Nineteen of the tales are concerned with poetry, style, genre. In KnT the Knight uses four rhetorical conventions--"occupatio," "brevitas" formula, "digressio," and "descriptio"--but the Knight is a flawed rhetorician-storyteller.
Andersen, Wallis May.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1980): 239A.
The ways these three pilgrims use four rhetorical devices--"occupatio," "brevitas," "digressio," and "descriptio"--reveals their personalities. The Knight's self-conscious narrative stance shows his pretensions: his insensitivity in his use of…
Anderson, David, ed.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee, [1986]
A catalogue of and guide to the 1986 exhibition of manuscripts and printed books of Chaucer's works and sources, held at the Arthur Ross Gallery and the Rosenbach Museum for the Fifth International Congress of the New Chaucer Society, in…
Anderson, David.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
Explores Boccaccio's use of Statius's "Thebaid"--his "systematic transformation" of the epic in the historical context of Boccaccio's day--and Chaucer's reshaping of the epic in KnT. Chapter 4, "Imitation of the 'Thebaid' in the "Knight's Tale,"…
Anderson, David.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986. (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987), pp. 113-25.
Anderson examines Chaucer's use of Statius's "Thebaid," specifically the description of the temple of the goddess Clemence, within medieval traditions that saw her temple as a "type of foreshadowing of the Church," associated with the "Unknown God." …
By cryptic genealogic allusions, Chaucer challenges his readers to perceive parallels between the fraternal conflict of Palamon and Arcite and the similar disastrous divisiveness that troubled their forebears, notably Eteocles and Polynices.
Anderson, David.
Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts 13:1 (1985): 1-17.
Cassandra's "olde stories" of the Calydonian boar and of the siege of Thebes are not digressions but analogies that draw prophetic parallels between Troilus's situation and the circumstances of both the Trojan and the Theban wars. Past disputes led…
Anderson, David.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 4 (1982): 109-33.
Chaucer's uses of the events of the "Thebaid" depend for their significance upon an historical perspective that placed the seige and destruction of Thebes" before that of Troy; thus, Chaucer uses Theban material in "satirical counterpoint" to the…
Anderson, David.
Dissertation Abstracts International 40 (1980): 4585A.
The complex and suggestive analogies between the "Teseida" and Statius' "Thebaid" force a re-evaluation of the question "What did Chaucer do the the 'Teseida'?" in light of what Boccaccio had already done to the "Thebaid." The "Teseida" is modeled…
Argues that Chaucer's similes cannot be explained in terms of imitation of Dante and Boccaccio or direct imitation of classical models. Instead, following the example of Dante and Boccaccio, Chaucer practiced a "poetics of vernacularization,"…
Explores historicity and fictionality in medieval narratives of early. mythic Thebes. Includes brief commentary on the sources of Chaucer's knowledge of Oedipus and his conflation of Egyptian and Boeotian Thebes in KnT 1.1470ff.
Anderson, Earl R.
Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2003.
Studies the Old and Middle English vocabularies of category in nature and human experience, anatomizing the words used for colors, the senses, the seasons, compass directions, geometric shapes, types of plant life and animal life, and human selfhood.…
Anderson, J. J.
English Studies 73 (1992): 417-30.
Unlike Machaut's knight, Chaucer's Black Knight, when describing his lady, shifts his attention from her outward appearance to her inner nature, as if he gradually comes to realize her value to him--a realization that helps him cope with her death.
The narrator of the dream poems is not a consistent character,as previously thought, but a progressive one, embodying Chaucer's later preoccupation with experience versus authority. The narrator of BD is a doer; that of PF, a reader. Their…
Collects examples of criticism of CT in two sections: 1) five "Early Appreciations" (Caxton, Dryden, Blake, Hazlitt, and Arnold), and 2) eleven selections from twentieth-century criticism (1912 to 1957), the latter focusing on the themes and…
Examines the role of the Bishop Guðmundr in mediating the relationship between the papacy and the Icelandic Church in the thirteenth century. Demonstrates how Guðmundr's actions, and strategy for challenging traditional notions of papal authority,…
Anderson, Judith (H.)
English Literary Renaissance 24 (1994): 638-59.
Spenser's depictions of the Bower of Bliss and the Temple of Venus ("The Faerie Queene" 2 and 4) are indebted to PF and, to a lesser degree, Th for explicit references and more general personal and cultural allusions.
Anderson, Judith H.
Theresa M. Krier, ed. Refiguring Chaucer in the Renaissance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 87-105.
Chaucer, especially GP, inspired Spenser's poetic identiy in "The Faerie Queene." Through allegory, Spenser manifests Chaucer's ironic doubleness, and he de-centers his dominant narration through various forms of "impersonations," emulating…
Anderson, Judith H.
Zachary Lesser and Benedict S. Robinson, eds. Textual Conversations in the Renaissance: Ethics, Authors, Technologies (Aldershot, Hampshire; and Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 71-89.
Explores intertextual relations between Spenser's Faerie Queene and Chaucer's PardPT and FranT. Archimago and Despair from Spenser's Book 1 gain dimension in light of the Pardoner and the Old Man of PardT; in Book 3, Spenser explores the "emotional…
Anderson, Judith H.
Chaucer Review 41 (2007): 271-78.
E. Talbot Donaldson's commentary on FranT in "Chaucer's Poetry" exemplifies his criticism "at its best": "[c]onstructive provocation, rather than dogmatic mastery."
Anderson, Judith H.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
Anderson considers intertextuality to be both a result of authorial intent and an inevitability of language, assessing various kinds of influence, imitation, allusion, and citation. Allegory is a "process of thinking," a kind of metaphor that is…
