Analyzes the "quotidian vocality of the medieval chicken yard" in John Lydgate's and Robert Henryson's versions of the "cock and jewel" fable, focusing on how avian vocality draws attention to the pace and meaning of the rhyme-royal verse form of the…
Rentz, Ellen K.
Notes and Queries 263 (2018): 172-74.
Argues that San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 64538, a short Middle English defense of women attributed to Solomon, appears to derive from Chaucer's Mel, specifically Mel, 1103-9. Suggests that "scholars ought to continue thinking about the…
Argues that the scheme of "diminution" penetrates every dimension of Th and discusses how the meanings are generated and complicated through combination of different dimensions. In Japanese.
Drawing on the superflat movement in Japanese contemporary art, argues that cuteness in Th effects a compression of the text's narrative layers and semiotic networks. Mirroring the horizontal, non-linear organization of the poem's layout in medieval…
Eckert, Kenneth.
Review of English Studies 68, no. 285 (2017): 471-87.
Reads Th as a "brilliant joke at the Host's expense": not a satire or parody of tail-rhyme romances but a repudiation of the Host's "crude homosocial bantering," his "puerile tastes," and his "pretensions" as a literary critic. Includes comments on…
Weigel, Bjoern.
In Wolfgang Benz and Brigitte Mihok, eds. Handbuch des AntiSemitismus: Judenfeindshaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Vol. 7, Literatur, Film, Theater und Kunst (Boston, Mass.: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 49-52.
Describes the "religiös motivierte Xenophobien" (religiously motivated xenophobia) of PrT and comments on the degree to which it may be considered satirical.
Heng, Geraldine
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Provides a comprehensive view of how "race" is defined in the premodern world and addresses the process of "race-making" within and outside the European context. In particular, discusses how Jews in England were "racialized" and analyzes the "sensory…
Zarins, Kim.
Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 4.1 (2017): 1-63.
Interprets the Pardoner as an intersex person, taking his sexuality literally rather than figuratively, a matter of variation rather than lack. Clarifies these concepts in the history of science and the history of Chaucer criticism, and compares the…
Ramírez-Arlandi, Juan.
In Salvador Peña and Juan Jesús Zaro, eds. Traducir a los clásicos: Entornos y transformaciones (Granada: Comares, 2018), pp. 187-204.
Analyzes the Spanish translation of PardT by Patricio Gannon published in 1944 in Argentina, a version that used as a source text John S. P. Tatlock's and Percy MacKaye's modernized version (1912). Studies the degree of rewriting in Gannon's version…
Examines the "rhetoric of pestilence" as a "powerful contemplative tool" that urges readers to "self-examination, penitence, and a more active, strategic approach to death" in five texts: PardT, John Lydgate's "Danse Macabre," "The Castle of…
Lee, Sun Young.
Feminist Studies in English Literature 25.3 (2017): 35-66.
Considers how PhyT prompts attention to "issues of female victimization and women's agency in litigation process," exploring Chaucer's alterations of his source material in Livy and the "Roman de la Rose," and examining how his tale evokes late…
Pugh, Tison.
Studies in Philology 114 (2017): 473-96.
Argues that MerT is unified by its engagement with medieval debate tradition, evident in a series of five episodes that concern competing views on gender and marriage. Moreover, the "phantom debate" of the Merchant's "split consciousness" and the…
Fyler, John M.
Critical Survey 30.2 (2018): 20-50.
Argues that the narrator in MerT "augments the malignity of the tale itself by debunking all idealism and mocking its naiveté, but in his blindness and rhetorical ineptitude points to a sordid reality that he fails to gloss over." Yet, the tale…
Assesses "maternal authority" in literary works from Augustine's "Confessions" to Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," including a chapter entitled "Maternal Abandonment, Maternal Deprivation: Tales of Griselda in Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer, and…
Fesko, J. V.
In Ronald S. Baines, ed. By Common Confession: Essays in Honor of James M. Renihan (Palmdale, Calif.: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2015), pp. 17-37.
Argues that ClT allegorically "reveals key elements of a medieval doctrine of justification," reading Walter as God and Griselda as a "reformed sinner." The tale also "provides a window into how a number of key scriptural texts figured into this…
Argues that the right use of anger in proper, hierarchical social relationships in SumT affirms aristocratic authority while undermining the pretenses of Friar John and Jankyn the clerk.
Štrmelj, Lidija.
In Gert Hofmann and Snježana Zorić, eds. Presence of the Body: Awareness in and beyond Experience (Boston, Mass.: Brill Rodopi, 2017), pp. 77-91.
Characterizes the Wife of Bath as "full of life and energy," with a "material" rather than a "romantic" view of marriage, based in her "sexual instincts." Summarizes the GP description of the Wife as well as that in WBP, offers a Freudian analysis…
Gordić Petković, Vladislava.
Sarajevo Notebook 51 (2017): n.p. Available at http://sveske.ba/en/content/astrologija-i-knjizevnost (accessed January 20, 2020).
A shortened version of an essay from a two-volume work not seen: Ljiljana Banjanin, Persida Lazarević Di Giacomo, Sanja Roić, and Svetlana Šeatović, eds. Il SoleLuna presso gli slavi meridionali, 2 vols. (Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2017).…
Dyches, Jeanne, and Brandon L. Sams.
Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education 25 (2018): 370-83.
Offers "pedagogical realism" as an approach to reconciling the "goals of social justice" with canonical "curricula standards" in English instruction, illustrating how to use the motif of rape in teaching WBT.
Coghen, Monika.
Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 12.3 (2017): 175-85.
Describes the transmission of WBT, through John Dryden's modernized English version in "Fables: Ancient and Modern" and Voltaire's French in "Ce qui plait aux dames" to Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz's Polish "Co sie damom podoba" in "Pisma rózne wierszem…
Bowden, Betsy.
Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2017.
Analyzes manifestations of the Wife of Bath throughout 1660-1810, in seven chapters on primarily verbal art and seven on primarily visual art. Melds methodologies from the disciplines of literature, art history, musicology, education, folklore, print…
Bjork, Robert E.
Chaucer Review 53.3 (2018): 336-49.
Surveys Chaucer's uses of terms for private parts, and argues that his use of "bele chos" (beautiful thing) instead of pudendum (shameful thing) suggests his celebration of the Wife's sexuality.
Ballesteros-González, Antonio.
In Antonio R. de Toro Santos and Eduardo Barros Grela, eds. Looking Out on the Fields: Reimagining Irish Literature and Culture (Rennes: TIR, 2018), pp. 922.
Presents Chaucer's Wife of Bath and James Joyce's Molly Bloom as counter-cultural figures, from the perspective of their characters, their views of man-woman relationships, and their sexuality. Contrasts the different forms of expression of their…
Compares MLT and the stories of Constance by Nicholas Trevet and John Gower. Argues that MLT points to the uncertainty of Rome as the center of ecclesiastical authority in the later fourteenth century.
McClellan, William.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Applies a "New Paradigm for Reading" to MLT based on the "new ethics" of Giorgio Agamben's analysis of Levi Primo's testimony of Auschwitz, combined with Walter Benjamin's concept of "constellations" of images that fuse past and present. Focuses on…
