Payne, Robert O.
Chaucer Review 9 (1975): 197-211.
The "G" Prologue to LGW is central to Chaucer's poetic career both chronologically and artistically. The Prologue and its narrator are a "mythic distillation" of Chaucer's earlier works and show the love poet's mature awareness of his position in…
Doyle, A. I., and George B. Pace.
Studies in Bibliography 28 (1975): 41-61.
Transcriptions of previously unpublished manuscript versions of three minor poems: "ABC" from Melbourne MS.; "Truth" from Nottinghame ME LM I; "Wom Unc" from Bodleian Fairfax 16.
The ms cited, an anthology of astronomical treatises possibly compiled in Spain c.1303, and transferred to England c.1350,may contain the specific sources for Chaucer's Astr. Two Chaucerian interpolations coincide with ms marginalia, and Chaucer's…
Taylor, Jerome.
Aldo Scaglione, ed. Francis Petrarch, Six Centuries Later: A Symposium. North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, Symposia, no. 3 (Chapel Hill: Department of Romance Languages, University of North Carolina, 1975), pp. 364-83.
Chaucer's Clerk responds to WBT using the poetry of Petrarch, the tale of Griselda, and a spiritually improved version of Aristotelian logic.
Clogan, Paul M.
Medievalia et Humanistica 6 (1975): 189-98.
Godwin's literary criticism of Chaucer's poetry contributed to the Romantic conception of Chaucer the man. His "Life" gives insight into the idea of the Middle Ages in early-nineteenth-century England.
Salmon, Vivian.
H. G. Ringbom, ed. Style and Text: Studies Presented to Nils Erik Enkvist (Stockholm: Skriptor, 1975), pp. 263-77.
Evaluation of the characteristics of genuine, spontaneous conversation supports the conclusion that CT provides realistic evidence of English speech in the late fourteenth century. Chaucerian conversation is affected by the need of speech to reflect…
Chaucer's comments on language show him to be particularly sensitive to all aspects of English, which had become fully accepted as a literary language. Along with other Middle English writers like the "Gawain"-poet and Langland, he manipulates…
Theiner, Paul.
Studies in Medieval Culture 5 (1975): 173-79.
In MLT Chaucer does not change the events found in Trevet, but, rather, transforms their telling so as to alter our perceptions of them. His purposeful complicating expresses the Man of Law's narrative technique.
Brewer, Derek S.
J. Coy and J. de Hoz, eds. Estudios Sobre los generos literarios, I: Grecia clasica e Inglaterra (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1975), pp. 107-18.
The character types in Chaucer's comic tales spring from the popular Aristophanic tradition; "popular" here does not exclude the learned or learning. While the humor of the tales is ambivalent and derisive, it yet elicits acceptance and sympathy.
Parsigian, Elise K.
Rackham Literary Studies 6 (1975): 51-54.
Though the Pardoner is consummately evil, the Host must be reconciled with him because the former is still a representative of the church. The Host's outburst, though justified, is destructive because to the company the Pardoner is an embodiment of…
Masui, Michio.
Chiaki Higashida, ed. Gengo to Buntai: Higashida Chiaki Kyoju Kanreki Kinen Rombunshu. Language and Style: Essays Commemorating the 60th Birthday of Professor C. Higashida (Osaka: Osaka Kyoiku Tosho, 1975), pp. 9-18.
A "multiple approach" to PrT treats the significant inter-relationships between structure, theme, and meaning. For instance, Chaucer's use of prayer heightens the religious mood of this tale and emphasizes the mother/son thematic conflict.
Blake, N. F.
E. Rombauts and A. Welkenhuysen, eds. Aspects of the Medieval Animal Epic. Medievalia Lovaniensia, Ser. 1, no. 3 (Louvain University Press; The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975), pp. 53-65.
The "Roman de Renart" has been overemphasized as a source for NPT and for other Middle English works; English animal fables, perhaps influenced in part by the "Roman," are more likely sources and should be explored more thoroughly.
Perez Gallego, Candido.
Candido Perez Gallego. Circuitos Narrativos. Serie Critica, no. 3 (Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Departamento de Lengua y Literatura Inglesas , 1975), pp. 153-201.
Introduction to CT that surveys major concerns of the work, including narrative technique, character development, comedy, setting, major themes, reader involvement, and sources and analogues.
Tabulates the "frequency and percentage" of the modal auxiliaries shall/will and should/would in CT, presenting in eight tables the statistical data in relation to grammar (types of sentences and clauses, person, etc.), mode (poetry and prose), and…
Bloomfield Morton W.
Burns, Norman T., and Christopher J. Reagan, eds. Concepts of the Hero in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Papers of the Fourth and Fifth Annual Conferences of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 2-3 May 1970, 1-2 May 1971 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), pp. 27-48.
Documents the "absence of a true charismatic hero who is valiant and noble" in the literature of medieval western Europe, commenting on a wide variety of works, including those by Chaucer, and attributing the late-medieval "retreat from heroism" to a…
Brody, Saul N[athaniel].
Ferrante, Joan M., and George D. Economou, eds. In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly Love in Medieval Literature (Port Washington, NY, Kennikat, 1975), pp. 221-61.
Compares Chaucer's satire of courtly love with similar depictions in "Frauendienst" by Ulrich von Lichtenstein, "De Guillaume au Faucon," and "Flamenca," all of which reflect awareness of the fading of the courtly ideal and the dissolution of noble…
Economou, George D.
Ferrante, Joan M., and George D. Economou, eds. In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly Love in Medieval Literature (Port Washington, NY, Kennikat, 1975), pp. 17-50.
Distinguishes two kinds of love associated with Venus in the Middle Ages, both of them subsets of earthly love: one "legitimate, sacramental, natural, and in harmony with natural law; the other, illegitimate, perverted, selfish, and sinful." Traces…
Howard, Donald R.
Wittreich, Joseph Anthony, Jr., ed. Milton and the Line of Vision (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), pp. 3-23.
Gauges Chaucer's influence on Milton, often mediated by Spenser, commenting on the use of interlace or "labyrinth design" in the works of the poets and their concern with the "picture of quotidian domestic life" in the marriage tales of CT and in…
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975.
Assesses the meaning and status of "courtly" love and its relation to marriage in medieval traditions and critical commentary on these traditions. Considers a wide range of medieval Latin and vernacular representations of love and marriage, and…
Moorman, Charles.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1975.
A pedagogical introduction to the practices involved in preparing a critical edition of a Middle English text, with commentary on paleography, the language of Middle English, and the processes of textual criticism. Includes reproductions of the…
Morrison, Theodore, ed.
New York: Viking Press, 1975.
Originally published in 1949, the volume includes modern translations of selections from CT (all except for ShT, Mel, MkT, ClT, SqT, PhyT, MancT, and ParsT, which are described in summary); TC; selections from HF and LGWP; and samples of the short…
