Jacobs, Joseph.
Alan Dundes, ed. The Blood Libel Legend (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 41-71.
Focuses on the story of the martyred child, Hugh of Lincoln, said to have been murdered by Jews for religious purposes. Jacobs traces the story through history, songs, and legend. Considers the prayer at the end of PrT.
Bellamy, Elizabeth Jane.
Alan Shephard and Stephen D. Powell, eds. Fantasies of Troy: Classical Tales and the Social Imaginary in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004), pp. 215-35.
Bellamy considers Paridell's undermining of Britomart's "nostalgia for the fallen Troy" in Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book 3, and argues that the "slippages" between fame and rumor in HF influenced Spenser's presentation.
Osberg, Richard H.
Alan T. Gaylord, ed. Essays on the Art of Chaucer's Verse (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 195-227.
Assesses Chaucer's uses of alliteration as recurrent adornment despite the poet's distance from the so-called alliterative tradition. Focuses on the role of alliteration in various kinds of rhetorical situations (high style, courtliness, prayer, and…
Brown, Emerson, Jr.
Alan T. Gaylord, ed. Essays on the Art of Chaucer's Verse (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 267-79.
Brown discourages emendation ("dreary refinements") of Chaucer's meter, arguing that "broken-backed" or "Lydgatian" lines recorded in good manuscripts are likely to be Chaucer's own. Metrical variation within Chaucer's dominant patterns can have…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Alan T. Gaylord, ed. Essays on the Art of Chaucer's Verse (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 283-95.
The "seeming eccentricities" in the verse of BD are an index to the poem's "complex intention." Close reading demonstrates how variations in verse communicate "the delicate psychological process the poem describes."
Pakkala-Weckström, Mari.
Alaric Hall, Olga Timofeeva, Ágnes Kiricsi, and Bethany Fox, eds. Interfaces Between Language and Culture in Medieval England: A Festschrift for Matti Kilpiö. The Northern World, no. 48 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 307-27.
Pakkala-Weckström compares translations (three modern English and one modern Finnish) of passages from three fabliaux (MilT, MerT, and ShT), examining how well they preserve the politeness features of Chaucer's originals.
Peck, Russell A.
Alastair Fowler, ed. Silent Poetry: Essays in Numerological Analysis (New York: Barnes and Noble; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 73-115.
Describes parallels in plot and structure between BD and Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," arguing that Chaucer depicts a partial glimpse of full consolation. Identifies how "numerological composition" underlies the structure of BD and how…
Wilson, Katharina M., and Elizabeth M. Makowski.
Albany : State University of New York Press, 1990.
Traces the history of misogamy: (1) classical antecedents in Imperial Rome, especially misogamy and mirth in Juvenal; (2) ascetic misogamy in the patristic period, particularly in Saint Jerome;
Baker, Denise N., ed.
Albany : State University of New York Press, 2000.
Eleven essays examining the reciprocity between literature and history in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Inscribing the Hundred Years' War under Alternative Title.
Gallacher, Patrick J., and Helen Damico, eds.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Essays began as papers read at the sixty-first annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, April 1986. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search under Alternative Title.
Woods, William F.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008.
Woods discusses the effect and significance of space and place in seven tales of CT, exploring place as an index of character and space as a site of characteristic potential. In KnT, Theseus and the narrator consider chivalry analogous to nature; in…
Huppé, Bernard F.
Albany: State University of New York, 1964.
Reads CT as a thematic engagement with the need for humans to pursue spiritual pilgrimage, considering allegorical and symbolic imagery and focusing on charity, "caritas," and contempt for engagement with the world ("contemptus mundi"). Explores…
Robbins, Rossell Hope.
Albert E. Hartung, gen. ed. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1500, Volume 4, Part 11 (Hamden Conn.: Shoe String Press, 1973), pp. 1285-1306.
A bibliography of the resources that pertain to the study of Chaucerian apocrypha (background studies, manuscripts and editions, and critical essays), arranged by the titles of the works.
Pigg, Daniel F.
Albrecht Classen and Connie Scarborough, eds. Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), pp. 347-58.
Argues that PhyT not only addresses changes in the medieval social power structure, but also serves as a "critique of masculine power" within the medieval European court system.
Stretter, Robert.
Albrecht Classen and Marilyn Sandidge, eds. Friendship in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Explorations of a Fundamental Ethical Discourse (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 501-24.
Stretter comments on various romances and includes discussion of how, in KnT, Palamon and Arcite's mutual love for Emily disrupts their sworn brotherhood, a powerful bond of obligation and friendship. Chaucer alters a long cultural and literary…
Schotland, Sara Deutch.
Albrecht Classen and Marilyn Sandidge, eds. Friendship in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Explorations of a Fundamental Ethical Discourse (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 525-41.
Canacee's kindness toward the formel eagle shows Chaucer's sympathy for women and appreciation of female friendship. The formel, like other females in Chaucer, has been abused by men--and warns Canacee against them. In creating a painted mew for the…
Beal, Jane.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Communication, Translation, and Community in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: New Cultural-Historical and Literary Perspectives (Boston: De Gruyter, 2022), pp. 233-52.
Argues that the "Chaucerian narrator could easily and perhaps more readily be called the Chaucerian translator," observing emphasis on translation in LGWP and in Ret, assessing Chaucer's many uses of sources and approaches to translation, including…
Jost, Jean E.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 193-237.
Discusses Chaucer's awareness of the plague and reference to it in his works, especially PardT.
DeLuca, Dominique.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 239-61.
Refers to the death-bearing rioters in PardT as an example of the theme, found in medieval art, of "death as living within" the body.
Pigg, Daniel F.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death )Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016(), pp. 263-76.
Discusses the intersection of death, money, and elements of the Catholic mass in PardT. In the wake of the plague, the mass became closely associated with death because of the spreading practice of saying masses for the souls of the dead. The…
