Argues that Criseyde is a "willful agent," who reveals "nominalist intentions" and is guided by her own desires and "misdirected will" in her love of Troilus.
Details two meanings of Chaucer's idea of "fame" in lines 1873-82 of HF: either living a "private, unnoticed life," or not looking for "glory as a poet." Compares Book II to Alexander's Pope's "The Temple of Fame."
Discusses the relationship between "translation and historical alterity" in TC, examining how Dante's vernacular language in his "Convivio" connects with how Chaucer "exploits the transformative potential of translation" within his own vernacular…
Contextualizes MerT by looking at medieval scientific writings on "pica" ("deviant pregnancy cravings") and the medieval "pathology of pregnancy," assessing May's pregnancy and her "sexual longings."
Reviews Prudence's "allegorical reading practices" and argues that Mel is based on the "relationship between the literary mode of moralizing allegory and contingent reading practices."
Investigates character development, language, and motifs of GP, CT, and TC to establish the extent of Chaucer's influence on the sixteenth-century poem "Debate betweene Pride and Lowlines."
Focuses on Chaucer's position as lay controller of customs and argues that HF constitutes an attempt to change the field of literature to benefit--in socioeconomic and aesthetic senses--someone in his "liminal" professional position.
Edits and translates a hitherto unknown Anglo-Norman analogue to PrT. The "Hugo de Lincolnia" is the only vernacular version of the story of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln produced contemporaneously with Chaucer's hagiographical tale.
The Reeve's dialect is usually considered a rendering of Norfolk dialect. However, Knox argues that the word "ik" indicates a Norfolk joke, revealing the Reeve's anachronistic and backwards speech.
Rather than consider the forests and woods in Chaucer's work symbolically, offers an eco-materialist reading of Chaucer's work as Clerk of the King and as forester of North Petherton. Argues that these positions inform Chaucer's settings and…
Mosser, Daniel W. and Linne R. Mooney.
ChauR 49.01 (2014): 39-76.
Identifies the Beryn Scribe as the scribe of Princeton University, MS 100, as well as other CT fragments. Maintains that the Beryn Scribe worked with other scribes in a scriptorium based in London to disseminate multiple copies of vernacular…
By paying attention to apocryphal texts such as "The Plowman's Tale," readers can understand the appeal of continuations of CT. As CT is an amorphous text, reconsidering medieval writers and readers of apocrypha helps scholars rethink the potential…
Discusses Christine de Pizan's "isopathic mode of treatment (cure by similarities)" to deal with the melancholy expressed in "Chemin de long estude." Compares Pizan's treatment to the "allopathic mode of treatment (cure by contraries)" Chaucer…
Halliday, Stephen.
Cheltenham: History Press, 2020.
Arranged in districts; includes brief references to Chaucer and his works, e.g., Cheapside (CkT), south of the Thames (CT), Aldgate (Chaucer's residence), etc.
Modern prose adaptation of selections from CT (GP, PardT, RvT, Th, FranT, and MilT), set within the pilgrimage frame, designed for staging by students in their "lower and middle years of secondary school". The text is interspersed with various…
Adaptation of the CT for staging that incorporates abridged versions of PardT, FrT, MilT, RvT, WBT, and NPT, with stage directions, framed by dialogue among Chaucer, a modern student, the Host, and several fiends. The volume includes suggestions for…
Masui, Michio.
Chiaki Higashida, ed. Gengo to Buntai: Higashida Chiaki Kyoju Kanreki Kinen Rombunshu. Language and Style: Essays Commemorating the 60th Birthday of Professor C. Higashida (Osaka: Osaka Kyoiku Tosho, 1975), pp. 9-18.
A "multiple approach" to PrT treats the significant inter-relationships between structure, theme, and meaning. For instance, Chaucer's use of prayer heightens the religious mood of this tale and emphasizes the mother/son thematic conflict.
Doniger, Wendy.
Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press, 2000.
A cross-cultural, transhistorical anatomy of one motif in the "mythology of sex" in literature and film--the "story of going to bed with someone whom you mistake for someone else." Discusses structuralist and psychoanalytic explanations of variations…
Summit, Jennifer.
Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Historicizing the "commonplace" conception that women writers stand in opposition to literary tradition, Summit assesses how the conception itself "dialectically fashioned both 'the woman writer' and 'English literature' in the medieval and early…
Brundage, James A.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
An exhaustive study of sexual practices and attitudes (both "official" and "popular") and the attempted regulation of sex and marriage under canon law. Chapter 10 deals with the period from 1348 to the Reformation.
Bloch, R. Howard.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Explores the scriptural roots of medieval attitudes toward women, focusing on how various kinds of abstraction and aestheticizing led to fundamentally misogynistic contradictions. Examines French romances, lays, and lyrics for the ways they elevate…
Hagstrum, Jean H.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
A historical assessment of representations of heterosexual love and marriage in the art, myth, and religion of the Western world, concentrating on differing ways in which esteem and desire have been aligned, rationalized, and sanctified.
