Confused in definition, "romance" designates both a value system and a method of treatment. The presence of the marvelous, courtly love, and chivalric adventure is not enough to form a definition. A parody like Th helps, since it indicates what is…
Romances are distinguished not by the presence of certain features--the erotic, the fabulous, etc.--but by attitudes toward those elements. WBT is "deliberately" not a romance.
Green, Richard Firth.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
Treats the modus vivendi of medieval poet in the context of the king's intimate circle, the literate court, the court of love, the writer as adviser or court apologist.
The lament for the dead is a literary form that critics have found difficult to appreciate, even in Chaucer. The book sketches the sociocultural background in medieval England in connection with older traditions, native, biblical, Greco-Roman,…
Robertson, D. W.,Jr.
Mediaevalia 6 (1980): 239-59.
Aware of the ethics of "commune profit," Chaucer condemns the self-seeking Franklin, Miller, Reeve, and Wife of Bath, while commending the other-centered Parson and Plowman.
Rosenberg, Bruce A.
Folklore Forum 13 (1980): 224-37.
The paucity of readers in the fourteenth century and explicit statements throughout Chaucer's works indicate that his poetry was recited aloud to a live audience, at least part of the time. Oral readings are most usefully appreciated by criteria one…
Salter, Elizabeth,and Derek Pearsall.
Flemming G. Andersen, Esther Nyholm, Marianne Powell, and Flemming Talbo Stubkjaer, eds. Medieval Iconography and Narrative: A Symposium (Odense: Odense University Press, 1980), pp. 100-23.
The study of the relationship of text to picture in medieval manuscripts is worthwhile, but seldom performed for Middle English texts, especially Chaucer, except for the "Troilus" frontispiece in Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 61. It is…
A companion volume to "Music in the Age of Chaucer." Fourteen of Chaucer's lyrics on the French model are presented in a performing edition with musical settings derived from contemporary songs by Machaut, Senleches, Solange, Andrieu, and the…
Gibaldi, Joseph, ed.
New York: Modern Language Associaiton, 1980.
A collection of pedagogical articles from diverse perspectives--general overviews and approaches as well as specific approaches--by well-known Chaucerians, including John Fisher, Emerson Brown, Robert M. Jordan, William Provost, and Thomas W. Ross.
MilT, RvT, FrT, SumT, ShT, MerT can be called fabliaux if this term is taken in a typological, rather than strictly historical, acception. Their homogeneity is, however, only apparent. The six tales from CT are divided into three…
The relations between diversity and unity, and between particular and general, are a major issue in CT, and emerge especially in the emphasis on profession, the sexes, and the relation of individual experience to normative authority. Emphasis on…
CT is filled with proverbs, maxims, and witticisms included consciously by Chaucer for entertainment combined with instruction. The sapiential material in CT falls into four thematic groups: time, transcience and death; god, destiny and fortune;…
Parkes, Malcolm, and Richard Beadle, intro.
Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books; Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1981.
Among the earliest of the Chaucer manuscripts, Cambridge Library Gg.4.27, once lavishly illustrated but now mutilated, is nevertheless the most nearly complete and one of the most reliable of Chaucer manuscripts.
Written by various hands in the fifteenth century, the Bodleian MS Tanner 346, the earliest of the Oxford Group, is indispensable in establishing the canon of the minor poems, especially Anel, Mars, Ven, and Pity. In addition, it contains BD, PF,…
Following Manly and Rickert, Blake sees Hengwrt as the most reliable early manuscript, but omits links for fragments E-F, which Blake believes were added by someone other than Chaucer--i.e., those links joining SqT to MerT and MerT to FranT. Blake…
Jones, Terry.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. 2d rev. ed., 1985; with new introduction, 1994 (London: Methuen).
Ranging through the history of the Crusades, Jones attempts to prove that Chaucer's Knight is a venal mercenary and Chaucer's means to criticize his contemporary military politics.
Nitzsche, Jane Chance.
Chaucer Newsletter 2, 1 (1980): 6-8.
Chaucer uses herbal imagery of licorice and cetewale, breath sweeteners associated with love in MilT, to establish the theme of character dependence on them. Cetewale is aphrodisiac; licorice quenches thirst; love is reduced to the physical and…
Higuchi, Masayuki.
Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature 25 (1980): 1-12.
Distinctions made between "expression-oriented" and "content-oriented" texts serve as a framework for demonstrating the interrelated nature of language in RvT. Philological tracings of word associations set up lexical chains that illustrate semantic…
WBT is a tale of transformations best understood by applying to it Jung's concept of anima. The knight's quest is really a search for understanding of his inner self, the feminine psyche. The transformation of the hag at the end mirrors his own…
Jungman, Robert E.
Mississippi Folklore Register 14 (1980): 20-23.
In SumT "covent" refers not only to the Friar's house, but also to witches' "coven," as indicated by various references to witchcraft or demonology--thus suggestiong that the friar is a witch.
Wilcockson, Colin.
Use of English 31 (1980): 37-43.
The Marquis in ClT addresses Janicola with the formal "ye" and, at certain points, Griselda as "thou," the intimate or insulting form. In keeping with her unfailing humility, Griselda never deviates from the formal "ye" when addressing Walter.
The parallel between Griselda and Mary, from preelection and marriage through maternal suffering to final coronation, is integral and pervasive in ClT. Mary embodies the canonical myth of the life of the Christian soul from baptism to heaven;…
The Franklin revises the law of the sacrament of marriage according to the medieval understanding of Epicurus. Ironically, echoing Amis and la Vielle from the "Roman de la Rose," the Franklin advocates the pursuit of "ese" and "delit" and the…
J. W. Spargo has not proved the existence of an extraliterary tradition among texts written by Chaucer and Boccaccio. The oral circulation of the tale does not support the hypothesis that Chaucer and Boccaccio had a common source.
