Trower, Katherine B.
American Benedictine Review 29 (1978): 67-86.
The Physcian and the Pardoner both claim to be healers, but both capitalize on human sickness. Their function as healers is ironically undercut and their tales are thematically related by a common vision of death as terminal rather than transcendent…
Breslin, Carol Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1978): 2246A.
A study of unity in CT focuses upon justice and law. Commentaries available to Chaucer and his audience include the writings of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Sacred Scripture. Legal texts include Glanville, Bracton, Horn, and court records. …
Keiser, George R.
Chaucer Review 12 (1978): 191-201.
The arrangement of CT proposed by Henry Bradshaw a century ago solves the problems of geography and the Endlink to MLT which are present in the Ellesmere arrangement. Recent arguments against the Bradshaw shift offer no real evidence to reject it.
Cooke, Thomas D.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978.
The comic climax, marked by carefully prepared effects of surprise, is the distinctive feature of the fabliaux. Action more than character development or setting characterizes the preparation. As regards genre, the fabliaux have relatively little…
Kempton, Daniel Robert.
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1978): 273A-74A.
The Manciple, Physician, and Clerk strain the notion of fictive propriety with their stories. They exploit the storytelling occasion by attempting to come to terms with their estates and the often oppressive audience through replicating conditions…
Morgan, Gerald.
English Studies 59 (1978): 481-98.
GP is a coherent structure indicating a subtle spiritual reality coinciding to Christian doctrines. It is not seen simply as a social vision, but as encircling both moral and spiritual truths which match: generosity to "gentils," materialism to…
Nitzsche, Jane Chance.
Papers on Language and Literature 14 (1978): 459-64. Rpt. in Harold Bloom, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (New York: Chelsea, 1988).
In the opening of GP, Chaucer follows the six days of Creation narrated in Genesis. The principles both of "natura naturata," created Nature, and of "natura naturans," renewing Nature, inform this passage.
Stark, Marilynn Dianne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1978): 2925A.
In CT, Chaucer examines or modifies various elements of the romance genre: adventure, wonder, medieval didacticism, and love. Three narrators of the tales comically muddle the romance: Sir Thopas, the Squire, and the Franklin. KnT is Chaucer's…
Welch, Jane T.
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1978): 3569A-70A.
Comic irony was used by Chaucer throughout CT, even in the tales generally considered to be serious or pious. ManT, SumT, FranT, PhyT, MLT, PrT, SNT, and ClT all display Chaucer's ironic point of view, although the reader's appreciaiton of this…
Curtz, Thaddeus Bankson,Jr.
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1978): 893A.
The manners in which the Miller, Summoner, and Manciple tell their tales are evidence of Chaucer's interest in the psychology of class conflict. The social events of medieval England and Chaucer's own situation reflect class issues.
Keenan, Hugh T.
American Notes and Queries 16 (1978): 66-67.
The 29 pilgrims may allude to Becket's feast day, December 29. The etymology of "Thomas" in Mirk's "Festial" as "alle mon" corresponds to the representative range of pilgrims and sounds like the Knight's description. Readers might add this…
The form of GP is descended from the genre of the rhetorical catalogue of types, represented in simpler form by the lists of trees and birds in PF. In PF, the garden represents the world of timeless values and the catalogs the earth-bound realities;…
Whitbread, L.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 79 (1978): 41-43.
CT I (A), 5 equals Catullus Car. XLVI 1-3, 7-11. "Pynce at" CT I (A), 326 is not a pun but an idiom. Mars is rightly red, as is the Wife; the number of her husbands evokes John 4:17-18. The Miller's gold thumb refers to the method of his theft,…
Frazier, J. Terry.
South Atlantic Bulletin 43.1 (1978): 75-85.
The marriage agreement in FranT and the Franklin's comment on "maistrie" are not functional parts of the tale, but digressive answers to the Wife, Clerk, and Merchant while obeying the Host's command to "telle on thy tale."
Haskell, Ann S.
Marlene Springer, ed. What Manner of Woman. Gotham Library. (New York: New York University Press, 1978), pp. 1-14.
The romance, reflecting a male dominated society, depicts heroines as stereotypically as the less popular fabliau depicts lower class women. Later literature gives more access to women's lives, particularly middle class ones. Chaucer's Wife…
Justman, Stewart.
Modern Language Quarterly 39 (1978): 3-14.
The workings of "auctoritee" in KnT are at odds with established--especially Boethian--norms. All authority in KnT is overthrown. Habitually in Chaucer's works, authority is subjected to uncongenial contexts and the presumption of irony. As a…
Clark, S. L.,and Julian N. Wasserman.
Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 4.3 (1978): 11-17.
Secular exempla evoke Fortune's rise and fall; religious ones, divine intervention for good. They fit Constance's romance architectonically and thematically.
In Jungian terms, the experiences of the knight in WBT express a psychic interaction with the mother archetype, leading to the ultimate goal of finding the anima.
Dame Alice embodies the "bossy woman" who wishes to be mastered in bed, demands freedom outside it, but only finds her ideal in fantasy. Her fourth husband failed to master her in bed; the fifth refused her freedom outside it; only the knight in WBT…
The reference in WBT to the husband who "pissed on a wal" recalls similar phrases in an oath of King David (1 Kings 25:22, 34). The Biblical allusion is ironic, occurring in the context of the story of Abigail, a model of forebearance in dealing…
Alice misunderstands the sacramental nature of Christian marriage--which requires perennial mutual affection and joining of wills, not self-centered egoism--creating a serious obstacle to the sacrament's efficacy in producing grace. Alice does not…
