Cole, Carol A.
Michigan Academician 29 (1997): 511-20.
Argues that Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" is fundamentally Boethian in its castigation of "inconstant Venereal love," and suggests that Henryson links his poem to TC in order to "underscore the Boethian view of love."
Cole contends that metrical groupings of works from the "Alliterative Revival" are faulty and that these groupings reflect inappropriate application of phonology common in the "poetic dialects" of Chaucer and Gower.
Cole, Kristin Lynn.
Clíodhna Carney and Frances McCormack, eds. Chaucer's Poetry: Words, Authority and Ethics (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 92-106.
Questions the idea that Chaucer's relationship with the alliterative verse of his contemporaries, such as the "Gawain"-poet and Langland, was antagonistic. Instead, suggests that the alliterative and the London poets participate in a shared metrical…
Cole, Meghan R.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 5 (2008): 17-25.
Cole examines the "intricate relationship between sex, money, and power" in WBP, particularly as reflected in the sequence in which the Wife recalls her husbands.
Coleman, Janet.
Chaucer and the Italian Trecento (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 33-63.
English culture was shaped by widespread literacy, English nationalism and political unity, a common language and traditions, schools, study of Latin, biblical commentary, knowledge of the classics, the humanistic movement, travel, and foreign…
Coleman, Janet.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
Deals with verse and prose in Middle English, Latin, and Anglo-Norman as literary evidence of the rise of literacy and social mobility. Most literary works aimed at reform and edification in Christian ethical behavior rather than at entertainment. …
Coleman, Joyce, dir. and prod.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Department of English, 2006.
Presents a two-part re-enactment of TC 2.78-119 in Middle English, with modern English sub-titles and production notes. Part I dramatizes the scene; Part II "recreates how medieval audiences would have experienced Chaucer's poem." Available on…
Coleman, Joyce, Mark Cruse, and Kathryn A. Smith, eds.
Turnhout: Brepols, 2013.
Interdisciplinary anthology focusing on interplay of social and political interactions and medieval French and English illuminated manuscripts produced between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. For one essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for…
Coleman, Joyce.
Joyce Coleman. Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 148-78.
Internal evidence in Chaucer's works indicates that he expected his works to be read aloud--both by himself and to an immediate, first audience and by prelectors to later audiences. Chaucer's references to the reception of his work, his references…
Argues that public reading was popular because people enjoyed listening to books in company. Aural audiences included literate upper-middle-class and upper-class readers well into the Renaissance, when aural reading changed. Elite audiences…
Coleman, Joyce.
Hildegard L. C. Tristram, ed. Medieval Insular Literature Between the Oral and the Written II: Continuity of Transmission. ScriptOralia, no.97. (Tubingen: Narr, 1997), pp.155-76.
Challenges the blunt opposition between orality and literacy, arguing from evidence in Chaucer and Langland that transitional terms are needed. Borrowing from the linguistic terms "exophoric" and "endophoric," Coleman argues that the Wife of Bath's…
Constructs a model for the reception of Gower's "Confessio Amantis" that accommodates its combination of English, marginal Latin glosses, and very difficult Latin prefatory verses. Clerk-prelectors probably studied the work before performing…
Coleman, Joyce.
Carolyn P. Collette, ed. The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 33-58.
Coleman surveys the betrothals, marriage, and literary patronage of Philippa of Lancaster, suggesting that she may have given Chaucer a copy of Deschamps's "Ballade 765," which may have helped to inspire Chaucer's interest in flower and leaf debates…
Coleman, Joyce.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 68-85.
Coleman clarifies differences between "aurality" and "orality," assessing references to reading aloud and speaking aloud in Middle English texts, especially Chaucer's works, and citing depictions of such practice in manuscript illustrations,…
Coleman, Joyce.
R. F. Yeager, ed. On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 46. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007, pp. 104-23.
Coleman considers the first recension of Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and the F version of LGWP for evidence of royal patronage, arguing that both were inspired by Anne of Bohemia and by the popularity of the "Flower and Leaf" conventions that Anne…
Argues that the frontispiece to TC in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 61, was modeled on the scene in which Genius addresses Nature in the "Roman de la Rose." Focuses on the "lower register" of the frontispiece, arguing that it depicts Chaucer as a…
Coleman, Joyce.
María Bullón-Fernández, ed. England and Iberia in the Middle Ages, 12th-15th Century: Cultural, Literary, and Political Exchanges. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 135-65.
Coleman argues that Philippa of Lancaster, oldest legitimate daughter of John of Gaunt and queen of Portugal from 1387, sponsored the Portuguese and Castilian translations of Gower's "Confessio" Amantis. Philippa may also have been responsible for an…
Coleman, Joyce.
Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse, and Kathryn A. Smith, eds. The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 403-37
Explores the argument that the lack of Chaucerian presentation miniatures suggests that Chaucer did not write for wealthy patrons. Identifies the first presentation miniature in an English-language manuscript as the 1409 incipit image in John…
Coleman, Joyce.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Visual Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), pp. 177-94.
Argues that "Roman de la rose" iconography underlies English conceptions of authorship and "literary self-validation" in MSS of Gower's "Confessio Amantis," "Pearl," and TC (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 61). The "recombinant iconography"…
Coleman, Joyce.
Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 155-69. 2 b&w figs.
Outlines an "ethnography of reading" and describes "audienceship" as a field of study of "how people actually read (and heard) texts," including examples drawn from Chaucer's fiction and its reception. Closes with a brief survey of reading and…
Coleman, Joyce.
Martin Chase and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds. Reading and Writing in Medieval England: Essays in Honor of Mary C. Erler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019), pp. 9-38.
Explicates the scene of Pandarus's interruption of Criseyde's reading group (TC,
II.85ff.), attending to its intertextualities, the implications of its setting in a paved "secular parlor," the nature of the female aristocratic readers, and…
Coleman, Joyce.
Julia Boffey, ed. Performance, Ceremony and Display in Late Medieval England: Proceedings of the 2018 Harlaxton Symposium. Harlaxton Medieval Studies, no. 30 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2020), pp. 95-109.
Reconstructs from documentary evidence aspects of Elizabeth de Burgh's holiday entertainment at Hatfield House in 1357-58, when Chaucer was her page, positing that Chaucer's mature recollections of performative readings can be found in BD, 349-61,…
Coleman, William E.
Medium AEvum 51 (1982): 92-101.
Chaucer's acquisition of a manuscript of "Teseida" in 1378 suggests that Chaucer omits reference to Boccaccio because he may have seen the imperfect Pavia MS 881, which lacked Boccaccio's commentary and attribution to Boccaccio.
