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…
Harding, Wendy.
Roger Ellis, Rene Tixier, and Bernd Weitemeier, eds. The Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age, 6. ([Turnhout, Belgium]: Brepols, 1998), pp. 194-210.
Assesses Chaucer's transformation of ClT in his process of translating his sources, focusing on the imagery of clothing. Through his alterations of the clothing motif, Chaucer disclaims the traditional notion that translation is merely superficial…
Examines ClT 911-17 and concludes that, because of textual ambiguities, it is difficult to know whether Griselda has physically changed upon returning to her former home or, as Harding seems to believe, her "olde coote" is no longer fit to be worn.
Godorecci, Barbara J.
RLA: Romance Languages Annual 8 (1996):192-96.
Assesses the modifications of Boccaccio's tale of Griselda (Decameron 10.10) in the translations of Petrarch and Chaucer, focusing on the uses and nuances of the verb "provare" (to prove) and its associations with "probus" (good). In ClT, Chaucer's…
Ginsberg, Warren.
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. 125-41.
Assesses how the Host's address to the Clerk reflects effort to shape the identity of the Clerk as a tale-teller, so that even before the Clerk speaks, literary, philosophical, and spiritual discourses compete to define his subjectivity.
Griselda's response to Walter at crucial points in the narrative--when he has "killed" her children and when he has banished her from the palace so he can take another "wife"--underscores his appalling behavior and demonstrates the ways outward…
Aers, David.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998): 341-69.
Argues that Griselda of ClT is not a type of Christ, because not all depictions of human suffering imitate Christ's passion. Texts by authors from Aquinas to Wycliffe, Arundel,and William Thorpe indicate that passive suffering is one of many…
The reference to "Symoun" alludes not to Simon Magus (as previously suggested) but to Simon the Apostle, whose connections with sin and confession advance some of the larger themes of SumT.
Lim, Hye-Soon.
Medieval English Studies 06 (1998):199-223
Deriving from the Greek word for "tongue" and from Scandinavian "superficial luster," "glosing" is the central notion of SumT. Chaucer uses it to disclose fraternal hypocrisy and distortion of Scripture. In Korean, with English abstract.
Kline, Daniel T.
Philological Quarterly 77 (1998): 271-93.
Assesses the scenes of swearing and oath making in FrT, arguing that the Tale is not only a theological exemplum but also a reflection of "cultural anxiety concerning the nature of changing social and economic relations as mediated by new forms of…
Jost, Jean E.
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. 77-90.
Analyzes the fraternal and potentially sexual attraction between the Friar and the Summoner by focusing on Chaucer's conception of brotherhood and the male relationships in FrPT and SumPT.
Psychoanalytic argument that the old woman's curses are pivotal to the workings of hostility, manipulation, and eroticism in FrT. The summoner, the devil, and the woman reenact a patriarchal version of the Oedipal scenario, disrupted by the woman's…
Tinkle, Theresa.
George Bornstein and Theresa Tinkle, eds. The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 55-88.
Despite Chaucer's efforts to create a stable "poetic self-fashioning," WBPT takes different forms in its different redactions in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts and in Thynne's 1532 edition.
Seaman, Myra.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1156A.
Medieval romance generally assumes that action is inherently a masculine activity and speech feminine, with both supporting patriarchy. Various English romances examine these assumptions (sometimes ambiguously). WBT employs them to subvert not only…
In WBT, the first mention of fairies--the Wife's lament for their disappearance--is linked to and introduces the other fairy scenes. The knight's experience demonstrates that even in her first mention of fairies the Wife associates them with…
Rivera, Alison Bucket.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature 6 (1996): 103-16.
Considers medieval family structures, attitudes toward sexuality, and marital practices to argue that the Wife of Bath "almost definitely had no children." Unlike Margery of Kempe, she may have been sterile.
Heffley, Sylvia Patricia.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 3446A.
Although Christian marriage was well defined by theologians in the twelfth through the thirteenth centuries, the proper role of sexuality remained debatable, as shown in the west portal of Senlis Cathedral, in Jean de Meun's introduction of the…
Awareness of narratological levels helps us understand differences in intent in Gower and Chaucer. Comparison of Gower's "Tale of Florent" and Chaucer's WBT illustrates these differences. Overall, Gower has a purpose and achieves closure; Chaucer…
Biebel, Elizabeth M.
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. 63-75.
WBT reveals the Wife's idealized vision of society. The Tale answers her society's gender inequities, which victimize both men and women, by depicting a world wherein ultimately women and men are recognized as individuals.
Biebel, Elizabeth M.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1564A.
Feminist criticism has changed perceptions of the Wife of Bath. Feminist critics perceive her not as a superficial and "garish caricature" of womanhood but as a serious person attempting to establish her identity, rejecting antifeminist tradition,…
Parallels between Mary and Constance exist not only in details but also in narrative strategy, since both women are subject to the complexities and contradictions of the exemplary mode. In addition, Constance is presented through metaphors of death,…
Nolan, Maura Bridget.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60 (1999): 123A.
The poetry of the age demonstrates the construction and manipulation of history, while popular culture reflects the changing relations of ruler and laws. Thus "Wynnere and Wasture" treats the 1352 Statute of Treasons. Chaucer's MLT,a poetic revision…
Landman, James [H.]
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 20 (1998): 1-39.
In MLT, the torment of Constance is explicitly linked with the judicial torture of Alla's messenger. A notion of a "single, certain truth" underlies the concern with torture in the Tale, also reflected in the attitude toward fiction expressed in MLP…
Goldstein, R. James.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 31-42.
Places the anti-Scottish legendary history of MLT into English historiographic tradition, especially Trevet's Chronicle. Argues that Chaucer implicitly supports England's claim to the overlordship of Scotland, a claim renewed by Henry IV and…
