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.
Study guide to the CT, with summaries of and commentaries on the GP, the links, and all of the tales. Includes brief introductions to Chaucer's life, world, language, and development as a poet, along with passages from critics. Reprinted recurrently,…
Coles, E. R.
University of Portland Review 20.2 (1968): 35-41.
Comments on ParsT as a "literary embodiment of the attitude" the Parson expressed in the GP "as well as the attitude Chaucer reveals" in Ret, suggesting that "the Chaucer of the Retraction is also the Parson of the Tales, by means of whom he…
Coletes Blanco, Agustin.
Cuadernos de Filologia Inglesa 2 (1986): 63-81.
MilT is a typical fabliau in form and content, but it goes beyond the conventions of the genre in its links with the rest of CT, its metafictive deep structure, and its riches of lexicon parody.
In ShT, Chaucer may have used the well-known text of Proverbs 31.10-31, which praises the valiant woman, in ironic fashion. The scriptural "mulier fortis" is praised for her "huswifery," her provision of food and clothing, her "rendering" to her…
The vernicle, an image of Christ, reminds us that man is made in God's image, and emphasizes the Pardoner's perversion of that image, both morally and spiritually. Yet it also provides hope that the Pardoner may reform himself.
Coletti, Theresa.
Studies in Iconography 3 (1977): 47-56.
The image of the merchant's wife waiting for him at the gate at the end of ShT (7.673-76) may be a reflection of a popular iconographic motif, the meeting of Anne and Joachim,parents of the Virgin Mary, at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem.
Coletti, Theresa.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 1-40.
Coletti compares HF with Christine de Pizan's "Livre du chemin de long estude," exploring their differing comments on and responses to their shared literary culture. Through parallel narrative gestures, the two poets consider textual authority,…
In HF, Chaucer's depictions of Venus's temple, the desert surrounding it, and the foundation of Fame's palace offer a vision of vernacular poetry that resembles glass. Like glass, such poetry is produced by transformation and translation of…
Coley, David K.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012.
Discusses nominalism, speech, and power in ManT, along with speech and rhetoric in Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Langland's "Piers Plowman," and works of Hoccleve.
Coley, David K.
Chaucer Review 49.4 (2015): 449-73.
Argues that ShT comments on fourteenth-century controversies regarding tithing and examines the connections drawn between international finance and agrarian production.
Coley, David K.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 121-35.
Reappraises FrT and SumT and acknowledges the professional and personal animosity at the root of the tellers' relationship to each other. Argues for a wider sense of that relationship between the tales and their tellers, contending that this…
While considering how speech in narrative poetry may represent "a distinct category within linguistic discourse," Coley reads ManT as a Chaucerian interaction with William of Ockham's rejection of longstanding Augustinian "hierarchies."
