Benoit-Dusausoy, Annick, and Guy Fontaine, ed. Trans. Michael Wooff.
New York and London : Routledge, 2000.
Comprehensive survey of European literatures, writers, genres, motifs, and themes, from Homer to contemporary figures and trends. J. Smith, "Chaucer (c.1340-c.1400)," pp. 142-46, describes Chaucer and his works, discussing him as a humanist and a man…
Beal, Rebecca S.
Annali d'Italianistica 18: 175-98, 2000.
Concerned with issues of closure in texts of Guillaume de Lorris, Dante, and Boccaccio. Introduction notes recent criticism treating Chaucer's "open endings."
Baumann, Eric James.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59: 483A, 1998.
Traces the development in English literature of attempts to "establish a poetic language mimetic of God's Logos." Explores writers from Chaucer to Eliot.
Baule, Cynthia Anne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 2293A, 2000.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the English laity became increasingly literate, in part because readers consumed religious literature to increase their devotion and to achieve personal relationship with God. PrT and SNT, among other…
Baker, Denise N., ed.
Albany : State University of New York Press, 2000.
Eleven essays examining the reciprocity between literature and history in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Inscribing the Hundred Years' War under Alternative Title.
Ashton, Gail.
London and New York : Routledge, 2000.
Analyzes the voices in medieval vernacular saints' lives: the controlling masculine voice and the submerged and subversive feminine voice. Defines female hagiography as a genre separable from male hagiography. French feminist critics (Cixous and…
Amtower, Laurel.
New York and Houndsmill, Basingstoke : Palgrave, 2000.
Analyzes depictions of reading in books of hours and assesses the theme of reading in Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan, examining a new "reflexive relationship" between "reading habits and the shaping of identity" in the late Middle…
Alexander, Michael.
New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000.
A narrative introduction to English literature from Old English to postmodernism, designed for the general reader. The discussion of Chaucer (pp. 55-62) emphasizes biography, PF, TC, and the ironies of CT.
Alamichel, Marie-Françoise.
Bulletin des Anglicistes Médiévistes 58: 5-37, 2000.
Examines medieval English widows. While Old English literature shows a general lack of interest in marriage and widowhood, Middle English literature is rich in various forms of testimonies. None of the widows surveyed shows true sorrow after the…
Abelson-Hoek, Michelle Christine.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 4418A, 1999.
Studies the medieval whore figure as rebel, outlaw, and heretic through historical and sociological analysis of the Norman Latin poem "Jezebel." Chaucer and Langland consider the whore evil but also emblematic of this world's carnal pleasures.…
Yonekura, Hiroshi.
Raymond Hickey and Stanislaw Puppel, eds. Language History and Linguistic Modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on His 60th Birthday. 2 Vols. (Berlin and New York: Mouton, 1997), 1:229-48.
Documents that compounding was an active process of word formation in Middle English, tabulating Chaucer's compound words and showing that he favored combinations of two Old English nouns rather than combining a noun with another word form or Old…
A study of Chaucer's simultaneous employment of, and challenge to, comparative language and thinking. Chapter 1 explores dissimilarity and its "taxonomic force" in academic and religious traditions, while chapter 2 focuses on this subject in HF.…
Collects excerpts documenting how "the modern study of Middle English became the way it is." Thirteen excerpts discuss language, from George Hickes (1642-1715) to James A. H. Murray (1837-1915), and nineteen consider literary criticism and…
Matsuda, Suguru.
Hisao Tsuru, ed. Fiction and Truth: Essays on Fourteenth-Century English Literature (Tokyo: Kirihara Shoten, 2000), pp. 9-18.
Argues that Chaucer criticized the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, treating the medieval status of the Parson; Lollardy; and Chaucerian concern with people of the lower classes.
Chaucer's dream visions confront contemporary philosophical debates, which also shape his poetics. BD is concerned with the status of universals, the relationship of universals to singulars, and the certainty of human knowledge. HF mocks "the logical…
Krueger, Roberta L., ed.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Fifteen essays and an introduction introduce the reader to "the voyages, transformations, and interrogations of romance as its fictions travel within and between the linguistic, geo-political, and social boundaries of Europe from 1150 to 1600." For…
Chaucer was well aware that he was writing for an audience that read his poems aloud. In his four dream poems, he familiarizes his audience with the subject matter through communication strategies, including conversational interjections such as "that…
Kimmelman, Burt.
John M. Hill and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. The Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages: Reconstructive Polyphony. Essays in Honor of Robert O. Payne (Madison, N.J., and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 177-205.
Chaucer's narrative persona is related to the Ockhamist controversy in that his narrator struggles with questions of experience and authoritative knowledge and of whether experience can convey truth. Particularly in Chaucer's dream-vision poems,…
Kendrick, Laura.
Columbus : Ohio State University Press, 1999.
Explores various "developments in the image of writing in the Middle Ages and the different ways in which images empower writing from approximately the sixth through the sixteenth centuries," concentrating on early manuscripts and religious rather…
Kawasaki, Masatoshi.
Hisao Tsuru, ed. Fiction and Truth: Essays on Fourteenth-Century English Literature (Tokyo: Kirihara Shoten, 2000), pp. 35-46.
Explores the relationship between orality and literacy and between authority and experience in the context of medieval folk culture, dealing with BD and HF.
Jolliffe, Christine.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 2287A, 1999.
With the linguistic turn from mimetic to generative properties of language, the traditional understanding of many aspects of literary and intellectual history has been denied. Jolliffe questions this extreme position in the light of writers such as…
Hornero, Ana María, and María Pilar Navarro, eds.
Zaragoza : Institucion Fernando el Catolico (CSIC), 2000.
Twenty-six essays by various authors, with eight that pertain to Chaucer. For essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of S.E.L.I.M. under Alternative Title.
Hill, John M.,and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds.
Madison, N.J., and London : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000.
Fourteen essays by various authors, along with an introduction and "Robert O. Payne: In Memoriam" by Hill. For eight essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages under Alternative Title.
