León Sendra, Antonio R.
Alfinge: Revista de Filología 8 (1997): 151-62.
Presents HF as a poetic and rhetoric reflection, as well as a reaction to the desire to have (versus the desire to be) and the belief in popular opinion (versus the belief in truth).
Kellogg, Arthur L., and Robert C. Cox.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 108-45.
Describes the backgrounds to Chaucer's reference to St. Valentine in PF (line 309) and explores its contemporaneous contexts in the poetry of Oton de Grandson and Charles d'Orléans. Rooted in Roman Lupercalia seasonal rites of purification and…
Kellogg, Arthur L., and Robert C. Cox.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 155-98.
Discusses Chaucer's three references to May 3 as an ambivalent "destinal date," arging that the date is affiliated with tragic fortune in TC, with humanistic outlook in KnT, and with comic reversal in NPT. This sequence comprises a "kind of limited…
Kellogg, Alfred L.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 276-329.
Reads Boccaccio's, Petrarch's and Chaucer's versions of the tale of Griselda, observing particular emphases, similarities, and differences, especially those that pertain to Griselda in relation to the ideal of the "mulier fortis" of Proverbs 31.10 in…
Kellogg, Alfred L.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 59-107.
Examines the occasion, structure, and humor of BD, its possible reflections of Chaucer's marriage to Philippa, and the legacy of its heart imagery that derives from Platonic and Arabic thought (Averroes and Ibn Hazm) and the courtly love tradition. …
Gutiérrez Arranz, Jose Maria.
Alicia Rodríquez Álvarez, and Francisco Alanso Almeida, eds. Voices on the Past: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature ([Spain]: Netbiblo, 2004), pp. 173-83.
Surveys philosophical feasts or "lunches" (symposia) in classical literature and traces the motif in Old and Middle English texts, commenting on the "metaphorical reality of Chaucer's non-existing banquet"--the Host's promised meal.
Garrido Anes, Edurne.
Alicia Rodríquez Álvarez, and Francisco Alanso Almeida, eds. Voices on the Past: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature ([Spain]: Netbiblo, 2004), pp. 185-91.
Considers Troilus' lovesickness as a physical disorder and a cause of distorted perception in TC and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida." His condition is due to the "often ambiguous correspondence" of "passions, signs, thoughts and facts."
Examines the use of Abelardian "sic et non" analysis in Mel as a demonstration of the "futility of arguing from Authority." In Mel, the sense of futility may be inadvertent, but in WBP it results from conscious parody of authoritarian argument.…
In modern reader reception, ClT produces either "Paduan" pity for Griselda or "Veronese" disbelief in woman so virtuous. Schaum examines the "negative capability" needed in reader response because of the character of the GP Clerk, the manner of…
Fumo, Jamie C.
Alison Keith and Stephen Rupp, eds. Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007), pp. 129-50.
The Wife of Bath's "manipulations of the Argus and Midas myths" reflect her Ovid-like "delight in sensuality and embeddedness of narrative" and her recognition of the power of story to "control and deceive." The myths help unify WBPT; through them,…
Rossiter, William T.
Alison Yarrington and Stefano Villani, eds. Travels and Translations: Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), pp. 231-50.
Expands upon Harold Bloom's concept of the "anxiety of influence" to explore agonistic revisionism through translation in medieval literature, focusing on transmission from Italy to England and illustrating in detail how "verbal, phrasal,…
Iconographic associations of Mary and Griselda have proved problematic in attempts to read ClT as allegory; however, if we hear in the "annunciation passage" a larger range of allusion--both secular and patristic--the allegorical force of the Marian…
Explores how Chaucer capitalized on extrinsic and intrinsic connotations in his ape metaphors. Kelly provides backgrounds to the metaphors from other medieval texts and, following Michael Riffaterre, theorizes about how such metaphors can operate in…
Mars is placed within Christian moral interpretation when Mars refers to lovers as fish caught on a hook. Asking why God made human love enticing, Mars inverts the "hierarchy of human and divine lovers." For him the love bait on the hook is not…
WBT, FrT, and SumT exhibit a thematic unity through common concern of "championing one...of two antithetical ways of perceiving the world." Wife and Summoner tell tales from an Aristotelian perspective, the Friar from a Platonic perspective.
Kellogg, Judith L.
Allegorica 9 (1987-88): 221-48.
We do not understand how the Franklin views the concept of "gentilesse" that informs his moral vision. Kellogg compares the Franklin's use of key chivalric terminology to its uses in Middle English romance, thereby illuminating the Franklin, FranT,…
Yager, Susan.
Allen J. Frantzen, ed. Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell in the Middle Ages (N.p.: Illinois Medieval Association, 1993), pp. 15-26
Briefly surveys the tradition in which sight and the many-eyed Argus were figures of either intellectual perception or deception. For Chaucer, in KnT, MerT, WBP, and TC, Argus "typifies a common failing in men"--their inability to comprehend truly…
Astell, Ann W.
Allen J. Frantzen, ed. Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell in the Middle Ages (N.p.: Illinois Medieval Association, 1993), pp. 53-64
Both NPT and Gower's "Vox clamantis" merge the figure of the crowing cock with the figures of the preacher and the poet, a response by each poet to the social challenges of the so-called Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Chaucer's ironic identification of…
Gulley, Allison.
Allison Gulley, ed. Teaching Rape in the Medieval Literature Classroom: Approaches to Difficult Texts (Amsterdam: Arc Humanities, 2018), pp. 113-27.
Ponders the complications and implications of discussing rape in modern classroom considerations of WBT, and recommends using the BBC television version of the tale to help raise and confront its inherent questions and values.
Pugh, Tison.
Allison Gulley, ed. Teaching Rape in the Medieval Literature Classroom: Approaches to Difficult Texts (Amsterdam: Arc Humanities, 2018), pp. 77-90.
Maintains that attention to speech and silence is crucial to literary analysis and to understanding medieval notions of gender difference, exemplifying how the speech/silence binary can be explored in complex ways to help analyze rape as a plot…
Houlik-Ritchey, Emily.
Allison Gulley, ed. Teaching Rape in the Medieval Literature Classroom: Approaches to Difficult Texts (Amsterdam: Arc Humanities, 2018), pp. 91-112.
Identifies contradictions and complications in legal and ethical understandings of rape, and describes how issues of consent and culpability can be used productively in classroom discussion of RvT to help students understand their own values as well…
Niebrzydowski, Sue.
Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton, eds. The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 18-26.
Surveys medieval commentary on women's enjoyment of sex, noting that sexual pleasure distinguishes Alisoun's marriage to Jankyn in WBP--a result of Jankyn's ability to read his wife's body like a text. Niebrzydowski contrasts Alisoun's sexual…
Saunders, Corinne [J.]
Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton, eds. The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 38-52.
Through otherworldly female characters, a number of Middle English romances and their French ancestors "interweave" heterosexual, romantic desire with magic and the supernatural. WBT, however, "subverts" this convention by reproving the violence of…
Hopkins, Amanda.
Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton, eds. The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 53-70.
Hopkins explores depictions of sexual frisson, or arousal, in a variety of Middle English romances, focusing on the presentation of clothing, nudity, and partial nudity. She surveys examples in which female ugliness is represented almost as often as…
