Considers the dates of BD and Jean Froissart's "Dit dou Bleu Chevalier" and explores their similarities, arguing that Froissart's poem inspired the central idea ("l'idée centrale") and many other features of Chaucer's poem--aspects of…
Cartier, Normand R.
Revue de Littérature Comparée 38 (1964): 18-34.
Reviews attempts to clarify Chaucer's reference to Morpheus's companion "Eclympasteyr," found in BD line 167 and also found in Froissart's "Paradys d'Amour" as "Enclimpostair." Argues on linguistic and literary grounds that the name in "plain…
Cladistics-the use of large-scale computer analysis of data, including variant readings-promises the possibility of identifying patterns of textual transmission. However, the inevitability of interpretive disagreement in selecting evidence or in…
Cartlidge, Neil.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 218-40.
Cartlidge examines the range of attitudes toward marriage, sexuality, and the family in CT - including questions of marriage as an ordering principle, sexuality as a threat to marriage, and sexuality as a form of aggression outside of marriage. Also…
Cartlidge, Neil.
Helen Cooney, ed. Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 115-30.
In FranT, Chaucer presents a "moral dilemma that might be described as scholastic in its contrived intractability." The "quaestio disputanda" posed at the end of FranT compels readers to confront the Tale's irresolvable legal complexities of…
Chaucer's evocation of contrasting senses of "frend" sharpens his depiction of Criseyde's precarious state in Troy. Lacking advisors, and thus dangerously dependent on Pandarus and Troilus, she also belongs to a network of relationships devoted…
Suggests possible sources for Chaucer's ideas on parenthood that influenced CkT, including the "Wisdom commentary of Dominican friar, Robert Holcot." Also compares Holcot's views on parental responsibility with those in PhyT.
Cartlidge, Neil.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 39 (2017): 57-97.
Discredits the idea that the Eagle's disquisition on sound in HF is conventional Aristotelianism, mediated by Robert Grosseteste or Walter Burley, arguing that the details of the multiplying ripples and the combination of science and myth were…
Suggests that Robert Holcot's commentary on the Book of Wisdom is the immediate source of HF, 991–1017 and 1259–70, and ParsT, 603–7, describing the authors' shared skepticism about the "limits of human knowledge" and discussing specific echoes…
Chaucer's illustrates the reciprocity of hearing and speaking by demonstrating how perfectly the characters of TC understand each other's indirectly spoken meanings. The reader's complicity in this implit communication is stressed particularly in…
Cartwright, John [H].
John H. Cartwright and Brian Baker, eds. Literature and Science: Social Impact and Interaction (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2005), pp. 1-29.
Summarizes "Aristotelian cosmology" and describes its role as a structural and thematic device in Dante's "Paradiso." Describes the roles of astrology, the humours, and alchemy in Chaucer's CT, especially in the description of the Physician and in…
Cary, Meredith.
Papers on Language and Literature 5 (1969): 375-88.
Compares WBT with its analogues to show that Chaucer's alterations of the plot "redefine such central concepts as 'honor' and 'sovereignty' in feminine terms," consistent with the gender of its teller. By emphasizing moral precept instead of…
Case, Linda.
[Jay Ruud, ed.] Papers on the "Canterbury Tales": From the 1989 NEH Chaucer Institute, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota ([Aberdeen, S.D.: Northern State University, 1989), pp. 186-202.
Description of proposed classroom activities for high school study of GP.
In view of Chaucer's resistance to the "finality of closure," allusions to CkT in Fragment 9 suggest that CkT "may be complete for Chaucer, although not completed by the Cook." Perhaps the Tale's "unfinished business" is an interruption by one of the…
Casey, Jim.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 209-27.
The price of love for Palamon and Arcite in KnT is violence and death, a feature of the "gender/violence/courtship paradigm" of medieval courtly literature that continues into the present, as evident in Brian Helgeland's "A Knight's Tale."
Casey, Jim.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 224-42.
Explicitly influenced by KnT, Shakespeare's "Two Noble Kinsmen" adapts Chaucer's humor and creates a dark vision of the intersection of consumerism and sexuality.
Casieri, Sabino.
Studi e Ricerche di Letteratura Inglese e Americana 1 (1967): 7-19.
Considers the theme of common profit in PF and Chaucer's treatment of source material, drawing examples from his uses of Dante and Boccaccio to evince that Chaucer is never an "arido tradittore" (dry translator) but an original poet.
Caspi, Mishael M.,with Debra Synder.
Mishael M. Caspi, ed. Oral Tradition and Hispanic Literature: Essays in Honor of Samuel G. Armistead (New York and London: Garland, 1995), pp. 81-109.
Because of oral anti-Jewish tales of blood libel, PrT, in attitude and some details, was for Chaucer's audience a familiar account. PrT and the ballad "The Jew's Daughter" (first recorded in the eighteenth century) indicate how literary and oral…
Cassidy, Frederic G.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 57 (1958): 739-42.
Suggests that "don thyn hood" in TC 3.954 may have the literal meaning of "put on your nightcap" or, more likely, the figurative meaning of "restrain yourself," the latter drawn from the practice of hooding a hawk.
Castillo, Francisco Javier.
Luis A. Lazaro Lafuente, Jose Simon, and Ricardo J. Sola Buil,eds. Medieval Studies: Proceedings of the IIIrd International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (Madrid: Universidad de Alcala de Henares, 1996), pp. 93-107.
A previously unknown Spanish translation of MerT derives not from Chaucer's original but from the English translation by Alexander Pope. Castillo provides biography of Canary Islander Graciliano Alfonso Naranjo, who may have been the author of the…
Castro, Enrico.
Parole rubate/Purloined Letters 18 (2018): 139-61. Open access journal, at http://www.parole rubate.unipr.it/issues.php (accessed January 24, 2022).
Identifies and comments on various parallels between lines 36 and 74 of the "Invocacio ad Mariam" in SNP and St. Bernard's praise of Mary in Dante's "Paradiso," XXXIII, treating portions of it as "free translation," although perhaps influenced by…
Catto, Jeremy.
Past and Present 179 (2003): 24-59.
Describes the rise of writing in English during the "age of Chaucer," commenting on the Ricardian poets (emphasizing Chaucer), Middle English sermon cycles, Lollard translation, and other examples of the "elevated vernacular" of late…
Cauthen, I. B., Jr.
Notes and Queries 203 (1958): 248-49.
Locates a previously unnoticed allusion to MilT 1.3638-39 in Samuel Harsnet's "A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures" (1603), perhaps recalled from memory.
Cavalcanti, Leticia Niederauer Tavares.
Dissertation Abstracts International 23.07 (1963): 2522-23.
Summarizes the "antagonistic and contradictory views on women" held by the medieval Church, and explores Chaucer's views of women by examining his uses of the motifs of sovereignty and obedience in marriage from BD through CT, focusing on three…
