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."
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.
