Despite abundant evidence of their being held in high regard by contemporary society, male oaths of friendship are consistently "satirized, broken, and/or ridiculed" in Chaucer's works, suggesting "an overarching distrust of such relationships" on…
Its fierce anti-Semitism notwithstanding, "Titus and Vespasian" is an important document of cultural uses of the "fall-of-Jerusalem narrative" and of attitudes toward Jews and Judaism in late medieval England. Thus, it deserves scholarly attention…
The essays in this special issue (43.4) of the "The Chaucer Review" open new perspectives on Chaucer's works, placing them in the context of the "new impulses toward quantification and measurement" in and beyond late medieval England.
Bradbury, Nancy Mason, and Carolyn P. Collette.
Chaucer Review 43 (2009): 351-75.
Bradbury and Collette survey historical records and literary representations of clocks in works by Jean Froissart, Henry Suso, Philippe de Mézières, and Christine de Pizan. The article counters the notion that the mechanical clock caused a sudden…
Ransom, Daniel J.
Chaucer Review 43 (2009): 376-99.
An examination of Chaucer's use of temporal terminology--from references to "eternity and perpetuity" to references to seconds and moments, including seasons, days, nights, and hours--suggests that he uses such terminology with a modicum of…
Walts, Dawn Simmons.
Chaucer Review 43 (2009): 400-413.
In MilT, Nicholas's real and reputed knowledge of astrology convinces John of the upcoming Flood, evidence that the clerk has spent his time well in learning the science of reckoning time. Indeed, in contrast to the carpenter, the educated clerk has…
By framing his "Pentacostal parody" within a parody of fourteenth-century English academics' preoccupation with measuring "both physical and metaphysical realities," Chaucer registers "a cautious but not gloomy attitude" regarding the spectrum of…
As knight, sheriff, and "contour" (I.359), the Franklin is the quintessential late medieval county "bureaucrat," whose duties provided incentives both to disclose and to hide the financial information to which he was privy. From its "dramatic irony"…
Boethius's "prosimetrum" lets readers experience the "consolation of temporality" that Philosophy offers. In Bo, Chaucer demonstrates his understanding of this consolation by highlighting Philosophy's references to time; however, by rendering the…
Chaucer's sensitivity to the "cultural survival" of Wales is suggested in three moments in HF: the insinuation that Wales is near the river of forgetfulness through a visual pun on "Cymerie" (73); the citation of an unknown and hence implicitly…
Wentersdorf, Karl P.
Chaucer Review 44 (2009): 110-13.
The clear erotic context of the blacksmith's response to Absolon's late-night visit supports a gloss of "viritoot" as a derivation of "the Latin ablative cum virtute," meaning 'with manly ardor.'
Ironic readings of the GP portrait of the Knight are undermined by an understanding of the medieval ideals of "honor," "prudence," and "moral goodness" and by recognition of their signs in the Knight's portrait. An understanding of the medieval…
A study of works featuring the test-of-love motif argues for including FranT among them rather than among narratives employing the motif of the "maiden's rash promise." However, by devising a "test" for Dorigen's suitor that expresses her concern for…
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 44 (2009): 186-204.
Reading ShT in the context of fabliaux in which children witness their mothers' infidelity, Beidler recalls that the Tale was originally intended for the Wife of Bath. He argues that the placement of a prepubescent girl on the scene of another wife's…
In its evocations of a "locus amoenus," "fin' amors," and Aeneas, the dream chamber in BD serves as a "structural analogue" to the Man in Black's autobiography, which narrates an idyllic youth, describes falling in love, and refers to the duties of…
Chaucer's reference to a sow eating a baby "right in the cradle" (CT I.2019) may evince Chaucer's knowledge of "just such an occurrence in the Norman town of Falaise" in 1385, later memorialized in paint on the walls of a Falaise church. This detail…
ClT and MLT dramatize contemporary uncertainties concerning the extent of a mother's genetic "influence" on her offspring, even as they critique the "fantasy of an autonomous male line." Given that disputes regarding monarchal succession formed the…
Chaucer modifies his sources for ClT in a way that emphasizes Griselda's virtue as specifically "feminine" and exclusively "wifely." The reflections of her wifely virtue in the pagan wives of LGW, who "view devotion to their husbands as their highest…
Hodges, Laura F.
Chaucer Review 44 (2009): 84-109.
Hodges "reads" Griselda's "sartorial transformation[s]" in light of detailed knowledge of fourteenth-century material culture. For instance, the fact that a smock could be made of plain linen or embroidered silk, or that it was the innermost of many…
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…
In playing on Alan's "theological epic" in HF, Chaucer projects a view of readerly interpretation as a key component of literary production, thus challenging the notions that poetry springs solely from inspiration and "that textual meaning could be…
Both Jerome and Chaucer follow Paul in deploying "provocative women" to dramatize contemporary controversies over who may interpret scripture. The Wife of Bath performs exegesis even as she effectively likens her husbands to "exegetes whose sins…
Laird, Edgar (S.)
Chaucer Review 44 (2010): 344-50.
By taking into account the increasing degree of willful irrationality attributed to Cupid in Chaucer's PF, KnT, and LGW and in Clanvowe's "Boke of Cupid," it becomes possible to view the writers' "god of Love [as] to some extent a collaborative…
The "temporal disorder" and "internationalism" of MLT--combined with its examination of competing familial and institutional loyalty--depict sovereignty as a redemptive governmental form capable of healing the ills of late medieval England, including…
Through its several nested narratorial performances, each of which includes its own disavowals and subtle appropriations of authority, MLT renegotiates the relative power of spiritual and secular domains to control the interpretation and transmission…
