Coss, Peter.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 227-46.
Examines current scholarship to illuminate the portrait of the Franklin in GP, arguing that it reflects Chaucer's various opinions about "the social position of franklins in real life" and "the roles Chaucer has its Franklin perform" in FranT.
Includes photostats of Cambridge, Peterhouse, MS 75.I (Equat) among several additions to "Section A" of Oronzo Cilli's "Tolkien's Library: An Annotated Checklist" (Edinburgh: Luna Press, 2019), and comments on Tolkien's concern with scribal…
Cossio, Andoni.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature 27 (2022): 166-76.
Identifies which folios of Cambridge, Peterhouse, MS 75.I are included (photostatic copies) in the Tolkien archive of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tolkien VC 277, using the copies to assess Tolkien's possible assistance to Derek J. Price and R. M.…
Costello, Mary Angelica, R. S. M.
Dissertation Abstracts International 23.09 (1963): 3352.
Compares TC with Boccaccio's "Filostrato," and explores Chaucer's "controlled use of the gods and the Christian God" as they "function ambiguously and symbolically" in contributing to the "ultimate meaning of the poem."
Costomiris, Robert Douglas.
Dissertation Abstracts International 56 (1996): 4783A.
William Thynne, the first true editor of Chaucer's oeuvre, performed fewer duties for the royal household than has been believed; thus, he had more time for editing. Familiar with the three previous printings and with many manuscripts, he built on…
"The Plowman's Tale" was regularly included in editions of CT from William Thynne's second edition in 1542 until Thomas Tyrwhitt's 1778 edition. Various qualities of the tale might have led sixteenth-century readers to accept the poem as Chaucer's:…
Costomiris, Robert.
The Library, 6th ser., 20 (1998): 99-117.
Uses correspondences between the Tanner texts of Clanvowe's poem and that printed in Thynne's 1532 edition of Chaucer to argue that Thynne's dependence on this manuscript was greater than scholars have avowed.
Costomiris, Robert.
Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline, eds. Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp. 237-57.
Assessing tale order, various links, and the treatment of spurious works in William Thynne's 1532 edition of Chaucer's Works, Costomiris argues that Thynne depended on William Caxton's first edition of CT and on one or another d-class manuscript.…
Discusses prefaces to CT as marketing and self-promotion that linked the authority of editors and a dedicatee, Henry VIII, to the authority of the author.
Argues that moral and psychological interpretations of TC--readings that judge the characters and those that empathize with their experiences--are "not as incompatible as their adherents would have us believe." Chaucer's rich depictions of his…
Describes hay as a symbol of ephemerality, materiality, and avarice in FrT and argues that "the summoner's urging his companion (a fiend) to seize a cart of hay . . . draws him closer to the very substance that symbolizes his own sinful propensities…
Cote, Mary Kathleen Hendrickson.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 2665A.
WBT, PrT, and SNT all confront the masculine authority of books, the nature of love and marriage, and the nature of feminine authority--issues of female identity and agency. They assert a feminine response to masculine discourse in CT, culminating in…
Cotter, James Finn.
Papers on Language and Literature 7 (1971): 293-97.
Identifies the "sharp incongruity" between the Wife of Bath's remarks on her initial encounter with Jankyn (WBP 3.543ff.) and Lenten sermons and traditions, sharpened by the irony of the Wife's two references to the Lenten season.
Cotter, James Finn.
English Language Notes 6 (1969): 169-72.
Contrasts the Wife of Bath's uses in WBP of the Pauline image of marital debt with commentaries found in St. Jerome and Thomas Aquinas, showing how she uses it to claim male debt only.
Cotton, Eve.
Mount Kisco, N. Y.: Guidance Associates, 2005.
Item not located; cited in WorldCat, with the following abstract: "Examines the life and ideas of Geoffrey Chaucer and traces the route of his pilgrimage."
Cotton, Michael E.
Chaucer Review 7.1 (1972): 37-43.
Treats the "psychological realism" and "moral allegory" in TC as complementary, analyzing the imagery and themes of ancient gods, the moon, and mutability, associated with Criseyde. Images of hell and torment in the final two books, differing from…
Couch, Julie Nelson.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 3554A, 2001.
Chaucer's representations of the child as pathetic and passive (in Th and PrT) contrasts with images of children in romance ("Havelock the Dane") and miracle tales ("Child Slain by Jews" and "The Jewish Boy"). Chaucer "canonizes" this negative view…
Treats medieval tragedy as a combination of the tragedy of fortune and the potential for tragedy of damnation, surveying antecedent traditions and exploring each of the four poems of the title. Reads TC as a poem that fuses both views of tragedy, and…
Courtauld, Sarah, Abigail Wheatley, and Susanna Davidson. Illus. Ian Mcnee
London: Usbourne, 2008.
Retellings (in prose, unless otherwise noted) of GP, KnT, MilT, RvT, MLT, WBT, FrT, MerT, SqT, FranT, PardT, Th (in verse), NPT, CYT, ManT, and Ret. The book shortens and bowdlerizes the works for an adolescent / juvenile audience and "tidies up…
Courtenay, William J.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987.
Chapters on the fourteenth-century educational framework, schools of the religious orders, higher education, patronage of ideas, English ties with Continental education, English scholasticism, Oxford after the plague, and "Piety and Learning in the…
Courtenay, William J.
Keiper, Hugo, Richard J. Utz, and Cristoph Bode, eds. Nominalism and Literary Discourse: New Perspectives (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997), pp. 111-21.
Surveys the history and state of scholarship on a key concept of fourteenth-century nominalism--the dialectic of divine omnipotence--and its applications to Chaucerian and other Middle English texts. Warns that a view of the "potentia absoluta" as…
