Baldini, Gabriele.
Turino: Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1958.
Includes a brief biography of Chaucer and a lengthy chronological work-by-work introduction to his oeuvre. Also includes a chapter on Chaucerian apocrypha, relations with Gower, and influence on later poets.
Hagstrum, Jean H.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Studies the use of pictorial imagery in neoclassical English poetry, its aesthetic effects, and the "tradition out of which it grew," from the classics forward. Includes discussion of the Chaucer's ekphrastic descriptions in HF, KnT, and Rom,…
Coghill, Nevill.
Herbert Davies, and Helen Gardner, eds. Elizabethan and Jacobean Studies: Presented to Percy Wilson in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), pp. 86-99.
Tallies a number of images, expressions, and "notional similarities" that evince Chaucer's influence on Shakespeare, reviewing previous scholarship, adding several examples, and arguing that the influence is strongest when Shakespeare was about…
Argues that the "key fact" in Chaucer's satiric GP description of the Monk is that he is an "outrider," allowing leeway for suggestive details about diet, hunting, and other worldly concerns. Fabricates a fictional dialogue between the Monk and the…
Benjamin, Edwin B.
Philological Quarterly 38 (1959): 119-24.
Attributes the disruption of order in the plot of FranT to Dorigen's pride and "indecisiveness" and to Aurelius's "moral flaw" and use of "unlawful" magic. Order is reinstated by means of seriatim "self-sacrifice" triggered by the "manly firmness" of…
Traces developments in Chaucer's "attitude to love" as reflected in his narrative personae in BD, LGWP, PF, HF, and TC, assessing this attitude in light of the courtly, Chartrian, and neo-Platonic standards of works by Alain de Lille, Jean de Meun,…
Explicates GP 1.673 (not 1.163, as in title), adding depth to the multiple, generally sexual innuendoes of the "stif burdoun" borne by the Summoner to accompany the Pardoner's song.
Reads FrT as "one of Chaucer's more carefully worked and closely unified poems, and, . . . one of his most dramatic." Focuses on the poem's "Faustian situation," its '"unusual withholding of the denouement," and "its moral implication," exploring…
Birney, Earle.
Notes and Queries 204 (1959): 345-47.
Clarifies the Franklin's "morning dish" of a "wine-sop," suggesting dietary or medicinal implications necessary to compensate for his culinary excesses.
Identifies an early modern allusion to Chaucer and CYT (by Hugh Platt) and one on dreams and, possibly, NPT (by William Vaughan), neither previously noted.
Creekmore, Hubert, ed.
New York: Grove Press, 1959.
Anthologizes samples of Greek, Latin, Provençal, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Welsh, Irish, Norse, Danish, Dutch, German, and Old and Middle English verse--generally in modern English translation--from the fifth to the fifteenth century.…
Dent, A. A.
Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society 9 (1959): 1-12.
Investigates the "equestrian vocabulary" used by Chaucer, with particular attention to GP, but including his other references to horses, their tackle, colors, names, conditions, movements, etc., clarifying the denotations of the terminology. Includes…
Dunn, Charles W., reader.
New York: Folkways, 1959.
Includes various readings by Dunn that illustrate changes in the English language and English literary style, among them, a reading of Book III.m9 of Bo (Side 1, band 9; 41 sec.). Text from F. N. Robinson's edition of Chaucer complete works (1957).
Ethel, Garland.
Modern Language Quarterly 20 (1959): 211-27.
Examines the characterization of the Pardoner as the "wretchedest and vilest of the ecclesiastical sinners" among Chaucer's pilgrims in CT, arguing that "not covetousness, but wrath against the Divine was the Pardoner's prime motivation." Tallies a…
Evans, Lawrence Gove.
Modern Language Notes 74 (1959): 584-87.
Explicates the "striking instance of Chaucer's use of word-play and Scriptural allusion" in TC 4.1585 to "enrich his presentation of the lovers' predicament" and emphasize differences between earthly and divine happiness.
Friedman, William F., and Elizebeth S. Freidman.
Philological Quarterly 38 (1959): 1-20.
Introduces literary acrostics and anagrams as examples of "unkeyed" transposition ciphers, clarifying some terminology of cryptography, and applying technical analysis to invalidate Ethel Seaton's claims (1957) about "so-called double acrostic…
Hitt, Ralph E.
Mississippi Quarterly 12 (1959): 75-85.
Describes how, as protagonist of NPT, Chauntecleer is the "mock-hero" of Chaucer's burlesque, engaging in three "battles" and failing because of his own vanity, the target of Chaucer's satire. His "avisioun" was no vision at all, a result of…
Examines the "apparent momentary tenderness between Aleyn and Malyne" in RvT 1. 4234-48, reading the passage as a parody of the "dawn-song," variously known as the "aube," "aude," "aubade," or "tageliet," an "established form in the medieval poetry…
Kaske, R. E.
Modern Language Notes 74 (1959): 481-84.
Identifies biblical and patristic resonances in GP 1.634, suggesting that they help to "deepen an already ugly picture of spiritual as well as physical deformity."
Kellogg, A. L.
Notes and Queries 204 (1959): 190-92.
Disagrees with editorial explanations of FrT 3.1314, arguing that the subject of the sentence, a "composite sinner," is the recipient of "pecunyal peyne." Offers supporting evidence from several contemporary sources.
Compares a horoscope and its accompanying Latin text found in Equat with two analogous versions, showing that it has closest relations with the Nürnberg version printed in 1659.
Observes that references to Elijah and Elisha in SumT 3.2116-18 evince "Chaucer's awareness, if not endorsement, of the widely held belief that the 'earliest anchorite' Elijah was the founder of the Carmelite Order," and provides various features of…
