In TC, a vision of love and death, Chaucer uses black and white to portray Criseyde as ambiguous: she shares her whiteness with Venus but is linked with death and its symbolic blackness.
Widespread acceptance of C. S. Lewis's belief that Criseyde's ruling passion is fear has resulted in a limited version of her motivation, for an equally powerful force, "routhe," works sometimes with and sometimes against her fear. The two forces…
Explores the relationship between fragments I and II and the "Marriage Group," reading the tales in I and II and III through V as "an ongoing discourse between Chaucer and the ultimate narrator and reader." Argues that Kittredge's concept of the…
Treats WBP, hermeneutics, and Chaucer and Wycliffism. Investigating whether and why Chaucer might have given Wycliffite traits to the Wife of Bath, Martin argues that he did in order to explore both faults and virtues of literal-minded…
Reviews providential readings of CT, asserting that nominalism furnishes theological context for MLT; contrasts MLT with its source in Trevet; and surveys use of the term "nominalism." In MLT, God's remoteness and arbitrariness ad the "extreme…
Suggests that details of ShT may reflect historical incidents involving Pedro I ("the Cruel") of Castile, his various marital scandals, and a Spanish-English naval battle near Bruges. Comments on Chaucer's connections with Spain.
Sixteenth-century editions of Chaucer's works "reflect a gradual transition from text-based definitions of what constitutes Chaucer to author-focused ones." Bly considers Thynne's edition of 1532, Stowe's of 1561, and Speght's of 1602, discussing…
Wood, Marjorie Elizabeth.
Comitatus 37 (2006): 65-85.
Anxious about the threat of Eastern hegemony and the increasing authority of merchant women, the narrator of MLT crafts characters that subtly feminize the East, "Orientalize" the feminine, and discredit women's economic participation as a threat to…
Using the fourteen extant manuscripts of PF as points of reference, Preston questions reductive thematic approaches to compilations and argues that other factors--authorial attribution and class, for instance--are equally plausible as explanations…
Argues that in LGWP Chaucer derives his tone from Jean de Meun's self-conscious narratation in the "Roman de la Rose," as well as many "particularities . . . of himself as love and writer." Chaucer's narrator is a caricature of Jean's Amant, an…
Posits the centrality of the Pardoner (rather than the marginality assumed by many critics) to CT. The "confidence game" of his narration parallels Chaucer's own rhetorical approach and informs those of his critics. Chaucer illustrates the…
Suggests that Griselda's excesses of bodily humiliation, self-sacrifice, and assent to contractual obligations, in response to her husband's rational program of complete control, actually represent a mystical negation of the self as subject that in…
Reads the Miller (whose mouth is compared to "a greet forneys" in GP) in the context of representations of rebel peasants in the chronicles of Thomas Walsingham, Henry Knighton, Jean Froissart, and the Anonimalle chronicler, as well as in Gower's…
Invokes the medieval ideal (exemplified by "Ancrene Wisse") of establishing self-identity and authority by memorizing and performing texts. The Prioress does this by "over-identifying" with the clergeon. Briefly considering the anti-Semitism of the…
Explores how Chaucer's characters in CT challenge the medieval social norm of community over "pryvetee" by telling tales that expose others' "pryvetee and obscure their own; by profession as a means of asserting individual power over one's pryvetee;…
The activities of Pandarus in TC and Celestina in Gernando de Rojas's "Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea" show the similarities in the panderer's roles and the fundamental disparities between Chaucer's and Rojas's visions. Celestina's world is…
Woo, Constance and William Matthews.
Comitatus1 (1970): 85-109.
Comprised of two related essays. The first, by Woo, assesses the pilgrimage frame of CT, its ecclesiastical pilgrims, ParsPT, and Ret, emphasizing the contrasts between the Pardoner and the Parson as religious figures. The second, by Matthews,…
Kivimaa, Krista
Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum, Societas Scientarum Fennica 43.1 (1968): 1-75.
Identifies, tabulates, and analyzes the clauses introduced by conjunctions in Chaucer's works (except Th and his lyrics), with or without pleonastic "that," attending to stress (verse and prose) and meter, and concluding, generally, that Chaucer…
The artistic unity of Chaucer's TC seems to fall prey to the contradictory philosophical arguments present, the attractiveness of earthly love, and then the repudiation thereof.
Severs, J. Burke.
Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979): pp. 271-95.
Chaucer's romances include KnT, SqT, WBT, FranT, and Th; but "Chaucer's realism, humor, and interest in character all tend to transform his romances into something beyond what one usually finds in the genre."
Compares Chaucer's manipulation of romance conventions with Carter's postmodern use of romance to challenge rationalist discourse. In its portrayal of mercantile challenge to feudal aristocracy, CT is a medieval modernist text.
The comic theory of Aristotle is a source for CT comic realism in which all topics, however volatile, may be explored as in TC, MilT, HF, CYT, FrT, PardT, GP, NPT, and PF.
