Investigates credulity as a feature of radical medieval thought (Marsilio of Padua, William of Ockham, John Wycliffe) and as depicted in Boccaccio and Chaucer. A creative artist rather than a philosopher or theologian, Chaucer uses various characters…
McDonald, Nicola F.
Chaucer Review 35: 22-42. , 2000.
Manuscript evidence shows that fifteenth-century female readers of LGW were urban and either household servants or daughters of the gentry, whereas the implied female audience of fourteenth-century manuscripts consisted of members of the nobility,…
Chaucer employs "costume signs" in TC, affecting plot and characterization. Signature costumes assigned to each character shed light on significant parts of the plot, as do the reversal and degeneration of costume patterns. Characterization through…
Bolens, Guillemette, and Paul Beekman Taylor.
Chaucer Review 35: 281-93, 2001.
The "remedia" for the Black Knight's loss is achieved in two parts: the "reshaping" of the Black Knight's imaginative metaphor (chess representing the art of love) and the sounding of the castle bell, which awakens the poet and "ends both hunt and…
Bishop, Kathleen A.
Chaucer Review 35: 294-317, 2001.
Classical and medieval Latin influences on the fabliaux are as important to analyze as are the analogues Chaucer draws upon for his tales. Specifically, a close consideration of Plautus and Latin elegiac comedy can lead to a fuller understanding of…
Errors in "Cliffs Notes" and "MAX Notes" guides on the Wife of Bath lead to an unsympathetic interpretation of the character and inaccurate reading of WBT.
ClT reflects aspects of Richard II's life and philosophy of kingship--and perhaps Chaucer's fanciful solutions to Richard II's political dilemma of an heirless realm: divorce or a consort advisor. The insistence on "obedience to authority" in ClT…
Adam is a more complex work than generally thought, evoking Adam the "first father" and "the earthly instrument of chaos and capriciousness." The scribe's "long lokkes" link him to Chaucer's other prideful, foppish characters. The threatened…
Absolon's profession is reflected in his elaborate hairstyle (rather than tonsure); in his red, white, and blue clothing; and in his choice of the cultour as a tool for revenge. With cutting blade in hand, Absolon takes his "patient" by surprise,…
Pakkala-Weckström, Mari.
Chaucer Review 35: 399-411, 2001.
The debate between Prudence and Melibee is the struggle for "maistrie" between husband and wife. Learned and sophisticated, Prudence exhibits "feminine powers of persuasion." She changes from being "humble and respectful" to being "impatient,"…
Juxtaposes the various rhetorical styles of BD and its central dialogue to highlight the resolution of the two in the final couplet. Assesses the narrator by comparing his text and its rhetoric and by examining borrowings from Ovid, the figure of the…
When seen in light of probable sources in Decameron 8.1-2 and contrasted with Chaucer's other fabliaux, ShT is an "elegantly sophisticated comedy of bourgeois values [written] by a socially and intellectually elevated vintner's son."
Smith, Warren S.
Chaucer Review 36 : 374-90, 2002.
Far from being rambling, hasty, or incoherent, Dorigen's lament on faithful and faithless wives is a careful working out of the solution to her own dilemma. Starting with stories from Jerome's "Against Jovinian," she develops a favorable, Augustinian…
Driver, Martha W.
Chaucer Review 36 (2002): 228-49.
Driver examines John Speed's portrait of Chaucer (first printed version, Speght 1598) as a representation of "Elizabethan nationalism" and an emblem of Chaucer's reception. She also discusses Speed's career as a cartographer and historian and…
Twombly, Robert G.
Chaucer Review 36 (2002): 250-69.
Examines the rioters' encounter with the Old Man in PardT in light of Dominican meditation on death as a form of "affective psychology," exemplified in Henry Suso's "The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom." In this genre, "meeting" Death is a means to…
Various concepts of "otherness" in SqT--oriental setting, magic, non-human speech, female centrality--reflect Chaucer's "reshaping" of Ovidian "transformation" myth. His efforts to enter "into feminized animal subjectivity . . . intertwine with…
Grossi, Joseph L., Jr.
Chaucer Review 36 (2002): 298-309.
Grossi compares details of SNT with Jacob of Voragine's version in the "Golden Legend" and the Franciscan "abridgement" of the life of Saint Cecilia, arguing that Chaucer "sought to widen the intellectual divide between Roman paganism and primitive…
Troilus cannot read the "text" of Criseyde's face because he is too self-absorbed. Thinking only of what she can do for him, he neglects her "context," fails to acknowledge her vulnerability, and thinks of her as an "image in stasis." Although…
Jankowski, Eileen S.
Chaucer Review 36: 128-48, 2001.
Although SNT has been considered a straightforward account of St. Cecilia, apocalyptic techniques make it more complex. Engaging apocalyptic imagination, Chaucer focuses on "eschatology, renovation, and the collapse of time."
John Urry's 1721 edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer was marketed to support a capital campaign to augment Christ Church, Oxford. Thoughout the 1720s and 1730s, several members of the college were occupied with book sales. Despite poor…
In his account of Katherine in the "Legendys of Hooly Wummen," fifteenth-century poet Osbern Bokenham "rebels" against his poetic fathers, namely Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate. Bokenham allows Katherine to persuade her audience with the Nicene Creed…
Skeat wrote a "Canterbury tale" in Middle English that admonishes the sin of covetousness, is thoroughly grounded in the Middle Ages, and fits into the scheme of CT. It reveals one of the more "relaxed moments" of this great Chaucer scholar, about…
The Prioress's French of "Stratford atte Bowe" (as opposed to the French of Paris) has drawn considerable speculation, but it can be examined more effectively in light of "a wider background," including Chaucer's characterization of Madame Eglantine,…
