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…
D. W. Robertson has already demonstrated the relationship between the Samaritan Woman (Matt. 4:4) and the Wife of Bath. But the similarities are even deeper, extending to an ironic typology of the harlot saved, including Mary Magdalene.
Mendelson, Anne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1978): 2295A.
The incongruity of the method of theological "quaestiones" (humble) in WBP with the Wife's aggressive, arbitrary approach and some of her orthodox assertions create the comic effect. WBT exhibits a transformation: the intellectual authority of the…
Sands, Donald B.
Chaucer Review 12 (1978): 171-82.
The Wife of Bath is neither a comic figure as Donaldson and others see her, nor a tragic figure as several other critics see her. Instead she is, as Beryl Rowland suggests, a neurotic and a misfit.
The interpretive problems with ClT--our ambivalence between human sympathy for Griselda and recognition of the poem's stern moral import--stem largely from the teller himself, whose additions to the source in Petrarch indicate that he does not fully…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Siegfried Wenzel, ed. Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Proceedings of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), pp. 37-50.
MerT is about limits and trangressions. January violates a limit marrying May; May violates moral limits; modes of parody and irony raze barriers between tragic and comic, making the tale its own anti-tale. The explicit cynicism and "realism" of…
Brown, Emerson, Jr.
Chaucer Review 13 (1978): 141-56.
MerT is not just a merry fabliau, uncomplicated by a fictional narrator. Through evidence included in the prologue, most of the first hundred and fifty lines, and various other passages in the work, we see that Chaucer may have consciously tried to…
Ewald, William B.,III.
English Language Notes 15 (1978): 267-68.
Robinson glosses Justinus' words "er ye have youre right of hooly chirche" (MerT, 1662) as "before your wedding is really solemnized." This should read "before your funeral is really solemnized."
