introd. Tudor Theatre: For Laughs? Puzzling Laughter in Plays of the Tudor Age/Tudor Théâtre: Pour Rire? Rires et Problèmes dans le Théâtre des Tudor (Bern: Peter Lang, 2002), pp. 21-39.
Bakhtinian analysis of references to garlands and garlanding in KnT and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Greenwood traces the classical traditions of garlands of love and glory, arguing that depictions of both "veer towards negative criticism" in these two…
Minnis surveys depictions of ambiguous pagan oracles in medieval literature, including Calchas's foreknowledge in TC and the temple scenes in KnT, arguing that Chaucer and other medieval poets held that pagans as well as Christians had the ability…
Rhetorically and thematically, the association of Theseus with solempnytee in KnT strains against the chaotic forces at work in the world of the Tale. Shakespeare opens the gap between Theseus's solemnity and comedy in A Midsummer Night's Dream for…
Wing, Susan L.
Cornelia N. Moore and Raymond A. Moody, eds. Comparative Literature East and West: Traditions and Trends. Selected Conference Papers (Honolulu: College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, University of Hawaii, and the East-West Center, 1989), pp. 139-51.
Wing explores similarities and differences among the characterizations of Emelye in Boccaccio's Teseida, KnT, Anne de Graville's Le beau romant, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The characterizations differ, but only in Shakespeare and Fletcher's play is…
Bishop, Louise M.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 44 : 231-46, 2002.
Augustine's glossing of God's corporeality (especially pertaining to Exodus 33) underlies the comments on the limitations of human knowledge in MilP. Confusion about the nature of flesh and about orifices hints at the ultimate ineffability of God's…
Assesses payment and revenge in MilT and RvT as economies of sexual exchange following Aristotelian notions of "distributive" justice, reflected in the "poetic" justice of the Tales. Women are the commodity in MilT and RvT, as in KnT and CkT. Edwards…
Johnston, Andrew James.
Manfred Pfister, ed. A History of English Laughter: Laughter from Beowulf to Beckett and Beyond (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 17-33.
Johnston assesses the interactions between religious allusion and satire in MilT, exploring the exegetical traditions of God's private parts, the Flood, and Absolon's use of the Song of Songs. The Tale generates laughter that ridicules religion and…
King, Pamela M.
Leeds Studies in English 32 (2001): 212-28. Reprinted in Pamela M. King and Alexandra F. Johnston, eds. Reading Texts for Performance and Performances as Texts (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 102-18.
Explores the possible "theatrical context" of MilT, clarifying the cultural value of Absolon's status as a parish clerk and arguing that Chaucer's plot and treatment of gender in his characterization of Absolon were inspired by "amateur theatricals…
Parry, Joseph D.
Philological Quarterly 80.2 : 133-67, 2001.
Because Alisoun in MilT and May in MerT are exempted from retribution for their active roles in adultery and deception, readers are invited to ask how women are or are not fully part of the systems by which we conceptualize accountability for…
Walker, Greg.
Roberta Mullini, introd. Tudor Theatre: For Laughs? Puzzling Laughter in Plays of the Tudor Age/Tudor Théâtre: Pour Rire? Rires et Problèmes dans le Théâtre des Tudor (Bern: Peter Lang, 2002), pp. 1-20.
According to Walker, the three males in MilT anticipate familiar types of masculine "fool" in English dramatic tradition: John as cuckolded senex amans, Nicholas as the punished "Priapic fool," and Absolon as the "squeamish, infantalised male."…
Walker, Greg.
Elaine Treharne, ed. Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle English Texts (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), pp. 61-91.
Absolon's rejection of Alison's sexuality in MilT suggests the kind of masculinity invoked by Mariology and by popular representations of the Annunciation.
Giaccherini, Enrico.
Rivista di Letterature Moderne e Comparate 26 : 99-121, 1976.
Compares and contrasts RvT and Boccaccio's version in the Decameron with their respective sources: Le meunier et les II. clers and De gombert et des II. clers. Plots and characterization in the works are similar, although outlook and purpose vary.
Horobin, S. C. P.
Neophilologus 86 : 609-12, 2002.
In RvT, Chaucer's "treatment of the Northern dialect" is fairly consistent, but the Reeve's dialect includes "distinctive features characteristic of the Norfolk dialect."
Shimonomoto, Keiko.
Tokyo : Waseda University Enterprise, 2001.
Reprints the author's 1986 University of Sheffield M.A. thesis on second-person pronouns, forms of address, and use of the imperative in CT. Includes eight additional articles: four on Chaucer, three on Nicholas Love, and one on linguistic…
Simpson, James.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
The volume surveys the literature of late medieval and early modern English writers in relation to political institutions contemporary with the literature, tracing an arc of "diminishing liberties." Simpson characterizes the shift in literature from…
