"Sefer Yetsira" of the ancient Jewish mystics, Chaucer's PF and Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" center on the necessary acknowledgement of the unfixed quality of language that Bakhtin describes. All three are concerned with distinct moments in the…
Chaucer satirizes the anti-Semitism and sexual restrictiveness of the medieval church by presenting the serpent-Satan as a representation of Judaic reproduction denied the celibate Prioress. Rudat suggests the Prioress terminated an earlier unwanted…
A "palimpsestic" reading of MerT reveals the irony with which the Merchant treats January and with which Chaucer treats the Merchant, enriching and complicating the "Tale's" identification between the Merchant and January.
Identifies exegetical details in the characterization of Absolon in MilT, helping to identify the clerk with the sins of avarice, lechery, and pride and showing how he is a parody of Robyn the Miller "in the Miller's own tale."
Maveety, Stanley R.
CLA Journal 4.2 (1960): 132-37.
Recommends showing students how digressive, "extra-narrative passages" in NPT "are the essence of Chaucer's intention, not obstructions." Includes discussion of contrasts between NPT and the Cock and Fox fable of Marie de France, focusing on…
Identifies three aspects of NPT that differ from those found in its analogues ("Roman du Renart" and "Reinhart Fuch"), arguing that Chaunticleer' s belief in dreams, the frugal poverty of the widow, and the limited role of the fox produce a "shifting…
Interprets the GP description of the Prioress as a satire of an institution rather than a critique of an individual, offering the reading as a prolegomenon to a comparative discussion of the challenges of teaching English and teaching foreign…
Radulescu, Raluca L.
Claire McIlroy and Anne M. Scott, Literature, Emotions, and Pre-Modern War: Conflict in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leeds: Arc Humanities, 2021), pp. 45-63.
Investigates the restless "emotional movement" of "roaming" in KnT, as expression of both confined frustration and openness to new adventures enacted by Palamon, Emelye, and Arcite. Compares Chaucer's depictions of these movements and emotions with…
Alamichel, Marie-Françoise.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (2014): n.p. (web publication).
Addresses landscape descriptions in Middle English Breton lays. Focuses on two literary categories of landscapes: romance and magical settings.
Blandeau, Agnés.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (2014): n.p. (web publication).
Assesses the theme of keeping one's word in Breton lays, including FranT, focusing on the theme's Middle Ages: pledging and keeping one's word, and its opposite, breaking one's promise or betraying one's pledge.
Carruthers, Leo.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (2014): n.p. (web publication).
Explores the semantic and cultural fields underlying the terms 'Breton' and 'Celtic'. Posits that Chaucer willingly betrays his knowledge of the traditional geography and culture connected with Breton lays in FranT.
Moulin, Joanny.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (2014): n.p. (web publication).
Discusses theoretical approaches to the study of Breton lays, including gender and postcolonial studies. Includes brief references to FranT.
Scala, Elizabeth.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (2014): n.p. (web publication).
Argues that Chaucer's interest in Breton lays rests on the genre's association with magic and language. WBT has features of a Breton lay, but is not marked as such; FranT, even though it has its sources in the Italian novelle, is marked as a Breton…
Séguy, Mireille.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (2014): n.p. (web publication).
Compares FranT with Breton lays, and centers on how memory, and the unreliability of the past, weaken the connection between Middle English lays and Breton lays.
Stévanovitch, Colette.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (2014): n.p. (web publication).
Concentrates on rhythm in FranT and contends that FranT is successful as a poetic composition, but cannot claim to be a Breton lay.
Yvernault, Martine.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (2014): n.p. (web publication).
Although courtly love, magic, and supernatural situations make up the framework of FranT, the role played by binding agreements, contracts, and consent in the Tale alters the traditional definition of magic. Claims that fourteenth-century society was…
Laskaya, Anne.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (2014): n.p. (web publication).
Includes the argument that the material context of FranT must be considered as a relevant framework for reading Middle English Breton lays.
Archibald, Elizabeth.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (Etudes Epistémè, no. 25, 2014): n.p. (web publication).
Despite the widely accepted claim that French and Middle English Breton lays are concerned primarily with love, argues that the English poems pay relatively little attention to romantic love, and are more concerned with identity, family separation…
Douglas, Blaise.
Claire Vial, ed. "A noble tale / Among us shall awake": Approches croisees des "Middle English Breton Lays" et du "Franklin's Tale" (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2015), pp. 17-25.
Explores the notion of commitment in connection with the contradictory and untenable verbal pledges in FranT.
Morrison, Stephen.
Claire Vial, ed. "A noble tale / Among us shall awake": Approches croisees des "Middle English Breton Lays" et du "Franklin's Tale" (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2015), pp. 27-34.
Focuses on how playfulness breaks the limits of existential constraint in FranT.
Ruszkiewicz, D.
Claire Vial, ed. "A noble tale / Among us shall awake": Approches croisees des "Middle English Breton Lays" et du "Franklin's Tale" (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2015), pp. 35-44.
Studies shifting perspectives on love, marriage, and honor in FranT and WBT.
Kinney, Clare Regan.
Clare Regan Kinney, Strategies of Poetic Narrative (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 31-68.
Considers TC as a narrative poem in relation to Boccaccio's Filostrato, exploring three narrative "designs" highlighted by the comparison: additive, goal-resistent dilation; patterned, goal-determining organization; and revisionary interpretation in…
Hoffman, Richard L.
Classica et Mediaevalia 25 (1964): 263-72.
Surveys arguments that seek to identify sources and analogues to the claim in KnT 1.1625-26 that neither love nor lordship "likes competition with another of its kind," citing similarities with TC 2.755-56, FranT 5.764-67, and others, and arguing…
Grennen, Joseph E.
Classica et Mediaevalia 26 (1965): 306-33.
Shows that "clichés of thought and expression" abound in medieval alchemical treatises, and explains how Chaucer's uses of these "topoi" or commonplaces "contribute to the meaning" of CYPT. Tabulates commonplaces of alchemical behavior, preparation,…
