The people's and Griselda's agreements with Walter, the agent of testing, are analogous to the Old and New Testament covenants, respectively. The lower-order civil bond, governed by the letter of the law, is weak; the higher-order marriage bond,…
Chaucer used allegory to create a teleological statement of ideal behavior as an apologia for the most repressive aspects of ruling-class dominance and male chauvinism of the world in which he lived, and which he depicted on the literal level of ClT.
Bradwardine's concept of God's "potentia absoluta" serves to reconcile the literal and allegorical meanings of Walter in ClT. Griselda must accept Walter's actions, though she cannot comprehend them. This parallels man's relationship to God, but,…
SqT may originally have been written for a Northern English audience, which could appreciate its echoes of Mandeville's "Travels" and "Gawain and the Green Knight."
Kee, Kenneth.
English Studies in Canada 1 (1975): 1-12.
The Franklin, not to be identified as Chaucer's spokesman regarding marriage, frequently intrudes into his story in order to present a favorable self image before his listeners. His intrusions also divert his audience from serious moral issues his…
The Host's reference to the "yiftes of Fortune and of Nature" is the thematic basis for Group C (Fragment 6). PhyT shows how Grace can sustain those injured by Nature's gifts; PardT shows the wretched fate of those who, blinded by Fortune's gifts,…
The Old Man of PardT, wretched because of his inability to die, embodies a lesson of "contemptus mundi" that should correct the rioters' "rash wish" to overcome physical death,but due to their spiritual blindness, they fail to heed his warning.
McGalliard, John C.
Philological Quarterly 54 (1975): 1-18.
Chaucer's characterization is sophisticated. The monk, merchant, and wife are complex personalities rather than flat stereotypes. The merchant is not duped or punished because of character flaws; he has none. The tale emphasizes the success of the…
Rice, Nancy Hall.
Dissertation Abstracts International 36 (1975): 875A.
The mistaken belief that sin was connected with death and sexuality led to the need to find a scapegoat. The result was virulence against women, Jews, or other denigrated casts. The virulence of the dominant group against the Jews in PrT can be…
Because the description of Sir Thopas underscores his artificiality and contains references to puppetry, the knight may be viewed as a puppet of Chaucer-Pilgrim, himself a puppet manipulated by Chaucer-Poet. This metaphor clarifies the operation of…
Chaucer's statements in the "Thopas-Melibee" link, which critics have interpreted in at least three different ways, are significant only as a continuation of the Pilgrim Chaucer's pose of literary innocence. They serve to indicate a switch from…
Van Arsdale, Ruth.
American Notes and Queries 13 (1975): 146-48.
George Williams is wrong to claim homosexual implication for Th, in the light of a re-examination of the knight himself, the forest through which he rode, and Chuacer's use of "prike" in the tale. To find sexual connotations in the tale is to read…
The labors of Hercules, employed by Boethius to show how man may determine his own fortune, are misused by the Monk, who sees the "Consolation" only as a source for secular tales.
Kehler, Joel R.
English Language Notes 12 (1975): 184-87.
Joseph's Conrad's epigraph to "The Rescue" quotes FranT 5.1342-44, and the two works share concern with "chivalric idealism" and 'amour courtois'." The heroines of the two works are "captives of illusion," and they abandon courtly suitors when…
Chaucer sees joy in Boethian terms as arising form what a man loves. Unlike the Man of Law and the Monk, the Nun's Priest affirms both worldly joy and heavenly bliss; he suggests that lost joy may be recovered if one, like Chauntecleer, actively…
DuVal, John.
Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 1.3 (1975): 15-24.
The French story is only a part of the larger whole of the fox's adventure; the English is not, though linked thematically with the Marriage Group. Love for Pertelote makes Chauntecleer ignore his dream; in the French it is pride. Narrative…
NPT makes fun of the Monk and the Prioress by combining hunting, rough handling of animals, sexual indulgence, and two morals. The "treading," the hunting, the near sacrifice and downfall, the injunction against flattery, touch upon the…
In its narrative strategy and its theme of the comic irrelevance of the abstractions on which men try to base their lives, Nigel of Longchamps' medieval Latin beast fable, "Speculum Stultorum," provided a suggestive model for Chaucer's NPT.
NPT is indebted to the naturalistic and mock-heroic tone of the French "Roman de Renard," as well as to an indigenous English tradition of didactic beast fables and exempla. The Priest's concluding exhortation on humility marks the point of the…
By proposing aesthetic and religious inevitability, the palinode to TC relieves the reader's frustration at Chaucer's deliberately ambiguous characterization of the poem's three main characters and shows the unity underlying the seemingly diverse…
Erzgräber, Willi.
Manfred Bambeck and Hans Helmut Christmann, eds. Philologica Romanica: Erhard Lommatzsch gewidmet (Munich: Fink, 1975), pp. 97-117.
Book IV divides into five sections, as does section 5 (the parting scene)--Chaucer being influenced by Boethius even in matters of structure. The whole poem has "dramatic" qualities, but in Book IV the drama is of non-action.
Hanson, Thomas B.
Chaucer Review 9 (1975): 297-302.
To emphasize the theme of Troilus' misconception of the nature of love and to make his poem reflect the stages of "gradus amoris," Chaucer placed the consummation scene at the numerical center of the "beta" version of TC.
