Chaucer's changes to the Ovidian version of Hypermnestra in LGW--exchanging the names of Danaus and Aegyptus and then reducing the number of daughters from fifty to one--were not an "error." Chaucer both indicates that men are not "stably positioned…
Amsler, Mark.
Elizabeth Robertson and Christine M. Rose, eds. Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 61-96.
Although "mythographers allegorized Ovid's rape narratives as stories of cosmological creation or spiritual desire," Christine de Pizan presents Apollo's assault on Daphne (Épîstre d'Otha) as a disfigurement of the female body; in his tale of…
Boffey, Julia.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 279-97.
Boffey summarizes the various numbers of legends included in LGW and in references to the work and assesses concern with these numbers. She considers LGW in light of the tradition of nine female Worthies in literature and the visual arts and in light…
Not all manuscripts of Ret read LGW as "xxv" tales (other numbers are "xix" and "xx"). Edward of Norwich (ca. 1406) uses "xxv" and refers to the work as the "Goode Wymmen," not, as is more common, the book of "ladies." He may have read Ret, in which…
Alceste's request for a "legend" of good women and reference to Queen Anne combine to establish the audience of LGW, raising questions about the gender ideology of saints' legends and resisting the "misogynist antiphrasis" recurrent in antifeminist…
LGW illustrates the importance of fidelity to one's pledges. Chaucer shows that "act, speech, and writing, when captured by image, text, and imagination, preserve love beyond its transitory moment of existence" (50). The written experiences of the…
Woods, Marjorie Curry.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 143-66.
Woods hypothesizes how Chaucer and the male members of his audience may have been affected by their experiences in an "all-male medieval classroom" and how, in turn, their encounters with female literary characters and the rhetorical exercises of…
Psychoanalytic reading of PF that identifies a reversal of the "logical sequence of origin, wish, and desire." This reversal "represses consciousness" and disguises the presence of the "Chaucerian ego" of the poem that is recognizable in the…
Kiser, Lisa J.
Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R. Wallace, eds. Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2001), pp. 41-56.
Through the tree catalog and the "unassimilated voices of the lower birds" in PF, Chaucer records his awareness that distinctions between nature and culture and between human and nonhuman are "species-ist"--an awareness similar to modern…
Besserman, Lawrence [L.]
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23: 181-224, 2001.
Various "titles, epithets, and images" in TC reflect Chaucer's "covert engagement" with political and religious contention. Pandarus and the narrator adopt priestly roles, Troilus is like an anti-Lollard zealot, and forms of address such as "madame"…
Dauby, Hélène.
Anne Berthelot, ed. "Pur remembrance": Mélanges en mémoire de Wolfgang Spiewok. WODAN, no. 79; Greifswalder Beitrge zum Mittelalter, no. 66. (Greifswald: Reineke-Verlag, 2001), pp. 131-41.
TC illustrates the mechanisms of perception, memory, and imagination as defined by fourteenth-century scientific theories. The two protagonists are enmeshed in a net of gazes--their own as well as those of others--and the narrative unfolds as viewed…
Evans, Trena Marie.
Dissertation Abstracts International 62: 1008A, 2002.
Late-medieval lay meditation extended the subject matter (previously the life of Christ) and the boundaries considered suitable for vernacular material. Evans treats Chaucer's TC, John Metham, Thomas Hoccleve, Nicholas Love, and anonymous works.
A critique of psychoanalytic approaches to medieval literature--based on the "fatal flaws" of "Freudian methods of inquiry"-and a rejection of psychoanalytic approaches to Chaucer's Pardoner, including Patterson's previous work. Patterson suggests an…
Schwebel, Lana.
Dissertation Abstracts International 62: 1828A, 2001.
In fourteenth-century England, the sale of indulgences was supported by orthodoxy and attacked by Wycliffites. Poetic fictions transcend this simple opposition, as seen in the artful deviousness of PardT and the revitalized idealism of "Piers…
Williams, David.
Robert Myles and David Williams, eds. Chaucer and Language: Essays in Honour of Douglas Wurtele (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), pp. 143-73 and 218-21.
Williams assesses the Pardoner's abuses of a wide range of signs, including words, relics, and the sacrament of the Eucharist, arguing that the Pardoner is "antisemiotic" and perverse in his privileging of signs over what they signify.
Bauer, Kate [A.]
Nancy M. Reale and Ruth E. Sternglantz, eds. Satura: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Robert R. Raymo (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2001), pp. 205-26.
Explores the figure of the "puer senex" (wise youth) in "Pearl," Gower's "Confessio Amantis" ("Tale of Apollonius"), courtesy books, and PrT. Chaucer carefully presents an "ordinary world" in which the clergeon of PrT is educated through realistic…
Besserman, Lawrence L.
Chaucer Review 36: 48-72, 2001.
Throughout the decades, Chaucer critics have argued their own biases in interpreting Chaucer's ideology--seeing Chaucer as a "Christian poet"; as a "poet first and foremost"; as an "atheist"; as a writer who was "politically incorrect." Eschewing…
Cox, Kenneth.
Kenneth Cox. Collected Studies in the Use of English. (London: Agenda, 2001), pp. 43-62.
Cox examines verse, style, and several cruces (textual and narrative) in PrT to clarify Chaucer's ironic technique and to argue that the "prioress's hold on reality is [. . .] weak and her language correspondingly lax, with a concern for decorum far…
Patterson, Lee.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31: 507-60, 2001.
The narrator of PrT desires to transcend the particularities of language and history, echoing patterns of medieval Jewish martyrdom connected to the "kiddush ha-Shem," which may have been known in Chaucer's England. Complex textual and historical…
The Prioress's French of "Stratford atte Bowe" (as opposed to the French of Paris) has drawn considerable speculation, but it can be examined more effectively in light of "a wider background," including Chaucer's characterization of Madame Eglantine,…
Aers, David.
David Aers, ed. Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 68-81.
Challenges the notion that Mel asserts orthodox Christian sensibility. By privileging prudence over the theological virtues and by omitting "Christ, the Church [. . .], the Trinity" and sacramental forgiveness, Mel suggests heterodox views.
Burger, Glenn.
Robert Myles and David Williams, eds. Chaucer and Language: Essays in Honour of Douglas Wurtele (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), pp. 61-70 and 198-203.
Burger follows Gilles Deleuze and Féliz Guattari in associating "mapping" with modernity, resistance, and queerness and associating "tracing" with medieval times, hegemony, and heterosexuality. Explores how Mel can be seen to "map" Melibee's…
Jones, Christine.
Robert Myles and David Williams, eds. Chaucer and Language: Essays in Honour of Douglas Wurtele (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), 71-82 and 203.
Jones considers language and its ability to represent reality in Th-MelL, arguing that unlike post-structuralist thinkers (such as Richard Rorty), Chaucer retains the "traditional distinction between history and fiction" even while cognizant of their…
