A detailed comparison of the Job story and Boccaccio's Decameron 10.10. Boccaccio's novella is seen as a variation of the biblical Job story that lacks the justification of God's divine attributes. Schöpflin argues that Boccaccio and subsequent…
Discusses Chrétien's "Knight of the Cart," including several points of comparison with TC: the poems as command performances, their inclusion of songs of love, and the possibility that the heroes are presented as humorous.
Uses two of the "modes of existence" theorized by Bruno Latour--technological and fictional--to examine medieval manuscripts, arguing that the "affordances and ecologies" of codices as technology encouraged the "proliferation" of fictional beings in…
Review of "Legenda femeilor cinstite si alte poeme" (1986). Dan Dutescu, praised as a highly sensitive translator possessing the "quintessence" of the art of translation, has given Romania its first complete Chaucer translation--of LGW.
Ruszkiewicz, Dominika.
Romanian Journal of English Studies 23 (2008): 85-96.
Interprets Troilus's failure to take action to keep Criseyde in Troy as a lack of "mesure," a courtly quality praised by troubadour poets. His lack, however, evinces the depth of his love and he, at times, "takes on the role a troubadour" by seeking…
Considers the dates of BD and Jean Froissart's "Dit dou Bleu Chevalier" and explores their similarities, arguing that Froissart's poem inspired the central idea ("l'idée centrale") and many other features of Chaucer's poem--aspects of…
Examines aspects of orality in CT (MilT, PardT), Boccaccio's "Decameron," and "Les cent nouvelles," focusing on features of transmission, secrecy, confession, and authentication. Considers HF.
Garbáty, Thomas Jay.
Romances Notes 9 (1968): 325-30.
Assesses the gate in PF, exploring "remarkable parallels which the inscriptions on the gate and the further description of the garden" in PF "have to certain sections of the Fifth Dialogue" of Andreas Cappellanus's "Art of Courtly Love."
Grennen, Joseph E.
Romance Notes 8 (1966): 109-12.
Argues that aspects of the beginning of MerT (including January's ill health, the names Placebo and Justinus, etc.) may have been inspired by details and sentiments found in "Livre du Chevalier de la Tour-Landry."
Dorris, George E.
Romance Notes 6.2 (1965): 141-43.
Identifies the earliest mention of Chaucer in Italian criticism, in the preface to Paolo Rolli's translation of Milton's epic, "Del Paradiso Perduto" (1729). Rolli's comments include recognition, perhaps the first, that Chaucer refers to Dante in…
Hanna, Natalie.
Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), pp. 229-49.
Questions how and to what extent recurrent mention of Hector in TC helps to characterize Troilus as a knight. Instances and collocations of "knight," "worthy," related terms, and references to Hector, generally not found in Chaucer's source text,…
Dwyer, Seamus.
Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), pp. 193-208.
Surveys critical attention to Adam and reads the poem as an exhortation to "moral and professional penitence." Focuses on "corect," "rubbe," and "scrape" as scribal activities and as metaphorical links to penitential erasure in Chaucer and other…
Morgan, Gerald.
Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), pp. 121-53.
Explicates the rhetorical, conventional, and philosophical aspects of the combination of physical beauty and moral virtue in Chaucer's portrait of Blanche in BD, "a triumph of the poet's art." Clarifies similarities and differences between Chaucer's…
Kaempfer, Lucis.
Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), pp. 105-19.
Examines joy in TC--looking forward to it in Books 1 and 2, experiencing it in Book 3, and remembering it in Books 4 and --as aspects of Troilus's identity and of the poem itself. Anticipated joy shapes the characterization of Troilus as a courtly…
Travis, Peter W.
Roland Hagenbuchle and Laura Skandera, eds. Poetry and Epistemology: Turning Points in the History of Poetic Knowledge (Regensburg: Pustet, 1986), pp. 30-45.
Chaucer's only beast fable, through the catalyst of parody, transforms a "literary primer" to achieve artistic freedom from past determinants. NPT "is an epitome of what Foucault calls the archaeological text," containing every major concern and…
Reisner, M. E.
Roger L. Emerson, Gilles Girard, and Roseann Runte, eds. Man and Nature: Proceedings of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 1 (London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario, 1982), pp. 185-98.
Demonstrates that details of dress in William Blake's "Canterbury Pilgrims" derive from the monuments in Westminster Abbey. Focuses on Blake's depictions the Pardoner, Prioress, and Wife of Bath.
Norton-Smith, J[ohn].
Roger Fowler, ed. Essays on Style and Language: Linguistic and Critical Approaches to Literary Style (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), pp. 157-65.
Explores Chaucer's "reading and use" of the genre of verse epistle, drawing on evidence from LGW, the two letters in TC, Scog, and Buk. Considers the influence of Ovid's "Heroides" and Horace's "Satires" to argue that Chaucer was adept in the Ovidian…
Harding, Wendy.
Roger Ellis, Rene Tixier, and Bernd Weitemeier, eds. The Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age, 6. ([Turnhout, Belgium]: Brepols, 1998), pp. 194-210.
Assesses Chaucer's transformation of ClT in his process of translating his sources, focusing on the imagery of clothing. Through his alterations of the clothing motif, Chaucer disclaims the traditional notion that translation is merely superficial…
Medcalf, Stephen.
Roger Ellis, ed. The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Volume I: To 1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 364-90.
Surveys the tradition of medieval translation from Latin into English, commenting on Continental mediators and awareness of Greek literature. Focuses on translations of Boethius (including Chaucer's) and those of Apollonius of Tyre, treating them as…
Windeatt, Barry
Roger Ellis, ed. The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Volume I: To 1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 137-48.
Surveys Chaucer's career as a translator and the varieties of his "translational practice," focusing on his literal translations and how his "guise of the slavishly faithful translator" sometimes enables his "transformative adaptation." Considers…
Machan, Tim William.
Roger Ellis, ed. The Medieval Translator: The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages. Papers read at the University of Wales Conference Centre, Gregynog Hall, 20-23 August 1987 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989), pp. 55-67.
Evaluates Chaucer as a translator according to the theories and principles of translation current in Chaucer's day.
