Coley, John Smartt.
Dissertation Abstracts International 26.08 (1966): 4625-26A.
Translates a potion of the "Roman de Thebes" into modern English; the Introduction to the translation includes discussion of Chaucer's uses of the work in KnT
The deceptive nature of physical sight in FranT is based on the medieval theory of optics, whereby one's vision--buttressed by "proper" control of the will--aided one in knowing God, while "improper" control made one susceptible to the dangers of…
Collette, Carolyn (P.)
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), 95-107.
Similar in context and form, SNT and PrT have evoked critical commentary on historical background, sources, and analogues. However, PrT has sparked more consistent and recent interest, in part because of the Prioress's personality, her relationship…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 337-49.
In SNT, Chaucer works within the theological tradition of Plato, Augustine, and Prudentius to instruct Christians in their proper attitude toward this world: a "thing" perceived by the physical senses, especially sight, is an apparent reality that…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 19 (1984): 39-45.
Chaucer draws on the symbolic and scriptural traditions of the oak to permit the Pardoner to show off his exemplum-telling skill. Anagogically the exemplum is an allegory of grace offered and refused.
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 15 (1981): 138-50.
The Prioress' preoccupation with emotion and the diminutive reflects the 14th century's concern for a particularized and emotional style in the arts. Though her tale seems odd and inconsistent, it has a consistent sensibility which uses the…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 29-30 (1988): 115-25.
Surveys commentary on Chaucer in Victorian critical journals, deriving three aspects of the Victorian view of Chaucer: he was a Child-Poet whose simplicity anticipated that of the nineteenth-century lower classes; he was the poet of the "green…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds. Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 47-55.
Criseyde's status as a widow and her self-conscious concern with her "honour" and "estat" help characterize her as someone "concerned with maintaining herself and her household as independent units." Her inconstancy is a rational response to her…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Robert R. Edwards, ed. Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 127-47.
Collette examines the tradition of Mariology in relation to PrPT and SNPT. In their "Prologues," the Prioress and the Second Nun invoke the Virgin "as a figure of virtuous female power and speech." In their "Tales," however, women and children die…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Yearbook 2 (1995): 49-62.
Compares the description of Virginia in PhyT with Wycliffite or Lollard materials to argue that Virginia is cast as a perfect image rather than a false one--a reflection of contemporary concern with images, their uses, and their abuses.
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 29 (1995): 416-33.
The concept of prudence was well known in the Middle Ages and was often seen as a specifically feminine virtue in medieval French texts. Drawing from those texts, Chaucer also underscores the feminine, making Mel a story for "real women living…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 33: 350-62, 1999.
Although Chaucer's "circle" has generally been considered wholly masculine, it may well have included contemporary women such as Joan of Kent. Joan was a prosperous and powerful woman, an interceder and a mediator: a model for a character such as…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., eds. Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000), pp. 151-68.
Defines the French literary topos of the good wife, wherein "female virtue grounded in prudence and self-control benefits the immediate domestic and also the wider public spheres." Reflected in Philippe's "Le livre de la vertu du sacrement de…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Christoph Huber and Henrike Lähnemann, eds. Courtly Literature and Clerical Culture / Höfische Literatur und Klerikerkultur / Littérature courtoise et culture cléricale. Selected Papers from the Tenth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Universitat Tübingen, Deutschland, 28 Juli-3 August 2001 (Tübingen: Attempto, 2002), pp. 177-94.
Collette reads the end of CT against Philippe de Mézières' "Songe du vieil pelerin," indicating Chaucer's connections with contemporary Anglo-French literature and exploring the relations between politics and morality in four Tales: alchemy as a…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 243-48.
Collette offers Umberto Eco's notion of a "rhizome labyrinth's indefinite structure" as a heuristic tool for describing the relationship of a text to its "cultural matrix" rather than to specific sources. Focuses on CYT.
Collette, Carolyn P.
Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols, 2006.
Collette surveys literary and historical evidence that women in the Anglo-French tradition played the role of mediator, i.e., someone who "negotiates, bridges, and unites differences"--evidence of the "ideology and practice of women's agency" in the…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 42 (2008): 223- 43.
Considered in the light of key themes of Victorian medievalism and of her own early identification with Chaucer's Emily, Davison's actions--especially those leading to her untimely death--stand as expressions of her ethical commitment, rather than as…
Collette, Carolyn P.
John M. Hill, Bonnie Wheeler, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Essays on Aesthetics and Medieval Literature in Honor of Howell Chickering (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2014), pp. 96-114.
Addresses shared tropes, themes, and language of LGW and TC. Presents LGW not as a "failed text" in its incompleteness, but as a work that is "grounded" in the tragedy of TC and that anticipates the "comedic narratives" of CT.
Collette, Carolyn P.
Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2014.
Examines LGW within the sociocultural and intellectual contexts of the late fourteenth century, paying especial attention to early humanist and late courtly traditions. LGWP may be juxtaposed with Richard de Bury's "Philobiblon"; and the legends…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Visual Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), pp. 244-68.
Examines the British illustrator and sculptor Elisabeth Frink's 1972 illustrated version (with nineteen etchings on copper plates) of Nevill Coghill's 1951 translation of CT. Analyzes several engravings and provides modernist visual interpretation of…
Collette, Carolyn P., and Harold Garrett-Goodyear, eds.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Anthology of documents pertaining to English literature from 1350-1500. Introduction details historical, social, and political movements of late Middle Ages. Includes annotations, timeline, and chronological listing of major medieval literary works.
The essays in this special issue (43.4) of the "The Chaucer Review" open new perspectives on Chaucer's works, placing them in the context of the "new impulses toward quantification and measurement" in and beyond late medieval England.
Collette, Carolyn P., and Vincent J. DiMarco.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23: 317-58, 2001.
Summarizes the political history of the fall of Armenia in 1375, surveying its impact on the court of Richard II and its status as a "haunting symbol" of catastrophe in Middle English literature. Discusses SqT, Anel, the description of the Knight in…
Collette, Carolyn P., ed.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006.
Eight essays by various authors, with an index and an introduction by the editor, who argues that Alceste's mediation is central to LGW, a poem about the "public dimension of ideal female behavior." The poem is best understood in the context of late…
