Scala, Elizabeth.
Medieval Feminist Forum 30: 27-37, 2000.
Assesses "gossip" about an emotional or sexual relationship between Rickert and John Matthews Manly, co-editors of "The Text of the Canterbury Tales" (1940).
Riddy, Felicity.
Roberta L. Krueger, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 235-52.
Sets Middle English romances "in the context of late medieval patterns of family and marriage, and presents them as part of a literate but unlearned lay culture centered on the home." Briefly discusses Thop and TC.
Purdie, Rhiannon.
J. A. Burrow and Ian P. Wei, eds. Medieval Futures: Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2000), pp. 167-84.
Surveys the literary and historical context for medieval attitudes toward dicing, mentioning hazardry in PardT and the notion of divine intervention in the chances of trade in CYT.
Pratt, John H.
Lanham, Md., New York, and Oxford : University Press of America, 2000.
Studies Chaucer's views of war and chivalry, examining biographical and historical data as background to assessments of TC, KnT, and the GP sketches of the Knight and Squire. Pratt summarizes medieval theories of warfare and "just war" and discusses…
Powell, Susan, and Jeremy J. Smith, eds.
Cambridge : D. S. Brewer, 2000.
Thirteen essays by various authors: seven interpretations of alliterative poems and six textual analyses of Middle English works. Includes a memoir by Derek Pearsall. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for New Perspectives on Middle…
Pearsall, Derek.
Proceedings of the British Academy 101: 77-99, 2000.
Although Chaucer's writings reflect the disposition of his time to exclude, in one way or another, those who are strangers in various communities, the poet is uninterested in England as a nation. Nonetheless, in the nineteenth century Chaucer came to…
Otey, Kirsten Johnson.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 4443A, 1999.
Most studies of the vernacular used in religious writing of the late-fourteenth century focus on clerical authors. Clanvowe, a layperson and chamber knight of Richard II, uses the vernacular to discuss Lollardy covertly. Otey examines works of…
Obermeier, Anita.
Amsterdam and Atlanta, Ga. : Rodopi, 1999.
Surveys authorial apologies in literature from the classical period to the late Middle Ages, discussing classical tradition, Christian tradition, medieval Latin tradition, and medieval vernacular literatures, including German, French, Italian,…
Nickinson, Patricia Anne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 2482A, 1999.
The romance knight needs chances to prove himself and achieve fame; he must act. The damsel needs words, often to ask for help. Nickinson treats "Beues of Hamtoun," "The Sowdone of Babylone," Malory's Alysaundir episode, KnT, and FranT, with…
Morrison, Susan Signe.
London and New York : Routledge, 2000.
Studies "medieval perceptions of pilgrimage, gender, and space," discussing literary and historical female pilgrims, their motives, and the effects pilgrimages had on their families and social dynamics. Discusses the shrines at Walsingham and…
Morey, James H.
Urbana and Chicago : University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Bibliographical guide to Middle English biblical literature, including manuscript and publication information, descriptions of the works, and identification of the biblical sources, covering some 110 individual works or sets of related works.…
Williams, Jeni.
Robert Penhallurick, ed. Debating Dialect: Essays on the Philosophy of Dialect Study (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp. 46-65.
Assesses linguistic features of RvT, not as evidence of rustic regional gullibility, but as factors in the Tale's response to the depiction of space in MilT. The dialect of John and Aleyn is part of an "ideological attack" in which the clerks are set…
Reconsiders the 127 Irish analogues to RvT cited in Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson's "Types of Folktale" and reduces them to four. Comments on the transmission of the various motifs in the Tale, suggesting that Chaucer may have gotten the Tale from…
Valdes Miyares, Ruben.
Ana María Hornero and María Pilar Navarro, eds. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of S.E.L.I.M. (Zaragoza: Institucion Fernando el Catolico (CSIC), 2000), pp. 267-75.
The Miller's bagpipe in GP epitomizes MilT, setting the pace for the pilgrimage and offering the rough justice of popular music as a human alternative to God's arbitrary judgment in the combat of KnT. The Miller questions the hegemony of vested…
Discusses what naturalism is and how it links a set of normative intuitions about gender and desire to a broader theory of what it means for humans to be a law to themselves. Central to MilT is Alisoun, the "single most compelling instance of a…
Cullum, P. H.
D. M. Hadley, ed. Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London and New York: Longman, 1999), pp. 178-96.
Uses several case studies to assess medieval male clerical behavior and its transgressions. Briefly discusses Nicholas and Absolon of MilT as an illumination of the dilemma of young medieval clerics, caught between their vows of celibacy and their…
Questions the traditional gloss of "shot wyndowe," arguing that the words refer to a window that opens inward, that is unglazed, and that, in MilT, is a window to a privy.
Boenig, Robert.
Robert Boenig and Kathleen Davis, eds. Manuscript, Narrative, Lexicon: Essays on Literary and Cultural Transmission in Honor of Whitney F. Bolton (Lewisburg, Penn: Bucknell University Press; and London: Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 96-110.
Surveys medieval representations and understandings of the psaltery, a musical instrument, as background to reading its meanings in MilT. The psaltery clashes ironically with Nicholas's amorous escapades, and his playing it to accompany his singing…
Stretter, Robert Eugene.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 2316A, 2000.
Focusing especially on love and fortune, Chaucer introduces to English literature the theme of male friendship in conflict with heterosexual love. By Shakespeare's time, this theme was treated even more darkly, moving from "guardedly optimistic…
Schembri, A. M.
Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies 5: 15-37, 1997.
Chaucer's changes to Boccaccio's "Teseida" in KnT introduce a concern with Cathar heresy. Until Theseus's final speech, the plot reflects cosmic dualism (Saturn and Jupiter), determinism, and pervasive sterility and evil. The poem is also touched by…
McGregor, James H.
Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 212-25.
The representation of history in KnT is dependent on postplague historiographical views of the Decameron. The Teseida and Chaucer's version of it are tragedies, but with a hope of reconciliation represented in the final marriage.
