Tornwall, William Allen.
Dissertation Abstracts 16.09 (1956): 1676.
Ranges throughout Chaucer's corpus, exploring imagery in a wide variety of works, arranged in five chapters: "Chaucer's Imagery and the Colors of Rhetoric," "The Appropriateness of the Subject Matter in Chaucer's Imagery," "Chaucer's Treatment of…
Wilson, Herman Pledger.
Dissertation Abstracts 16.11 (1956): 2154.
Identifies the "characteristics" of Chaucer's prose style in Bo, Mel, ParT, and Astr, comparing and contrasting them, and arguing that his reputation as a prose stylist has suffered because of linguistic changes and changes in taste.
Neville, Mark A., and Max J. Herzberg, eds.
Chicago: Rand McNally, 1956.
Illustrated anthology of English literature and literary criticism from Old English into the twentieth century, with a section entitled "The Time of Chaucer" that includes NPT and PardT, along with "Interesting Sidelights," "The Royal Tree," and "The…
Hartung, Albert E.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Lehigh University, 1957. Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global and at https://preserve.lehigh.edu/lehigh-scholarship/graduate-publications-theses-dissertations/theses-dissertations/study-textual.
Compares "the accepted and variant readings of 'Melibeus' with the corresponding passages in the French source, 'Le Livre de Melibee et Prudence'," assessing variants from fifty-seven manuscriptsof Mel and arguing that there was "an earlier version…
Cawley, A. C.
Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society (Literary and Historical Section) 8 (1956-1957): 173-80.
Assesses "unsavory" details of the GP description of the Summoner, the "bad feeling" between the Friar and the Summoner (WBP 3.829ff. and FrP 1265ff.), and concerns that link the GP Summoner and the summoner of FrT, clarifying the Friar's "attack" on…
Olson, Paul A.
Dissertation Abstracts 19.10 (1959): 2603.
Places the medieval "Jaloux tale" in "its philosophic and historical framework," rooted in the marriage controversies of Sts. Augustine and Jerome with the Pelagians, Manichee, and Jovinians Traces the tradition in French humanists of the twelfth and…
Barnes, John, producer.
Morrison, Theodore, collaborator.
United States:] Encyclopedia Britannica Films, 1957. Also released in VHS and DVD. YouTube version available at https://www.youtube.com/live/vJEVRxYDJz0?app=desktop&t=262s; accessed June 28, 2024.
Brief introduction to Chaucer, his age, and his language, with samples in Middle English and modern translation, followed by a dramatization of adapted portions of GP and PardPT, in stylized modern English, prose and verse.
Bennett, J. A. W.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1957. 2d ed. 1965.
Reads PF as a thematic exploration of Christian love infused with Neoplatonic thought and imagery, and influenced by Cicero, Macrobius, Alain de Lille, John de Meun, and Dante. Demonstrates the poem's tight verbal structure and its allusiveness,…
Bland, D. S.
[London] Times Literary Supplement April 26, 1957, p. 264.
Suggests that Chaucer was in 1345-46, with several rejoinders in ensuing correspondence: Margaret Galway, May 10, p. 289 and July 12, p. 427; C. E. Welch, May 17, p 305; and G. C. G. Hall, June 28, p. 397.
Argues that the Host's mention of "half-wey pryme" in RvP 1.3906 refers to the canonical hour of prime rather than "modern clock time" and means 6:30 am, rather than 7:30 as it is often explained. Compares other chronological references in CT…
Assesses the "artistic role" in TC of the narrator--a commentator and a "historian [who] meticulously maintains a distance between himself and the events in the story." Explores "temporal, spatial, aesthetic, and religious" devices in the poem…
Revisits Carleton Brown's 1910 suggestion of source relations between the "Alma Redemptoris Mater" in PrT and the "Gaude Maria," offering a liturgical explanation for Chaucer's use of the former.
Brown, Calvin S.
Boston University Studies in English 3 (1957): 228-30.
On contextual and linguistic grounds, rejects Marion Montgomery's suggestion (1957) that "for the nones" in LGW-P (F 292-96 and G 194-98) is a "reference to the canonical hour of Nones, with its attendant services."
Identifies various instances of irony in MerT, arguing that its "persistent irony" distinguishes the tale from Chaucer's comic fabliaux and aligns it with the "moral fable" of PardT. A poem of "clarity, critical observation, and disgust," MerT also…
Chute, Marchette.
William Targ, ed. Bibliophile in the Nursery: A Bookman's Treasury of Collectors' Lore on Old and Rare Children's Books (Cleveland: OH: World, 1957), pp. 106-12.
Excerpts and re-titles a portion of chapter two of Chute's 1946 "Geoffrey Chaucer on England," describing the nature of Chaucer's education and the books he likely encountered in his early studies.
Dobbins, Austin C.
Modern Language Quarterly 18 (1957): 309-12.
Identifies previously unrecorded allusions to Chaucer, most of them reflecting his "reputation as a religious leader and reformer," some based on works attributed to him falsely.
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56 (1957): 52-59.
Considers possible sources and analogues for three passages in FranT (5.721-25, 829-34, and 1113-15), explaining how diction, style, and rhetoric indicate the likely influence of Alanus de Insulis's "Anticlaudianus" (Alain de Lille's "Anticlaudian")…
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Philological Quarterly 36 (1957): 49–60.
Identifies parallels between the characterizations of January and May in MerT and those of Pluto and Proserpine in Claudian's "De Raptu Proserpinae." Anticipating the role of the fairy deities in Chaucer's Pear-Tree episode, Claudian's "myth of…
Duino, Richard.
English Journal 46 (1957): 320-25, 365.
Provides "some scholarly background information" about the Pardoner intended for teachers of high school senior English classes, summarizing studies by Tupper, Kittredge, Curry, and Patch, and focusing on why Chaucer may have invested this Canterbury…
Describes Chaucer's life and works in a brief subsection of chapter two (pp. 47-56), offering appreciative commentary that characterizes the poet as one who "loved life," despite awareness of the "faults, sins, crimes, follies, and vanities of…
Eisner, Sigmund.
Wexford, [Ire.]: John English, 1957.
Identifies and traces developments of the sources and analogues of WBT, emphasizing the transmission of Irish roots through Welsh elaboration, Arthurian development in Brittany and France, Middle English analogues, and various parallels in…