Childress, Diana.
North Haven, Conn. : Linnet, 2000.
An introduction to the social, political, and intellectual history of Chaucer's age, aimed at a general audience. Individual chapters pertain to fourteenth-century England and its relations with the Continent, social hierarchy, "cracks" in the social…
Childs, Wendy R.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 277-96.
Discusses the ambiguity of Chaucer's Shipman, connecting ShT to estates satire and contending that Chaucer combined an "ideal craftsman and the flawed individual" in the character of the Shipman.
Chism, Christine N.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales" (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 340-56
Describes the office of canon and the science of alchemy as background to the Canon, who chooses not to join the Canterbury pilgrimage. The history of corruption and reform among canons is a "touchstone" for understanding the character Chaucer…
Chism, Christine.
Faith Wallis and Robert Wisnovsky, eds. Medieval Textual Cultures: Agents of Transmission, Translation and Transformation (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 85-120.
Describes the variety of cultural uses to which the astrolabe was put historically, and argues that the "complex back-histories of multicultural compilation," the "multifocal transmission," and the "imaginative pedagogy" of Astr assert a "reluctance…
Chism, Christine.
In Robert DeMaria Jr., Heesok Chang, and Samantha Zacher, eds. A Companion to British Literature. Vol. I, Medieval Literature 700–1450 (Chichester: Wiley, 2014), pp. 130-45.
Surveys the meanings, origins, and theories of courtly love, asking how it "works" in medieval texts, what light it can "cast upon medieval cultural practices, and why it comes to matter." Includes discussion of secrecy in TC, a text that animates…
Chism, Christine.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Treats the breaking of sisterhood (Emelye and Hippolyta) and brotherhood (Palamon and Arcite) in KnT as Chaucer's adaptations of Ciceronian ideals in order to "intensify questions of desire agency and social justice" in the face of worldly…
Chisnell, Robert E.
Patricia W. Cummins, Patrick W. Conner, and Charles W. Connell, eds. Literary and Historical Perspectives of the Middle Ages (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1982), pp. 156-73.
Neglected through modern predilections that ignore the intellectual milieu of the fourteenth century, Chaucer's prose works deserve more enlightened attention.
Chmaitelli, Nancy Adelyne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1986): 1722A-1723A.
On the bases of manuscript illuminations, ivory and stone carvings, and typological windows, Chmaitelli examines Dante's pageant at the end of "Purgatorio" and Chaucer's WBPT. The former shows the degeneration of the Church, while the latter reveals…
Chocano Díaz, Gema, Noelia Hernando Real, and Ana Ardid Gumiel, eds.
Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2020.
Includes a selection of passages from Chaucer, with word-by-word English translations and an introduction to Chaucer's linguistic and literary context. Intended for use as a manual for Middle and early modern English literature survey courses.
Choi, Jiyeon.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 23.2 (2015): 145-59.
Focuses on the clothing of Alisoun of MilT and the Wife of Bath, with attention to color, stereotyping, and economic conditions. In Korean, with an abstract in English (pp. 158-59).
Choi, Yejung, and Ji-soo Chang.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 12 (2004): 225-56.
The authors critique several Korean translations of CT published since the early 1960s: those by J. Kim, B. Song, Dong-il Lee and Dongchoon Lee, and another attributed to J. Kim.
Choi, Yejung.
Medieval English Studies 7: 149-75, 1999.
In LGW, if the God of Love and Alceste criticize Chaucer, they do so as representatives of a text community based on Augustinian hermeneutics. Chaucer undermines the legitimacy of their view of poetry, inscribing his own presence and intent in the…
Choi, Yejung.
Feminist Studies in English Literature 10 (2002): 223-44
Choi explores the relationship between body and text in medieval hermeneutics. arguing that MLT represents the uncontrollable signification of the text and reveals how textual transmission becomes a process of textual transgression.
Choi, Yejung.
Feminist Studies in English Literature 12.1 (2004): 249-78.
Assesses the overt or implied gender of the narrator in ABC, in PrPT, and in SNPT, exploring how each correlates with the depiction of the Virgin Mary in these works. Suggests that these depictions indicate that Chaucer was a "keen observer of the…
Chaucer self-consciously makes the reader aware of the achievement of the writer, of the reader as reader, and of the intelligent response he is asking the reader to make. All three point to Chaucer's fascination with the power of language as a key…
Christianson, C. Paul.
Joseph B. Trahern, Jr., ed. Standardizing English: Essays in the History of Language Change, in Honor of John Hurt Fisher (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), pp. 82-112.
Presents a sketch of the development of the written trades and the connections among scriveners in the late Middle Ages.
A community of tradespeople-artisans in small shops on Paternoster Row near Saint Paul's Cathedral was engaged in book production during Chaucer's last decade and the early fifteenth century. The editor, text writer, and artists of Ellesmere may be…
By proposing aesthetic and religious inevitability, the palinode to TC relieves the reader's frustration at Chaucer's deliberately ambiguous characterization of the poem's three main characters and shows the unity underlying the seemingly diverse…
Treats Mel as a "consolatio," not an allegory, of the same genre as Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" and "designed to cure an excess of wrath" and to promote "forgiveness." Identifies ways that Mel engages thematically with the other tales in…
Christopher, Joe R.
Salwa Khoddam, Mark R. Hall, and Jason Fisher, eds. C. S. Lewis and the Inklings: Reflections on Faith, Imagination, and Modern Technology (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015), pp. 121-32.
Explores why C. S. Lewis chose not to discuss FranT in his "Allegory of Love," arguing that Lewis made the decision because he wanted to attribute the "final defeat of courtly love by the romantic conception of marriage" to Edmund Spenser in his…
Christophersen, Paul.
English Studies 45.1-6 [Supplement] (1964): 146-50.
Scans two lines of GP (49 and 173), "usually felt to be awkward," arguing that in light of comparable Middle English examples the syllable counts and stress patterns of these lines are consistent with the "iambic-decasyllabic theory."
