Julius, Patricia Ward.
Dissertation Abstracts International 37 (1976): 3606A-07A.
BD and HF show thematic unity of conflict between appearance (attractive externals) and reality (the authority of books). Replacing reality with worship for the artificial, mutable object is error.
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 75-91.
Chaucer deals with a concern of earlier poets--humanity's place in the universe--and with concerns of his own time--the bases and abuses of civil and ecclesiastical authority, the limits of human freedom, and the implications of will and…
Fisher, William Nobles.
Dissertation Abstracts International 36 (1976): 7435A.
Through the game created by the Host and other references to playing, Chaucer created a festive structure for his tales whose movement leads the narrators, their audience, and the modern reader towards an ever-broadening perspective on life.
Haines, R. Michael.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 220-35.
That the Fortune-Nature-Grace topos is the unifying theme of Fragment C is supported by Chaucer's additions to its sources and by his probable revision of the link. PhyT shows the gifts of Grace overcoming Fortune and Nature; PardT shows the abuse…
Harrington, Norman T.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 187-200.
CT is the last formulation of one of Chaucer's strongest literary preoccupations: the dynamic interaction of experience and art. The links present reality as it is immediately perceived: chaotic but vital. The tales present reality as it is…
Howard, Donald R.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Although CT is unfinished, it is aesthetically complete. The GP is structured to reveal typifying groups. The tales are ordered into thematic clusters. The ParsT provides a satisfying closure. The structure of the poem is the interlace or…
Internal evidence about Harry Bailly's literary aesthetic suggests that he would have chosen the Nun's Priest as the winner of the "soper" at the Tabard. The priest's "sentence," "solaas," conviviality, and obvious masculinity are the deciding…
Deligiorgis, Stavros.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 129-41.
Chaucer used elements from linguistic to cosmological in raising CT to the anagogic level of symbolism (cf Frye's "Anatomy of Criticism"). Various tales illustrate this progression to anagogy.
Quinn, Esther C.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 55-73.
All aspects of CT--the pilgrims themselves and the characters,themes, and language of each tale--unite to present the pilgrimage to Canterbury as a representation of the conceptual pilgrimage of all Christians.
The pilgrimage to Canterbury is actually a search for wisdom. Chaucer is seeking to arrive at a fusion of rational thinking and revelation. KnT rejects reason as the only answer to man's problems. In ParsT the superiority of godly revelation over…
Weissman, Hope Phyllis.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 93-110.
The depiction of women in CT stems from the medieval presentation of four main female archetypes. Chaucer employs and experiments with these types, occasionally seeming sympathetic to women. Nonetheless, the women in the tales perpetuate the…
Clark, Roy Peter.
Studies in Short Fiction 13 (1976): 277-87.
The tale includes several oblique references to Christmas. At once comic and suggestive of serious religious ideas, these features may mark the work as an actual bawdy Christmas tale.
Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, confesses certain details that parallel incidents in the Miller's story about young Alisoun. If the two Alisouns are one, then Old John is the Reeve, the Wife's fourth husband; and he suffers in embarrassed silence while…
Ross, Thomas W.
English Language Notes 13 (1976): 256-58.
Nicholas' seduction of Alisoun is an impudent parody of the Annunciation, of which he sings in the "Angelus ad virginem." Absolon is clad "ful smal," i.e., in a tight-fitting garment, as a sign of his lechery and vanity.
Finnegan, Robert Emmett.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 77 (1976): 227-40.
The Man of Law, in the telling of his tale, wants to present himself as a fount of knowledge. In Part I he frequently interrupts the narrative to voice his own comments. In Part II, as the power of God manifests itself in the trial scene,the…
Wurtele, Douglas (J.)
Neophilologus 60 (1976): 577-93.
Chaucer uses the art of "proprietas" or decorum when he makes the language and substance of MLT conform to his personality and vocation. The narrator subscribes to Quintillian and Ciceronian theories of rhetoric and employs the techniques of…
Braswell, Laurel.
English Studies in Canada 2 (1976): 373-80.
Two narratives of the "Legenda aurea" are likely sources for the anti-mendicant satire in WBP and WBT. Imagery in the legends of Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Francis of Assisi parallels the Wife's anti-mendicant satire, and provides a close…
The WBT and its analogues have in common the archetype of transformation from ugly age to beautiful and fertile youthfulness. The psychic transformation of unconsciousness to consciousness, a phenomenon central to human individual and collective…
Glosses to the early manuscripts of CT may be read as important commentaries on the text. In particular glosses to WBT point out the wife's misquotations and, ultimately, her spiritual deafness to the New Law and the deeper meaning of marriage.
Magoun, Francis P.,Jr.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 77 (1976): 253.
The so-called original "Dunmow Oath" quoted by G.E.L. Johnson in the quarterly "This England" V (1972), 53, col. 3 is much more recent than the Dumdow [sic] Flitch spoken of by Chaucer's Wife of Bath in her prologue.
Oberembt, Kenneth J.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 287-302.
The Wife of Bath first weakens the conventional notion of men as reasonable and women as sensual by showing how sensual and unworthy of sovereignty were her five husbands. Then she overthrows this notion when her own feminine-sensual image dissolves…
Bugge, John
American Notes and Queries 14 (1976): 82-85.
The Prioress by omitting the passage which extolls King David in Psalm 8 betrays herself as ignorant of history. The Friar in blending vv.8-9 of Psalm 10 omits passages which chastise the aggrandisement of the friars at the expense of the poor. …
Clark, Roy Peter
Annuale Mediaevale 17 (1976): 48-57.
Developing from the Pentecostal parody in the poem, Chaucer's use of the word "wit" in SumT 1789, 2291 may suggest a submerged allusion to the contemporary controversy surrounding the Wycliffite translation of the Bible.
