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…
Courter, Jean M.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1993): 3206A.
The term "Scottish Chaucerians," evolving from Henryson's "Testament of Criseyde," proves inaccurate, overly limited, and unfortunate, since the fifteenth-century Scottish poets,superior to their English contemporaries, initiated their nations great…
Courtney, Eleanor Lewer.
Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Arizona, 1975. xlv, 387 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International 37 (1976): 327A. Fully accessible via https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/290393 (accessed April 12, 2026).
The Introduction is a survey of trends in Chaucer criticism 1964-71. Robertson's 'Preface to Chaucer' and Jordan's 'Chaucer and the Shape of Creation' are found especially influential. The second part is an annotated bibliography of 1218 items,…
Explores Chaucer's depiction in CT of human vitality "in an unending variety of circumstances," framed by the "revelatory power of symbolism" latent in his details and styles. Separates Chaucer's techniques from Dante's allegory and from modern…
This collection of critical essays by Cousins includes a discussion of Shakespeare's "Lucrece," part of which is entitled "Versions of the Lucretia Story by Ovid, Livy, Boccaccio, Chaucer and Gower" (pp. 48-58), a survey of the various accounts which…
Cousins, A. D.
A. D. Cousins and Daniel Derrin, eds. Alexander Pope in the Reign of Queen Anne: Reconsiderations of His Early Career (New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. 113-36.
Argues that in his reworking of HF as "The Temple of Fame," Alexander Pope "comprehensively repudiates the inconclusiveness" of Chaucer's work. Where Chaucer suggests "the contradictions and confusions" of literary tradition and authority, Pope…
Covella, Sister Francis Dolores.
Chaucer Review 4.4 (1970): 267-83.
Gauges the "literary probability" that the Envoy to ClT (and the preceding stanza), 4.1170-1212, was intended by Chaucer to be voiced by the Clerk, suggesting that either the Host or the Wife of Bath may be considered the speaker, adducing manuscript…
Covella, Sister Francis Dolores.
Chaucer Review 2.4 (1968): 235-45.
Considers the tone and attitude of the seventeen-stanza "Epilogue" of TC (5.1751-1869), observing a shift between the first five stanzas and the last twelve and suggesting that the latter are addressed to a reading audience rather than the original,…
Cowdery, Taylor.
Taylor Cowdery. Matter and Making in Early English Poetry: Literary Production from Chaucer to Sidney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 15-51.
Examines Chaucer's various engagements with the commonplace notion that "wordes moote be cosyn to the dede" (GP, 742), focusing on CT, which initially presents literature as unconstrained by norms, and later counters this flexibility to show that…
Cowen, J. A.
Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig, eds. Medieval Studies Presented to George Kane (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Wolfeboro, N.H.: D. S. Brewer, 1988), pp. 147-52.
Examines the lexicographical records of "child" in Middle English and suggests that like Thopas, Absolon may be a Narcissistic figure, influenced by the "Roman de la Rose."
Cowen, J. M.
Notes and Queries 232 (1987): 152-53.
The handwritten collations in the British Library 643.M.1 copy of Urry's "Chaucer" are in the hand of Samuel Pegge the elder, antiquary and vicar in Kent, 1730-51. The collations are from British Library MS Add. 9832, which Pegge evidently owned.
