Russell, J. Stephen.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.
Argues that medieval language theory and the arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric inform CT. They provided Chaucer with his fundamental awareness of the slipperiness of language-its inability to represent truth and reality and its ability to distort…
Pappano, Margaret Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 2490A.
Explores the sociocultural influence of sacerdotal celibacy on literature. Capable of performing the Mass, the "special body" of the priest became a literary icon, aligned with the Latin language in opposition to Lollardy. Lay writing emerged against…
Lerer, Seth.
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. 59-76.
In the beginning of CT, Chaucer's references and allusions to late-fourteenth-century theater indicate the potentially disruptive nature of dramatic public expression. CT defines the cycle plays as radically other-provincial, civic, and communally…
Kensak, Michael Alan.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 817A.
Entry into heaven and the approach to God properly conclude a pilgrimage, as represented by Dante and Alain de Lille. In ManPT, Chaucer inverts the topos to show logic and language vitiated (not transcended) as the Cook becomes literally drunk (not…
Holloway, Julia Bolton.
Julia Bolton Holloway. Jerusalem: Essays on Pilgrimage and Literature (New York: AMS Press, 1998), pp. 173-94.
Assesses the Wife of Bath (in contrast to the Clerk) and the Pardoner (in contrast to the Parson) as "Chaucer's Diptych of Eve and Adam," commenting on their depictions in the Ellesmere manuscript and reading them as inversions of the ideals of…
Haas, Kurtis Boyd.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 2970A.
Unlike other authors of chivalric romance of his time, Chaucer manipulates medieval theories of rhetoric to reveal how the relations of authority and discourse define both the pilgrim narrators and the characters in their tales. Treats WBPT, KnT,…
Claiming "there is no clear textual evidence for the assertion that [the Ellesmere order] reflects Chaucer's intention," Forni questions the authority of the Ellesmere order and examines how that order was canonized as Chaucerian. She contends that…
Ellis, Steve, ed.
London and New York: Longman, 1998.
An anthology of twelve previously published essays and excerpts from longer works that apply modern critical theory to CT. Ellis's introduction assesses the contributions of the essays to a postmodern understanding of CT.
Doltas, Dilek.
Hacettepe Bulletin of Social Sciences and Humanities 3 (1971): 157-75.
While depicting love and marriage in the Marriage Group, Chaucer presents the "delights of both the flesh and the soul." The group opens with Mel; WBPT, ClT, and MerT offer extreme but lively views. FranT presents an ideal secular solution, while…
DeVries, David N.
Chaucer Review 32 (1998): 391-99.
Despite David Wallace's assertion that London is "absent" in Chaucer, and D. W. Robertson's contention that medieval Londoners were content within "an hierarchical classless society," CT depicts London as an "underworld," where unscrupulous…
Cullen, Dolores L.
Santa Barbara, Calif.: Fithian Press, 1998.
Allegorical reading of the CT Host as an image of Christ, a figure of the Eucharist associated with joy, heroism, and omnipotence. The Host is a guide of others and the only pilgrim not in need of penance. His name, his language, and his leadership…
Cote, Mary Kathleen Hendrickson.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 2665A.
WBT, PrT, and SNT all confront the masculine authority of books, the nature of love and marriage, and the nature of feminine authority--issues of female identity and agency. They assert a feminine response to masculine discourse in CT, culminating in…
Carruthers, Leo.
Jacqueline Hamesse et al., eds. Medieval Sermons and Society: Cloister, City, University: Proceedings of International Symposia at Kalamazoo and New York. Textes et etudes du Moyen Age, no. 9 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fłdłration Internationale des Instituts d'₁tudes Młdiłvales, 1998), pp. 219-40.
Shows how the Middle English sermon series :Jacob's Well" reflects many aspects of contemporary society. Carruthers likens its audience to that of CT.
Brosamer, Matthew James.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4643A.
Assesses gluttony in CT and Piers Plowman, arguing that each presents consumption as both an occasion of the sin and part of its symbolic apparatus. In these works and in scriptural and patristic traditions, gluttony signifies human potential for all…
Boehme, Timothy Howard.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60 (1999): 121A.
Analysis of WBPT, FrT, SumT, ClT, FranT and Ret indicates that Chaucer was "a realist with regard to religion and a nominalist with regard to language and epistemological issues."
Bishop, Kathleen A.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4643A.
Explores how classical comedy (especially Plautus and Ovid) and medieval elegiac comedies influenced Chaucer's fabliaux and the fabliau elements of ManT, WBP, TC, and the Prologue to the apocryphal Tale of Beryn.
Biebel, Elizabeth M.
Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal, eds. Food and Eating in Medieval Europe (London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1998), pp. 15-26.
Surveys references to food in CT, arguing that they capitalize on traditional associations of the "feminized Christ" and butchered animals.
An introduction to CT, designed to enable students to approach the poem on their own. Includes sections on style and narrative technique; voice, narration, and form; and themes,tensions, and ambiguities--each with explanatory discussion,summary of…
Allen, Mark.
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. 9-21.
In the transformation from Deduit in the "Roman de la Rose" to the Host of CT, and in the actions of the Host during the pilgrimage, we can see intersections of gender and class as Chaucer constructs the Host's distinctively "bourgeois masculinity."
Zieman, Katherine Grace.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 818A.
Late-medieval liturgical activities--especially benefactions and the education that lay behind them--resulted from a variety of conditions and motives and produced a volatile environment that influenced the rise of vernacular literacy.
Yeager, R. F., ed.
Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 1998.
Fifteen essays by various authors, each essay originally presented at the annual meeting of the John Gower Society between 1992 and 1997. Revised for publication, the essays explore issues of Gower's poetics and methods, his political concerns, and…
Winstead, Karen A.
Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Divides Middle English saints' lives about virgin martyrs (ca. 1200-1450) into three subgroups and examines how each reflects the cultural conditions of its reception.
Wilsbacher, Gregory James.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 3448A.
Examines ethical questions raised by medieval literature for modern readers in the light of modern philosophical studies (Jean-FranƯois Lyotard, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy), as shown in LGW (literature and history), Piers Plowman…
Waters, Claire McMartin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 4423A.
Focuses on the association of preaching and the preacher's body in medieval tradition, exploring the association through traditional identification of women and the body. Women preachers of hagiographic tradition and various exemplary women…
