Thomas Spencer, a scrivener, purportedly owned a copy of TC in 1394. Presents the historical record regarding Spencer's life, since if this claim is true, it represents the only recorded instance of one of Chaucer's works circulating during his…
Carlin, Martha.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 40 (2018): 413–21.
Distinguishes among taverns, alehouses, and public inns, providing historical evidence that the latter were in Chaucer's day a "new institution," and maintaining that his setting of the opening of GP in an inn engages an emergent social culture,…
Carlson, Cindy L.,and Angela Jane Weisl,eds.
New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Eleven essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors. Topics include depictions of virginity, widowhood, and their intersections in medieval romance, hagiography, and drama, with recurrent references to other literary genres and…
Carlson, Cindy.
Cynthia Kuhn and Cindy Carlson, eds. Styling Texts: Dress and Fashion in Literature (Youngstown, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2007), pp. 33-48.
Carlson examines motifs of shame and covering in the two disrobing scenes in ClT, arguing that Griselda's request for a smock to cover herself before she leaves Walter indicates that she has "shown a self that cannot be shamed by Walter, by poverty…
Carlson, David R.
Huntington Library Quarterly 54 (1991): 283-300.
Hoccleve's hopes for preferment depended upon his claim to personal acquaintance with Chaucer and to his "consail and reed." Hoccleve's patrons had known Chaucer by sight and could verify the image of Chaucer that accompanies Hoccleve's poems. …
Carlson, David R.
Robert Taylor, James F. Burke, Patricia J. Eberle, Ian Lancashire, and Brian S. Merrilees, eds. The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1993), pp. 29-70.
Usk's "Testament of Love" relies on Chaucer's translation of Bo and his literary reworking of philosophy in TC, but it reflects even more significantly Chaucer's innovations in writing nondevotional, apolitical, self-consciously literary prose texts.
Carlson, David R.
University of Toronto Quarterly 64:2 (1995): 274-88.
Inferences about Chaucer's court life and patronage provided literary successors with a model for the profitabliity of writing poetry, which--along with the increase in the number of Italian humanists and the advent of printing--fostered the…
Carlson, David R.
Library, ser. 6, 19 (1997): 25-67.
Traces the history of two related series of woodcuts. The first, cut for Caxton's 1483 edition, apparently derives from miniatures in the manuscript now known as the Oxford Fragments (Ox1 and Ox2). The second series was copied from Caxton for…
Carlson, David R.
New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Chaucer's occupations--domestic servant, customs agent, justice of the peace, and clerk of the King's Works--shaped his literature, and his "servility" enabled him to become the "father" of English poetry. His biography and his works alike reveal…
Legal proceedings following the 1390 roadside theft from Chaucer while he was on the King's business demonstrate the folly of any medieval challenge to hierarchical prerogative by a gang representing antihierarchical attitudes. Theoretically…
Carlson, David R.
Modern Language Review 109 (2014): 931-52.
Argues that Gower was "emulous and rivalrous," and eager to better the work of Ovid, Chaucer, and even his own early poetry. Compares Chaucer's use of the Ovidian tale of Ceyx and Alcyone, in BD and HF, with Gower's use of the same material in the…
Carlson, David R.
Review of English Studies 66, no. 274 (2015): 240–57.
Discusses how Skelton persistently mocks Henry's awarding knighthood to Garnesche by likening him to the silliest knights of romance. Claims that this portrayal of knighthood is influenced by Chaucer's mockery of knights in Th.
Carlson, David R.
Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2021.
Chapter 3, "Gower and Estates Satire before Chaucer," includes brief mention of Chaucer in situating and analyzing Gower's uses of estates satire in his "Mirour de l'Omme," "Vox Clamantis," and Confessio
Amantis.
Carlson, Paula J.
Mediaevalia 11 (1989, for 1985): 139-50.
In LGWP, Alceste is a more complicated character than is suggested by references to her in TC: "Alceste's truth, goodness, and faithfulness are offset in the Prologue by her obstinance, petulance, and fickleness." Critical readings ignore the…
Carnegie, Teena A. M.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 2472A, 1998.
Experience, here defined in the context of feminist criticism, gives women the capacity to differentiate themselves from others as well as to identify with them. Gendered experience is examined in the works of many authors from antiquity to the…
Carney, Clíodhna, and Frances McCormack, eds.
Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013.
Eleven essays about Chaucer and his works that form, in the words of its editors, a "general" rather than a "thematically unified" collection. Threads that run through multiple chapters include rhetoric, ethics, and poetic form. For individual…
Carney, Clíodhna.
Hodder O'Connell and Brendan O'Connell, eds. Transmission and Generation in Medieval and Renaissance Literature: Essays in Honour of John Scattergood (Dublin: Four Courts, 2012), pp. 89-101.
Regards the Squire as the "son-substitute" of the Franklin, and reads FranT, with a nod to Freud, as a projection of the narrator's idealized and decontextualized attitudes toward money, generosity, gentility, and virtue that reveals a subtle…
Carney. Clíodhna.
Clíodhna Carney and Frances McCormack, eds. Chaucer's Poetry: Words, Authority and Ethics (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 61-74.
Considers the relationship between the Wife of Bath and the Clerk, focusing on their shared approach to self-presentation through the words of other writers and their interrelationship as speakers. Highlights the Wife's use of clerical authority and…
Carpenter, Garth Chivalle.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Victoria University of Wellington, 1997. Fully accessible via https://openaccess.wgtn.ac.nz/articles/thesis/Chaucer_s_Solar_Pageant_an_Astrological_Reading_of_the_Canterbury_Tales/16959343?file=31374472 (accessed April 6, 2026).
Correlates the "twenty-four 'Canterbury Tales'" with the twelve signs of the zodiac, observing two binary oppositions of the zodiacal signs in the "main characters" of each tale as they "symbolize parts of the body in the "astrological medical…
Carpenter, Nan Cooke.
Explicator 30.06 (1973): Item 51.
Comments on the portentousness of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and on the moon as the cause of the rainstorm in TC 3.624-28, when Criseyde decides to stay at Pandarus's home.
Proposes that the first line of HF derives directly from Tibullus (III.iv.95) and hypothesizes that Chaucer may have had access to a manuscript of Tibullus's work (Codex Ambrosianus) held by Coluccio Salutati in 1373.
Analyzes how the "Legend of Dido" differs from Virgil's "Aeneid" and Ovid's "Heroides," VII. Claims that Chaucer's narrator is more self-referential and that the plurality of voices of the narrator, along with the characters' voices, results in a…
Carrillo Linares, María José.
Brian J. Worsfold, ed. Women Ageing Through Literature and Experience (Lleida and Catalunya, Spain: Department of English and Linguistics, University of Lleida, 2005), pp. 21-30.
Depictions of female and male aging in WBT and MerT reflect the reality that human beings wish to remain desirable "in spite of advanced aging."
