Uses WBT to exemplify Chaucer's combination of narrative devices characteristic of the rhetoric of oral persuasion: plot combined with exemplary materials and "direct statement" of theme or moral directive. WBT concerns human willfulness, evident in…
Hogan, Moreland H. Jr.
Chaucer Review 5.3 (1971): 245-46.
Identifies a version of the "Lover's Gift Regained" plot in a modern oral narrative recorded in South Carolina; comments on particular parallels with ShT.
Rosenberg, Bruce A.
Chaucer Review 5.4 (1971): 264-76.
Tallies similarities between the pear tree episode in MerT and the cherry tree account in an apocryphal narrative about the pregnancy of Mary, mother of Jesus. Explores parallels among various analogues, and explains how the parallels capitalize on…
Otten, Charlotte F.
Chaucer Review 5.4 (1971): 277-87.
Analyzes the "comic unity" of the Pluto-Proserpine episode of MerT with the four biblical accounts women to: Rebecca, Judith, Abigail, and Esther (4.1362-74), all figures of deliverance rather than deception. By association, Proserpine should be read…
Explores the "interstitial pattern of errors about things literary" in MLPT that characterize the teller as a "not-quite scholar" and highlight a tension between his "rhetorical excess and religious exhibitionism" and his penchant for legalisms,…
Archer, Jayne Elizabeth, Richard Marggraf Turley, and Howard Thomas.
Chaucer Review 50.1-2 (2015): 1–29.
Proposes connections between the CT--especially Chaucer's Plowman, the apocryphal Plowman's Tale, and RvT--and ideas about food supply. Provides an overarching argument that anxieties about farming and the politics of how food was distributed in late…
Blurton, Heather, and Hannah Johnson.
Chaucer Review 50.1-2 (2015): 134–58.
Examines manuscript circulation of PrT showing Chaucer's reception as a Marian poet. This tale was not only used in devotional texts but was responded to in this register by Lydgate and Hoccleve.
Links BD with Freudian method, arguing that the poem "foreshadows" psychoanalysis through its depiction of how certain uses of language can heal trauma from painful memories
Farrell, Thomas J.
Chaucer Review 50.1-2 (2015): 178–97.
Argues that in CT, "wight" could indeed mean a supernatural being and refer to Jesus Christ as Creator, which questions a long-standing editorial emendation by E. Talbot Donaldson in WBP, 117.
Presents textual analysis about CT manuscript descent, specifically, that "a copying of *W [the MS used by De Worde for his 1498 edition of CT]" is likely to have "led to the production of Gg [CUL, MS Gg.IV.27] and Ph1 [University of Texas, Harry…
Argues that the Franklin presents a formula for happiness: living a life of "gentilesse" as opposed to the principle of adhering to a law-based system of morality.
Examines Chaucer's use of dream visions and the "Somniale" tradition as contrasted with that of the Harley scribe. While Chaucer is suspicious, the Harley scribe uses the tradition as a source of knowledge. Includes an edition and translation of…
Examines the parallels between Cresseid and the narrator showing Cresseid's eventual transformation while the narrator fails to understand the moral point. Includes comments on Chaucer's narrator in TC.
Argues for the effectiveness of the Pardoner's speech in light of his use of fables and exempla rather than "officium." PardT affirms the power of literature over that of the Pardoner's own duplicitous nature.
