Focuses on three letters that preface Thomas Speght's Chaucer editions, which "conceive, invite, and attempt to influence their audiences." Argues that these letters reveal that the intended audience included both the established audience for Chaucer…
Shows that "what is thought to be the earliest record of a Chaucer folio in North America in fact refers to a text by the Protestant theologian Daniel Chamier." Concludes "with a brief survey of other early American readers of Chaucer."
Discusses "the power of affect on minds and bodies" and the "psychology of love and loss" in Chaucer's works. Explores relationship between women's literary culture and roles of women in BD, KnT, TC, and LGW.
Considers ways that female monastic readers in Amesbury and Syon may have read and used works by Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, and John Lydgate. Claims that these "Chaucerian tradition" writings helped influence the devotional culture of female monastic…
Mosser, Daniel W., and Linne R. Mooney.
Chaucer Review 51.2 (2016): 131-50.
Analyzes the paleography and spelling of the fifteen manuscripts belonging to the hooked-g group, including three CT manuscripts, identifying two separate scribes and several collaborators. Includes four tables, six b&w illustrations, and an appendix…
Analyzes the border illustrations and other codicological features of twelve manuscripts of the hooked-g group of manuscripts (including three CT manuscripts), using them to construct a "tentative chronology" of the dates of production and the…
Rogers, Cynthia A.
Chaucer Review 51.2 (2016): 187-208.
Argues that Pity is both a "clever critique" of the French lyric genre of complaint and "loving homage" to it, assessing aspects of exaggeration, repetition, structure, conventional theme and diction, wordplay, etc. as evidence that the poem evokes…
Nielsen, Melinda E.
Chaucer Review 51.2 (2016): 209-26.
Considers how the interrelated texts and glosses in CUL, MS Ii.III.21 depict in nuanced ways the gender of Lady Philosophy, focusing on Chaucer's emphasis in Bo of her "norisschyng" of Boethius as teacher, physician, and wet-nurse. While translating…
Reads the manuscript glosses to TC in Cambridge, St. John's College, MS L.i and Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.IV.27 as an "experimental early step toward the more elaborate marginal apparatus" in CT manuscripts. The TC glosses reflect a…
Connects the complicated relationship among FranT's three main characters and the political relationship of England, France, and Brittany. Asserts that each character symbolizes one of these places and shows how the dynamics of love and sex merge…
Twomey, Michael W., and Scott D. Stull.
Chaucer Review 51.3 (2016): 310-37.
Analyzes the two houses in RvT and MilT and contends that Chaucer's precise description of architectural setting displays how architecture shaped medieval social life and communicated social and class satire.
Espie, Jeff, and Sarah Star.
Chaucer Review 51.3 (2016): 382-401.
Examines Chaucer's original characterization of Calkas through the ways it diverges from the representation of this character in earlier versions. Chaucer presents him as a human individual whose words are not necessarily to be trusted, introducing…
Saraceni, Madeleine L.
Chaucer Review 51.4 (2016): 403-35.
Explores what Chaucer's use of genres strongly associated with female readers--such as vernacular devotional writing, conduct literature, and hagiography--suggests about his attitudes toward women. Examines the significance of the catalogue of…
Contends that Cresseid's maturation in Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" includes an evolving contemplation of free will, as one finds in Boethius and in Chaucer's depiction of Troilus in TC.
Cook, Megan L.
Chaucer Review 52.1 (2017): 124-42.
Claims that LGW may have been viewed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a response to TC and as an allegory for how Chaucer may have interacted with patrons.
Provides an afterword to the special issue on LGW, focusing on the theme of love's loss, and presents an argument that Prince's song "When You Were Mine" provides a foil for the women of LGW.
Argues that Chaucer employs Livy's and Augustine's stories of Lucretia as a way to hold up feminine virtue, rather than repeating their negative attributes exhibited in the source material.
Examines the ways in which Gower and Chaucer use their source material differently. Gower uses Ovid to emphasize morality while Chaucer uses Ovid to explore both the courtly and the romantic.
