Mertens-Fonck, Paule.
Bulletin de la Societe Royale Le Vieux-Liege 13 (1997): 707-18.
Argues that the GP portrait of the Monk evokes Jean le Bel, chronicler of Edward III, and suggests that MkT is a poetic chronicle. With the Knight and the Prioress, the Monk is evidence that contemporary personalities and events lie behind CT.
Staley, Lynn.
David Aers and Lynn Staley. The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), pp. 179-259
Revises, and reprints as one, the following essays: "Inverse Counsel: Contexts for the 'Melibee'" and "Chaucer's Tale of the Second Nun and the Strategies of Dissent."
Mel resembles several other late-fourteenth-century retellings of this story as a proper model for wifely imitation. In using the form of the scholastic arts lecture, however, Prudence co-opts a masculine discursive style and its authoritative…
Grace, Dominick M.
Florilegium 14 (1995-96): 157-70.
Interpretations of "tretys" in MelP have assumed a single referent for both occurrences of the term. But here and elsewhere Chaucer challenges assumptions of consistency between word and meaning. In making the first use of "tretys" refer to Mel and…
Rambuss, Richard.
Lori Hope Lefkovitz, ed. Textual Bodies: Changing Boundaries of Literary Representation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 75-99.
The Prioress's identification with the little clergeon of PrT and her elisions of history indicate a "desire for transcendence" rather than sentimentality. The presence of bodily violence and prurience in PrT accords well with some of the…
Oliver, Kathleen M.
Chaucer Review 31 (1997): 357-64.
The "greyn" placed on the little child's tongue by the Virgin in PrT represents the Eucharistic Host, also known as "singing bread." "Greyn" means "particle," such as that broken from the wafer. The viaticum possessed properties of restoration and…
Meale, Carol M.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 39-60.
Argues that Chaucer was familiar with the realities of female monastic existence but chose to create his GP sketch of the Prioress from literary satire. The spirituality of PrT, however, is particularly apt for females, and many discussions of the…
Lindahl, Carl.
Journal of Folklore Research 34 (1997): 263-73.
Folklorists' recent interest in performance tends to neglect the chronological context of storytelling, for which now-maligned type and motif indexes remain useful. A change in pattern usually signals a change in meaning. For example, the ending of…
Lampert, Lisa Renee.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1997): 450A
In patriarchal tradition, the Christian is defined as male and spiritual; the female, as Other, Hebrew, and carnal. Lampert traces tensions in the parallel between women and Jews from Bernard de Clairvaux to Shakespeare's Shylock, including medieval…
Holsinger, Bruce W.
New Medieval Literatures 1 (1997): 157-92
Both ManT and PrT reflect the violence inherent in medieval teaching of music, especially evident in the role of tactile solmization--through the use of the Guidonian hand--in ecclesiastical tradition. In both, Chaucer suggests that music fuels the…
Gonzalez Fernandez-Corugedo, Santiago.
Luis A. Lazaro Lafuente, Jose Simon, and Ricardo J. Sola Buil,eds. Medieval Studies: Proceedings of the IIIrd International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (Madrid: Universidad de Alcala de Henares, 1996), pp. 151-75.
Comparative analysis of PrT and its Spanish analogue reveals how the author of each uses different rhetoric to achieve different aims, although the two share a tendency to direct personal appeal.
Sturges, Robert S.
Jeffrey Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York and London: Garland, 1997), pp. 261-77.
Provides Freudian and Lacanian analysis of two references to veils in the GP sketch of the Pardoner and the Host's threat at the end of PardT. The Pardoner's vernicle signifies his collusion with masculinist equations of penis and word, while his…
Lázaro Lafuente, Luis Alberto.
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. 146-53.
Discusses oral satiric performance in PardPT, focusing on medieval flytings, sermons, and "additive" oral structure.
Gerke, Robert S.
Bulletin of the West Virginia Association of College English Teachers 14 (1992): 23-33.
In plot and dominant ideas, PardT reflects the opposition between avarice and mercy common in the medieval vices-virtues tradition. The avaricious Pardoner lacks mercy, and the recurring notion of voluntary poverty in PardPT can be linked with mercy…
Cooper, Helen.
Patrick Mileham, ed. Harry Mileham, 1873-1957: A Catalogue. His Life and Works, with a Selection of Paintings, Designs, and Sketches (Paisley: University of Paisley, 1995), pp. 45-47.
Comments on Harry Mileham's painting of the Canterbury pilgrims, depicted in a tavern during the telling of PardPT. Mileham is sensitive to literary and historical detail, derived especially from GP and the Ellesmere illustrations. The painting…
Pelling, Margaret.
Social History of Medicine 8 (1995): 383-401.
Comments on the appropriateness of PhyT to its teller, both in its classical learning and in its "gender-related ambivalences," also found among historical physicians.
A Bakhtinian approach to the juxtaposition of PhyT and PardT. In its aloof style and its paralleling of Apius and Virginius, PhyT is marked by a "tendency to monologue." PardT is dialogic in its comic replacement of justice with mercy.
Finds parallels between FranT and Chretien de Troyes's "Eric and Enid" as both courtly texts and antiadulterous ones. Chaucer's contribution to the dialectic is the integration of "fin'amour" with Truth expressed as Christian virtue, defending…
Although the initial description of the egalitarian marriage in FranT seems to open liberating possibilities for Dorigen,the ultimate concern is which man is most "fre." Dorigen's actions and intentions have been lost in the insistence of Arveragus…
An unfinished "Tale" that constantly calls attention to stories it is not telling, SqT epitomizes the poetics of Chaucer's fragments, including CT itself. Successful fragments prompt intensified reader response; they imply infinitude. Medieval…
Heffernan, Carol F.
Chaucer Review 32 (1997): 32-45.
SqT is Chaucer's one foray into the genre of "interlace" romance, where characters and episodes are treated, then dropped, and subsequently treated again. SqT is not a parody like Th; it is a different genre that Chaucer wanted to try. He did not…
DiMarco, Vincent.
English Studies 78 (1997): 330-33.
Replies to M. C. Seymour's identification of seven satiric loci in SqT arguing that Chaucer's manipulations of convention may be seen as innovation rather than parody.
Taylor, Andrew.
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. 280-95.
Cites E. Talbot Donaldson's appreciation of May in MerT as an example of "iconologia," sexualized analysis or penetration of art or literature. Sexual titillation in reading is evident in medieval manuscripts and in modern responses to medieval…
A feminist reading of MerT as a diptych in which sympathy for May as the victim of marital rape is replaced by response to her as a fabliau shrew. May's reading and disposal of Damyan's letter are a "fissure" that marks her transformation and…
