Rose, Christine M.
College Literature 28.2: 155-77, 2001.
Use of sources and analogues in the classroom can provide baffled students a point of entry into the complexities of MLT and allow them to appreciate the importance of redaction in medieval literature. In particular, examining Chaucer's feminization…
Spearing, A. C.
New Literary History 32: 715-46, 2001.
A survey of selected criticism since Kittredge demonstrates that the idea of a fallible narrative voice has dominated criticism of CT. Spearing examines MLT 2.141-96 to show the difficulty of separating narrational from nonnarrational elements and of…
Yeager, R. F.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 525-57.
Yeager contrasts Gower's uses of imagery in the 'Tale of Constance" with Chaucer's techniques in MLT, arguing that Gower is more minimalist, but that, like Chaucer, Gower challenges readers to discover the moral implications of the world he…
Carter, Susan Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 62: 1403A, 2001.
Examines loathly ladies in Irish myth, Chaucer (WBT), Gower ("Florent"), Dame Ragnell, Thomas of Erceldoune, and ballads, focusing on two loci--court and forest--and kinds of power. Also examines the political significance of the refiguration of…
Doob, Penelope Reed.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 167-84; 4 b&w figs.
Surveys relations between female literary characters and labyrinths from mythic accounts to Lady Mary Worth's "Pamphilia to Amphilanthus," commenting on Virgil's "Aeneid," Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," Dante's "Commedia," WBPT, and the…
Dwyer, June.
Studies in Short Fiction 35: 307-18, 1998.
Two possible versions of women's attitudes toward violence appear in WBPT: WBT idealizes women as a civilizing force working to curb male violence; WBP portrays a woman who uses violence when other means of control fail. Both constructs of female…
Fee, Christopher R., with David E. Leeming.
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2001.
Surveys the multicultural nature of medieval British literature, which combines Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Christian influences. Introduces the myths and heroic figures of pre-Christian cultures through synopses of various narratives and…
Kennedy, Beverly.
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. 1-32, 178-91.
Descriptions of the Wife of Bath in GP and in WBP are consciously ambiguous, a means of reminding us to suspend moral judgment because language is inherently ambiguous. Through glosses and textual choices, modern editions oversimplify the Wife by…
Two essays: 1) "The Place of Philology" argues that the MLE is Chaucer's late and revised addition to CT and that it is properly followed by WBP; Patterson confronts the manuscript evidence and suggests several structural and thematic continuities…
Terry, Michael.
Notes and Queries 246: 110-12, 2001.
Proposes that "A Ghearóid déana mo dhail" (ca. 1338-56) be added to the list of analogues to WBT. It involves an interaction between a human and "fairy" being in which the human is rewarded for appropriate behavior; the outcome of the interaction…
Wood, Chauncey.
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. 33-43, 191-92.
In light of Reason's discussion of direct language in "Roman de la Rose," the Wife of Bath's euphemisms and circumlocution characterize her as unreasonable and a misuser of language.
Errors in "Cliffs Notes" and "MAX Notes" guides on the Wife of Bath lead to an unsympathetic interpretation of the character and inaccurate reading of WBT.
Somerset, Fiona.
English Literary History 68: 315-34, 2001.
Various late-medieval English texts (including the Wycliffite "Twelve Conclusions" and Roger Dymmok's "Reply" and other Wycliffite discourse) reflect "anxiety" about laypeople's inabilities to discern clerical hypocrisy. In FrT, Chaucer distinguishes…
Collette, Carolyn. P.
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2001.
Medieval ideas of psychology and cognition underlie the concern with sight, imagination, and "fantasye" in select tales of Canterbury, wherein Chaucer demonstrates that the only certainty in human relations is uncertainty. The male characters of KnT…
A literal journey and lifelong spiritual experience, pilgrimage involves new surroundings and new levels of understanding. Dyas discusses pilgrimage in early Christian tradition and in Old and Middle English literature, including Chaucer's choice of…
Fields, Peter John.
Lewistown, N.Y. : Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
Chaucer's interest in craft goes far beyond mere technical process. In CT, the word and its derivations emblematize human efforts to control the world through personal expertise and learned tradition. Fields challenges notions of Chaucer's pluralism,…
Jacobs, Kathryn.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2001.
Four chapters explore the influence of contemporary marriage law on Chaucer's imagination, and three investigate similar influences on religious and Renaissance drama. Chaucer did not merely reflect his society's concerns with marriage and its…
Kummerer, K. R.
Journal of the British Astronomical Society 11.4: 203-13, 2001.
Discusses seven "celestial assertions" in CT and the reference to April 18 to show that Chaucer "accurately describes the celestial conditions he observed" in southeast England. Astronomical evidence indicates that the CT pilgrimage ends on April 18,…
Ladd, Roger Alfred.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 3163A, 2001.
Clerical anti-mercantile views gradually shifted as a "guardedly pro-trade ideology" emerged. Such attitudes also appear in estates satire found in CT, Gower's "Miroir de l'Omme," "Piers Plowman," Margery Kempe, the York cycle plays, and various…
Lawler, Jennifer [L.]
John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg, eds., with Scott D. Westram and Gregory G. Guzman. Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, no. 1899 (New York and London: Garland, 2000), pp. 105-06.
Brief description of Chaucer's travels and of pilgrimage as a frame in CT. Like the pilgrimage report of Felix Fabri (1441/2-1502), CT is important as a historical record.
Lewis, Celia Milton.
Dissertation Abstracts International 62: 2109A, 2001.
The "Seven Sages," the "Decameron," and CT share, in addition to frame structure and historical milieux, a concern with death and avoidance of it (plague), a changing sense of time, and a new concept of authorial identity (especially Chaucer). The…
Minnis, A. J.
A. J. Minnis. Magister Amoris: The Roman de la Rose and Vernacular Hermeneutics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 119-63.
Explores Jean de Meun's treatment of vulgar talk in "Roman de la Rose" (lines 15,129-272) within the context of late-medieval theories of signification. In various passages of CT, Chaucer also confronts direct language and low subject in literature.…
O'Brien, Timothy D.
College Literature 28.2: 178-96, 2001.
The Wife of Bath, the Prioress, and the wife in ShT represent themselves as victims of violence to make themselves attractive to men. In doing so, they draw on texts, such as medieval saints' lives and romances, that depict violence as central to the…
Pitcher, John Austin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 3582A, 2001.
Examines the "interrelation of equivocation and desire" in PhyT, ClT, FranT, and WBPT, not in what the narrators and characters say, but through a "movement or oscillation between opposed interests." In CT, sexual politics can be found in the…
