Cox, Catherine Stallworth.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1992): 2930A.
Ovid's Narcissus becomes polysemous, generating figures of language among "Pearl" (Dreamer as Narcissus); TC (narrator's drawing on the myth for rhetoric to link pagan and Christian); "Piers Plowman B" (Christian Narcissus and "dreamer-Will"); and…
Cox, Kenneth.
Kenneth Cox. Collected Studies in the Use of English. (London: Agenda, 2001), pp. 43-62.
Cox examines verse, style, and several cruces (textual and narrative) in PrT to clarify Chaucer's ironic technique and to argue that the "prioress's hold on reality is [. . .] weak and her language correspondingly lax, with a concern for decorum far…
Challenges arguments which assert that the MLE should be followed by ShT in the order of the CT, and argues that, in "light of both external and internal evidence," the Ellesmere order is the best order, with WBPT after MLT, and an emended version of…
Edits portions of CT (KnT, MilT, WBP, MerT, FranT, PardT, NPT, and PrT), selections from TC, and from lyrics (Truth, MercB) in Middle English, with introduction, notes, and glossary.
Edits portions of CT (KnT, MilT, WBP, MerT, FranT, PardT, NPT, and PrT), selections from TC, and from lyrics (Truth, MercB) in Middle English, with introduction, notes, and glossary.
Cozart, William R.
Rosario P. Armato and John M. Spalek, eds. Medieval Epic to the "Epic Theater" of Brecht: Essays in Comparative Literature (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1968), pp. 25-34.
Suggests that the notion of making a "virtue of necessity" in TC and Theseus's "First Mover" speech reflect late-medieval nominalism and express concern with the precariousness of human life and its relation to "Ultimate Justice." Ending on a…
Crafton, John Micheal.
Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 163-86.
Chaucer's comedy is a "function of the inherent paradoxes of language, particularly as articulated by Freud," and the humor of CT depends on the audience's awareness of the slippage between truth and language. The paired opposition of PhyT and PardT…
Crafton, John Micheal.
Richard J. Utz, ed. Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm (Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.; Lampeter, Wales: Eswin Mellen, 1995), pp. 117-34.
Chaucer's works reflect a pattern of concern with the realist-nominalist issues of language. Early on, Chaucer critiques realism, and, later on, nominalism, while TC and especially CT pose the two views in dialogic debate. Fragment 6 (Phyt and PardT)…
Crafton, John Micheal.
Philological Quarterly 84 (2005): 259-85.
As a treatise on continence, the last chapter of the "Summa virtutem remediis anime" provides significant analogues to PhyT. Virginia represents true virginity and in her martyrdom appears saintly. Virginius represents foolish virginity, especially…
Middle English sermons and manuals of vices and virtues indicate that Chaucer's audience would have understood Jephtha's daughter as a figure of a loose woman. Through allusion to her, Chaucer creates a painfully ironic moment that characterizes…
Craig, Hardin.
In MacEdward Leach, ed. Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Albert Croll Baugh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), pp. 97-106.
Comments on thematic similarities between Plato's "Gorgias," Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," and several of Chaucer's works, observing in TC a particular concern shared by Plato and Boethius: the "futility of earthly existence."
Craig, Lisa Renee.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 1119A, 1999.
In this study of a specialized kind of computer manual, Chaucer's Astr is cited as a prototype and analyzed for its use of three characteristic rhetorical features.
Craig, Robert M.
Claudette Stager and Martha Carver, eds. Looking Beyond the Highway: Dixie Roads and Culture. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006, pp. 267-87.
Compares people and places of twentieth-century journeys on the Dixie Highway to several medieval pilgrimages, real and fictional, including CT.
Summarizes each of the "comic" tales of CT, with appreciative, inferential, scene-by-scene commentary on techniques of characterization, situations, and enlivening details that make the Tales "amusing." Essentially farcical, the action of MilT…
Cramer, Patricia.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 89 (1990): 491-511
Walter and Griselda are an "Oedipal couple whose sadomasochistic rituals of dominance and submission enact gender roles prescribed by patriarchal social structures which Freud recognized and propogated through his Oedipal models for mental health."
Crampton, Georgia R[onan].
Medium Aevum 43 (1974): 22-36.
Argues that TC "gains psychological interest and what may be called a novelistic effect" through adaptation of the "to do and to suffer" topos. Troilus is "a man of passion who suffers," Pandarus is "a man of action who contrives," and Criseyde…
Crampton, Georgia Ronan.
Medium Aevum 59 (1990): 191-213.
Provides critical analysis of Chaucer's "ABC," examining in turn its genre, plot, two characters, style, and reception, and comparing it to its source.
ABC is not polite praise of the Virgin or gentle expression of filial love: it is a needy, fearful, grasping cry for her protection, evincing the greed, craft, and importunity of a child seeking its mother's reassurance.
Crampton, Georgia Ronan.
David A. Richardson, ed. Spenser: Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern (Cleveland State University, 1977), pp. 132-34. [Microfiche available from the Department of English.]
Spenser and Chaucer both composed subtle, complex closures, spreading out before the audience several endings, like sections of a fan. Many medieval poems ended almost interchangeably in a formulaic prayer for salvation.
Crampton, Georgia Ronan.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974.
Examines the commonplace theme of "agere et pati" (to act and to suffer) in the works of Chaucer and Spenser, especially KnT and books 1-4 of Spenser's "The Faerie Queene," exploring oppositions between deed and emotion, action and passion, and…
Crampton, Georgia Ronan.
Dissertation Abstracts International 28.06 (1967): 2205A.
Traces the topos of the sufferer as protagonist in classical, Christian, and late Latin sources and explores it "as an element" in KnT, TC, and Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene," arguing that Chaucer tends to emphasize "the value of acceptant…
Crampton, Georgia Ronan.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 62 (1963): 486-500.
Assesses the transitions in BD as devices Chaucer uses to "direct the reader toward the hard statements [the poem] makes about deprivation, consolation, the hazards of fortune and the consequences of decision." Divisions in the conversation between…
Crane, John Kenny.
English Language Notes 4 (1966): 81-85.
Adduces evidence from late-medieval maritime law and practice and from details in the GP description of the Merchant (compared with those of the Friar and the Clerk) to argue that the Merchant "has probably committed every money-crime in the books."
