Jost, Jean E.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval and Early Modern Literature. (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004), pp. 267-87.
Explores vows and vow-breaking in CT, arguing that ManT brings to tragic crescendo a concern with the transgression of marital vows and presents consequences as horrific as any in Greek drama.
Mieszkowski, Gretchen.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, Its Meaning, and Consequences. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, no. 5 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter), 2010, pp. 457-80.
Mieszkowski contrasts the situational comedy of TC and the structural comedic techniques of MilT, MerT, and SumT. Chaucer generates "all the comedy" of TC by means of Pandarus, whose comic counterpoint compels readers to reconceptualize love without…
Peters, Harry.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 375-91.
Describes two medieval views of old age, based in the "seasonal model" of the four ages of life and the planetary model of seven ages. Comments on various poets' uses of the age of Jupiter and the age of Saturn, and identifies Chaucer's depictions of…
Sandidge, Marilyn.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic. (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 357-73.
Youthful attitudes toward old age in the works of Boccaccio and Chaucer differ strikingly, perhaps because of demographic changes caused by the Black Plague. In Boccaccio, youth respects the wisdom of age, whereas in Chaucer young people resent the…
Jost, Jean E.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 599-632.
Contrasts Chaucer's Troilus and the title character of "Sir Tristrem," with comments on brutality and violence in "Athelston," exploring the "nobility" or lack of nobility of masculine protagonists in courtly romance. Devotion and affection dominate…
Jost, Jean E.
Albrecht Classen, ed. The Book and the Magic of Reading in the Middle Ages. (New York and London: Garland, 1998), pp. 171-217.
Chaucer involves his readers in a romancelike quest of introspection. By way of infinite regression, they encounter first the text, then a reading character, and finally themselves. The process encourages both Socratic self-knowledge and pleasurable…
Scott, Anne.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time: Explorations of World Perceptions and Processes of Identity Formation (Boston, Mass.: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 379-423.
Explores what Chaucer's romances "say about . . . individuality and identity," interpreting spaces, movements, and characters' perception of them in KnT for how they "delimit" behaviors even though these limitations are disrupted by individual…
Jost, Jean [E.]
Albrecht Classen, ed. Words of Love and Love of Words in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008), pp. 395-420.
Courtly literature is an intellectual battleground in which reversals of gender and social positions clash. The men's rhetorical competition in FranT shows a courtly love of words.
Examines the philosophical content of Chaucer's dream visions--the interplay between the soul and its courtly context--arguing that in Chaucer's world, the ideal of courtesy rather than any explicitly spiritual principle holds together a fictive…
McTurk, Rory.
Aldershot, Hampshire; and Burlington, Ver. : Ashgate, 2005.
Revives the idea that Chaucer visited Ireland between 1361 and 1366, placing new emphasis on the date of the Statute of Kilkenny. Identifies sources for Chaucer's works in Irish and Norse literatures. Observes parallels for HF in the "Topographia…
Holton, Amanda.
Aldershot, Hampshire; and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008.
Studies Chaucer's stylistic techniques, comparing several texts (KnT, MLT, PhyT, MkT, ManT, and LGW) with sources to show that Chaucer employed a style that was remarkably consistent across genres, rather than appropriating the styles of source…
Includes thirteen essays by Benson, all but one reprinted from earlier publications. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Contradictions: From "Beowulf" to Chaucer under Alternative Title.
A biography of John Shirley (d. 1456) that examines available life-records and assesses his scribal output and influence. Shirley was a scribe of several important manuscripts that include works by Chaucer, Lydgate, and Gower; a collector and…
Seymour, M. C.
Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press, 1997.
Describes fifty-six manuscripts of "The Canterbury Tales," providing detailed contents and collations, plus briefer comments on binding, decoration, glosses, rubrics, scribes, and provenance. Follows Manly and Rickert's classifications of the…
Twelve essays by various authors, a celebratory introduction of testimonials, and a bibliography of publications of M. B. Parkes. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer search for Of the Making of Books under Alternative Title.
Foster, Edward E., and David H. Carey.
Aldershot; and Brookfield, Vt. : Ashgate, 2002.
Lists Chaucer's religious, ecclesiastical, and liturgical terms and proper names (about 500), alphabetically arranged by Chaucer's spelling and cross-listed. Many terms are defined at greater length than in a lexical dictionary. Others are lengthier…
Goodall, John A.
Aldershot; and Burlington, Vt. : Ashgate, 2001.
A visual and verbal history of the institution, community, and architecture of the almshouse attached to St. Mary's Church, Ewelme. Thomas Chaucer, who patronized one of two building campaigns of the church, is buried in the church with his wife,…
Huppé, Bernard F.
Aldo S. Bernardo and Saul Levin, eds. The Classics in the Middle Ages: Papers of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, no. 69 (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1990), 175-87.
Surveys the typology of journeying in Beowulf, Abelard's Calamaties, Chretien's Eric and Lancelot, Roman de la Rose, Dante's Vita nuova, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Troilus's rise through the spheres in TC.
Taylor, Jerome.
Aldo Scaglione, ed. Francis Petrarch, Six Centuries Later: A Symposium. North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, Symposia, no. 3 (Chapel Hill: Department of Romance Languages, University of North Carolina, 1975), pp. 364-83.
Chaucer's Clerk responds to WBT using the poetry of Petrarch, the tale of Griselda, and a spiritually improved version of Aristotelian logic.
Four essays by Pizzorno on Chaucer's epistemological uses of metaphor, exempla, and allegory, with an appendix (pp. 111-31) on figurative thinking in classical and medieval tradition and in modern theory. Chapter one (pp. 5-29) was previously…
Da Rold, Orietta.
Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin, eds. The Production of Books in England, 1350-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 12-33.
Da Rold's study of Cambridge University Library MS Dd.4.24 (a manuscript of CT) suggests that variations in shades of ink helps to disclose scribal habits of copying and emendation as well as the continuity of the exemplars used. Argues for further…
Partridge, Stephen.
Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin, eds. The Production of Books in England, 1350-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 79-103.
Observes that scribes often used more than one exemplar. In the case of at least one CT manuscript (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 198), the scribe's addition of glosses from an exemplar apparently received late in the copying process resulted in…
León Sendra, Antonio R.
Alfinge: Revista de filología 3 (1985): 241-52.
Focuses on Chaucer's humor and irony in the love consummation scene in TC, and how he frames terminology as courtly love, while undermining the concept.
