Jost, Jean E.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 8.1: 61-69, 2000.
Recommends a learning-centered approach to teaching CT in which students collaborate to produce a creative imitation of Chaucer's work. Description of college-level assignment included.
Higgs, Elton D.
Susan Powell and Jeremy J. Smith, eds. New Perspectives on Middle English Texts: A Festschrift for R. A. Waldron (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 151-67.
Explores the themes of debt and indebtedness in CT, showing how they are established in GP and how throughout the work attempts "to manipulate obligations to one's own advantage" result in "superficial or ambivalent success." Material advantage often…
Hanning, Robert W.
James H. McGregor, ed. Approaches to Teaching Boccaccio's Decameron (New York: Modern Language Association, 2000), pp. 103-18.
Assesses the "relevance and importance" of the Decameron to the study of CT, considering evidence of Chaucer's knowledge of Boccaccio's work and the ways the two works reflect similar and different "cultural agendas." Comparison of shared motifs and…
Georgianna, Linda.
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. 148-73.
Examines the complexity of anticlericalism. Clerical figures are prominent in the works of both Boccaccio and Chaucer, but CT redirects the potential disruption of anticlerical complaint away from dissent and toward self-evaluation. Georgianna gives…
Includes eight essays pertaining to CT, examining the similarities between the narrative structure of CT and the multi-layered system particular to Gothic aesthetics.
Donnelly, Colleen.
Language and Style 24: 433-43, 1991.
Surveys interactions between women's speech and silence, on the one hand, and generic conventions, on the other, in KnT, WBT, ClT, MerT, FranT, and ShT. Chaucer variously confirms or complicates the expectations about female speech embedded in the…
Situates Chaucer's attitudes toward law and legal process in late-medieval thought, discussing statute law, legal procedures of resolution by love, and Italian, Thomistic, post-Glossarian philosophy of law. Tale-telling and pilgrimage represent two…
Cullen, Dolores (L.)
Santa Barbara, Calif. : Fithian, 2000.
Cullen's third volume on CT claims the work is an allegory reflecting Chaucer's preoccupation with astronomy/astrology. The Pilgrims, who congregate at sunset, correspond to the constellations and planets-celestial "pilgrims" traveling across the…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., eds. Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000), pp. 151-68.
Defines the French literary topos of the good wife, wherein "female virtue grounded in prudence and self-control benefits the immediate domestic and also the wider public spheres." Reflected in Philippe's "Le livre de la vertu du sacrement de…
Assesses CT as a web of Tales and voices, focusing on KnT, MilT as a response to KnT, the Marriage Group, and Chaucer's Italian sources, especially Boccaccio. Includes sections on the adaptations of KnT in Shakespeare, in Fletcher's "Two Noble…
Savage, Anne.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., eds. Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000), pp. 345-61.
Despite differences in genre, these narratives include a father who "constructs the circumstances in which he could marry his daughter." Pointedly excluded from consideration in MLP, paternal incest posed in ClT (between Walter and his daughter) is…
Discusses the work of J. B. Severs, the manuscript tradition of Petrarch's Griselda narrative, and the form in which it would have been accessible to Chaucer.
McClellan, William.
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. 149-63.
The Clerk's polemical stance in relation to Petrarch in ClP differentiates the Clerk's voice, rhetorical style, and ideology from Petrarch's, thus allowing for the introduction of dialogic discourse in the Tale itself.
Koff, Leonard Michael.
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. 278-316.
Examines what the relationship between The Clerk's Tale and Decameron 10.10 might be without the intervening sources: Petrarch's "De insigni obedientia et fide uxoris" and its French translation, "Le livre Griseldis." Chaucer does not reduce the…
Finlayson, John.
Studies in Philology 97: 255-75, 2000.
Argues that Chaucer used Boccaccio's version of the Griselda story in addition to Petrarch's. A number of Chaucer's alterations and additions to Petrarch have a "strong, often detailed relationship" to Boccaccio, Petrarch's own source.
Viewed in both historical and literary contexts, the Friar's "typet" (probably a shoulder cape with a deep hood) and his "semycope" (a short cloak) show that he is breaking sumptuary laws for his fraternal order. That he also dresses in the finest…
Takahashi, Isamu.
Eigo Seinen 146.8: 499-501, 2000.
Surveys the transformations of the Wife of Bath in "The Wanton Wife of Bath" (1600), Johnson's "A New Sonnet of a Knight and a Faire Virgin" (1612), Fletcher's "Women Pleased" (1620), "Pilgrim's Progress" (1678), "The New Wife of Bath" (1700), Gay's…
Shimomura, Sachi.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 2483A, 1999.
From Old English representations of doomsday to medieval romances, "layered narratives" provide audiences with visual judgment. The fair-to-foul transformations of Old English sermons and "Christ III" give way to the foul-to-fair transformations of…
Using ironic techniques deplored by Christine, Chaucer is often misunderstood by modern audiences. Rigby contrasts Christine's "comprehensive defence of women" with Chaucer's satire in WBP, where Alisoun is the target.
Mouron Figuera, Cristina.
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. 147-57.
Compares views about married women reflected in The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale with late-fourteenth-century social reality.
Maggioni, M[aria]. Luisa.
Gabriella Di Martino and Maria Lima, eds. English Diachronic Pragmatics. Proceedings of the International Conference on English Diachronic Pragmatics. (Naples, Italy: CUEN, 2000), pp. 103-14.
Examines relationships between the roles of women in medieval society and the language used by women in Arthurian romances, especially interpersonal relationships as depicted in dialogue, forms of address, indicators of politeness, and the emerging…
Longsworth, Robert (M.)
Chaucer Review 34: 372-87, 2000.
Through her use of the Samaritan woman, the Wife argues for the "exegetical reliability" of her own experience. Longsworth explores several biblical references in WBP and their exegetical backgrounds to show how the Wife, even while more…
WBP contains two quotations from Ptolemy (3.180-81, 326-27), setting up a system for classifying knowledge according to practica (the Wife) and theorica (Ptolemy). The Wife recontextualizes and trivializes Ptolemy's efforts to achieve a vision of…
