Assesses Boccaccio's and Chaucer's attitudes toward their sources by examining the relations of their narrators with Cressida in "Filostrato" and TC. Cressida's legendary status as dishonest and inconstant had been established before Boccaccio and…
Kelen, Sarah Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1997): 3928A.
Identified by Caxton as "historiographs," Chaucer and Langland write as historians and consider the meaning of writing history. In TC, Chaucer discusses sources and antiquity as marks of authority and hindrances to reading. The English literary…
Kanno, Masahiko.
Masahiko Kanno and others, eds. Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of Tadahiro Ikegami. (Tokyo: Yushodo, 1997): pp. 241-54.
Whereas Boccaccio uses the straightforward word "tradimento" of Criseyde, Chaucer uses the roundabout phrase "hire hertes variaunce." In TC, "in gret penaunce" means both that "Criseyde was in great misery" and "Criseyde was in hell for her sins."
Jimura, Akiyuki.
English and English Teaching, Vol. 2: A Festschrift in Honour of Kiichiro Nakatani (Hiroshima: Department of English, Faculty of School Education, Hiroshima University, 1997), pp. 57-69.
In TC, descriptions of nature, including natural objects, plants, and animals, reflect the characters' emotions. When characters "act in harmony with nature," things go well; when they act against nature, they are destroyed by its "uncontrollable…
Hanning, Robert W.
Chaucer Yearbook 4 (1997): 79-83
Reads "thus seyde here and howne" (TC 4.210) as "everyone agreed," a reading supported by reference to Henry Knighton's "Chronicle," in which Howne's army ("Hownher") may have connoted wide consensus in popular tradition.
Aristotelian natural philosophy, specifically the doctrines of natural place and natural motion, lie at the heart of the structure and meaning of TC. Troilus and Criseyde are bodies in motion toward their natural resting places; their natures--her…
Fichte, Joerg O.
Walter Haug and Burghart Wachinger, eds. Fortuna (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1995), pp. 192-215.
Surveys the theme of Fortune's influence in treatments of the story of Troilus and Criseyde from Boccaccio to Dryden, including TC and the versions of Henryson and Shakespeare.
Fehrenbacher, Richard W.
Exemplaria 9 (1997): 341-69.
Readers who refuse to recognize Pandarus's incestuous desire risk participating in the denial of such desire in patriarchal societies; they also risk colluding in society's invocation of the incest taboo, which underlies traffic in women.
Summarizes the scholastic idea of the book and applies the concept of the written word (book) as "essential epistemological instrument" to Wolfram's "Titurel" fragments (ca. 1220) and to TC. Chaucer presents Troilus as a misreader of texts who only…
Explores political implications of PF, commenting on the theme of common profit and on Chaucer's political situation. Examines the role of Nature as an advocate of hierarchy and a suppresser of rebellion.
Considers the letter as a means of spoken and written transmission and demonstrates how the most important elements and functions of the letter prescribed by the "artes dictaminis" were put to creative use in medieval literary texts such as the…
Bloomfield, Josephine.
Modern Philology 94 (1997): 291-304.
Although Chaucer's narrator is sympathetic to the hero of TC, Troilus's "stellification" contradicts our expectations because he values his own desires over the welfare of the polis. Chaucer's "political and moral judgment against Troilus's…
Bankert, Dabney Anderson.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1997): 4733A.
Considers biblical, historical, traditional, and hagiographical accounts of conversion, exploring Chaucer's appropriation of them to psychologize courtly love or "'fin'amors' as a surrogate religion" in TC.
Surveys Ockhamism and Chaucer's exposure to it. Through both a "philosophical interpretation of character" and a close analysis of images, words, and discourse, Andretta maintains Chaucer's allegiance to "manifest truths that are skeptical, and only…
Andretta, Helen [Ruth]
Joan F. Hallisey and Mary-Anne Vetterling, eds. Proceedings: Northeast Regional Meeting of the Conference on Christianity and Literature (Weston, Mass.: Regis College, [1996]), pp. 1-7.
Considers Criseyde, Troilus, and Pandarus as figures of Spirit, Psyche, and Self respectively, suggesting that the interactions among the three characters in TC depict a "false theology" that is made right in Troilus's translation.
Watson, Nicholas.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997): 145-87.
The belief that all humanity will attain salvation occurs with surprising frequency in Middle English writings. Though influenced by Latin theology, the sentiment was generated primarily by English and Anglo-Norman vernacular culture. PF shows the…
Straus, Barrie Ruth.
Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler, eds. Desire and Sexuality in the Premodern West (Toronto; Buffalo, N.Y.; and London: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 245-64.
The formel eagle in PF, Emily in KnT, and Margery Kempe seek to delay or renounce sexual activity. The eagle's blush embodies her later request to delay a choice of mate; Emily's desire to remain unmarried is marked by her desire to reject the…
Hoffman, Donald L.
Will Wright and Steven Kaplan, eds. The Image of Nature in Literature, the Media, and Society (Pueblo, Colo.: Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery, 1993), pp. 61-67.
Compares the depiction of social order in Aristotle's 'Politics' with that in PF. Chaucer's Natura is a figure of "communal order" who properly subordinates the drive for procreation to the need for social hierarchy.
Taylor, Andrew.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 19 (1997): 95-119.
Reconsiders what role Anne may have had as a patron of Chaucer, examining her literary interests and political career and assessing the relation between these and the depiction of Alceste in LGWP. From Lydgate forward, the construction of Chaucer as…
Seymour, M. C.
Modern Language Review 92 (1997): 832-41.
Compares the original (F) version with the revised (G) version of LGWP, commenting on stages of transmission of G--from its composition to the extant manuscript Cambridge University Library Gg 4.27. Hypothesizes that Chaucer revised LGWP as a…
Harding, Wendy.
Marcel Faure, ed. Felonie, trahison, reniements au moyen age. Actes du troiseme colloque international de Montpellier Universite Paul-Valery, 24-26 novembre 1995. Cahiers du CRISIMA (Centre de Recherche sur l'Imaginaire et la Societe au Moyen Age), no. 3 (Montpellier: Publications de l'Universite Paul-Valery, 1997), pp. 441-52.
In LGW, Chaucer reflects on his role as poet, his relation to past and present, and his responsibility to his readers, comically exploring how literature must betray its sources through the accusation that the dreamer betrays courtly values. TC and…
Fradenburg, Louise O.
Karma Lochrie, Peggy McCracken, and James A. Schultz, eds. Constructing Medieval Sexuality. Medieval Cultures, no. 11 (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesote Press, 1997), pp. 135-57.
Lacanian analysis of LGW that considers the hope of redemption as a function of charity in Aquinas and in Freud's commentary on Daniel Paul Schreber. Though beautiful and concerned with love, LGWP promises but does not fulfill the desire it creates,…
Argues that Chaucer drew on Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and the "Ovide moralise" rather than on Geoffrey of Monmouth for his description of Pyramus's death in LGW.
The chaos in HF is partly the result of multiple interpretations of texts and massive disagreement among the characters. Geffrey may curse the individual who "misinterprets" his writing, but he is partly joking. Only those authors whose texts are…
Serrano Reyes, Jesus L.
Margarita Gimenez Bon and Vickie Olsen, eds. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Dpto. Filologia Inglesa, 1997), pp. 326-37.
Argues that Chaucer visited Catalonia sometime between 1365 and 1366. Exposure to the country's folklore results in Chaucer's description of folk "alle on an hepe" in HF (2149). Serrano Reyes provided contemporary pictures of this type of "human…
