The vivid details of Decameron 7.3 (the story of Friar Rinaldo)-the corrupt clergy, their obesity and sweating faces, their rich foods and wine, together with the simplicity of the widow's life-suggest that Boccaccio's work may have inspired NPT as a…
Pearsall, Derek.
F. R. P. Akehurst and Stephanie Cain Van D'Elden, eds. The Stranger in Medieval Society (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 46-62.
Explores the nuances of "strange" and "stranger" in Middle English, arguing that noncitizens, immigrants from the provinces, and merchants were considered strangers in London. Comments on the 1381 massacre of Flemings and Chaucer's allusion to it…
Thomas, Paul R.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 187-202.
Differences between NPT and Roman de Renart indicate how Chaucer's 'Tale' depicts a mock-heroic masculinity through its scenes with the cock and the hen and the cock and the fox, as well as in the chase scene.
Travis, Peter W.
James J. Paxson, Lawrence M. Clopper, and Sylvia Tomasch, eds. The Performance of Middle English Culture: Essays on Chaucer and the Drama in Honor of Martin Stevens (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 161-81.
In the opening of NPT, Chaucer investigates the exemplary form, both honoring the aesthetic persuasion of Geoffrey of Vinsauf and of Horace and-through parody-undercutting prescriptive notions that narrative must have a predominant sense and readers'…
Zeitoun, Franck.
Leo Carruthers, ed. Reves et propheties au Moyen Age (Paris: Publications de l'Association de Młdiłvistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supłrieur, 1998), pp. 99-112.
The dissonant echoes within and between Chauntecleer's dream narrative and the subsequent disputatio prevent any clear idea of the veracity of the dream's apparently prophetic nature. In the confrontation between the cock and the fox, the dogmatism…
Chaucer's choice of this version of the saint's life allows him to portray the interests of a female teller and to fuse masculine and feminine ideals. We hear Cecilia's strident voice and experience her powers of articulation. Further, the hair shirt…
Views SNT as a "generic experiment" built "upon an epistemological premise whose axiomatic status was crumbling." Discusses analogical, hermeneutical, and hagiographic elements of the "Tale" as well.
Abraham, Lyndy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Alphabetical arrangement of alchemical terms and images from "ablution" to "zephyr." The entries define the terms and illustrate the images, citing works in which they appear, including CYPT.
Landman, James H.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998): 389-425.
Both CYPT and the "Book of Margery Kempe" raise questions about community and selfhood. In each, an individual criticizes his or her community to the members of a different, markedly less local community. The two texts suggest the precariousness of…
Kline, Daniel Thomas.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 3125A.
Works such as Pearl, PhyT, PrT, and Lydgate's Siege of Thebes present children as transgressive social agents whom society represses through ill treatment to stabilize traditional hierarchies.
Wright, Michael J.
Studia Neophilologica 70 (1998): 181-86.
FranT is set in a pre-Christian age, but Dorigen prays to God and thus achieves the status of a good pagan. She is portrayed as an individual rather than a socially rule-bound wife. Chaucer celebrates individuality through her, but he also recognizes…
Rossi-Reder, Andrea.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde ( Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 105-16.
Like Boccaccio in Il Filocolo, Chaucer in FranT contrasts men and women by emphasizing men's mobility and women's fixity. Men are depicted as publicly and physically active, while women are privately and intellectually active.
Purdon, Liam O., and Julian N. Wasserman.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 112-15.
Chaucer's somewhat unusual association of his Franklin with food may reflect the frequent migration of the Exchequer from Westminster to York and the prioritizing of the York food trade as a result. The Franklin may have been a York franklin who…
Lipton, Emma.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60 (1999): 123A.
Influenced by literature, the meaning of marriage changed radically in late-medieval England. Replacing the celebration of celibacy as reflecting union with Christ, earthly marriage validated itself in bourgeois ideology, as shown by FranT, Gower,…
Gravlee, Cynthia A.
James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravlee, eds. Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid Through Chaucer (Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1998), pp. 177-87.
Argues that the "horizon of expectations" (a concept derived from Hans Jauss) of FranT is never fulfilled by the narrative. Although the Franklin strives to meet social and generic expectations, he leaves his Tale open-ended--Chaucer's means of…
Lucas, Angela M.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 123-45.
January's comparison of looking for a bride to reflections in a mirror evokes associations of limited and distorted vision, of two-dimensional representations, and of reversals of left and right. This image of "imperfect vision" is reflected in…
Everest, Carol A.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998) pp. 91-103.
From the perspective of medieval psychology, January's pretensions to youth and sexual vigor are ridiculous and potentially fatal, since his sexual overactivity diminishes vital spirits and causes, among other effects, blindness and eventually death.
Baker, Joan,and Susan Signe Morrison.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 12 (1998): 31-63.
MerT is a direct response to passus 9 of the B version of Piers Plowman, presenting an "unkyndely similitude" of marriage in contrast to the ideal expressed in Langland's poem.
Paris, Bernard J.
Chapter 5 in Imagined Human Beings: A Psychological Approach to Character and Conflict in Literature (New York and London: New York University Press, 1997), pp. 82-92.
Psychoanalyzes Walter of ClT as one who tests Griselda's submissiveness to assure his own freedom and to vindicate his choice of her as a wife. Griselda seeks personal glory in her subservience. They are "two sick people in a pathological…
Newton, Allyson.
John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Medieval Mothering (New York and London: Garland, 1996), pp. 63-77.
Classical and medieval theories of sexual reproduction privilege the male role as active and occlude the female as passive. This occlusion is paralleled by the plot and language of ClT, in which mothering is subordinated to paternalistic concerns…
An abstract of a paper that considers ClT and Petrarch's version of the Griselda tale in comparison with "Laxdaela Saga" and Marie de France's "Le Fresne". In all, the central female figure "possesses a greater value than may at first appear."
McKinley, Kathryn L.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 90-111.
The concept of piety was complex and problematic during the Middle Ages, and Chaucer's refusal to align himself with one side or the other in ClT is distressing. Griselda is neither a paradigm for lay sanctity nor an ironic or satiric character.
McClellan, William.
James J. Paxson, Lawrence M. Clopper, and Sylvia Tomasch, eds. The Performance of Middle English Culture: Essays on Chaucer and the Drama in Honor of Martin Stevens (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 183-96.
Both ClT and Kingston's "No Name Woman" reveal how patriarchal culture operates to disguise male complicity in women's repression, and both connect issues of knowledge and power with the construction of subjectivity, showing how these are intimately…
