Arner, Timothy.
Comparative Literature 69.2 (2017): 160-80.
Shows that Lucan's "Bellum civile," the medieval "accessus" tradition, and "vitae Lucani" together depict the Roman poet as a "violated female," victimized by his "tyrannical emperor," and abruptly silenced, arguing that this legacy influenced LGW…
Camargo, Martin.
Comparative Literature Studies 33 (1996): 173-86.
The ethos of the Canterbury preachers reveals Chaucer's distinctive self-consciousness about medieval rhetorical issues. The Pardoner's emphasis on pathos contrasts the Parson's emphasis on logos. NPT is an act of self-display in which the narrator…
Pinti, Daniel J.
Comparative Literature Studies 37: 277-97, 2000.
Medieval commentaries on the "Commedia" (Divine Comedy) inform our understanding of how Chaucer read Dante. In the Hugolino episode of MkT, with its reference to Dante, Chaucer simultaneously authorizes "Inferno" 33 and destabilizes it, exemplifying…
Raizis, M. Byron.
Comparative Literature Studies 6 (1969): 141-47.
Establishes Nikos Kazantzakis's familiarity with Chaucer, evident in his discussion in "England: A Travel Journal" (1941) of a passage from SumT; then suggests that the Tale may have influenced Kazantakis's depiction of a monk in his novel "The…
Schleiner, Winfried.
Comparative Literature Studies 9 (1972): 365-75.
Argues that the theme of testing female patience, found in ClT, Chretien's "Erec and Enide," and Robert Greene's "Friar Bacon and Friar Bongay," "demonstrates the interdependence of traditional motif, aesthetic sensibility, and societal structure."…
Lenaghan, R. T.
Comparative Studies in Society and History 12 (1970): 73-82.
Treats GP as a record of social history, focusing on the economic information available in the descriptions of the pilgrims, particularly as it is evident in the work they do and the status they hold in relation to land, the Church, and trade. Treats…
The tension between sensual love and orthodox truth in TC can be seen in nascent form in Boccaccio's "Filocolo," even though Chaucer depends for his plot on "Filostrato." The tension is rooted in Dante's "Comedy" and in the "Roman de la Rose," but…
Pouzet, Jean-Pascal.
Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres 1 (2004): 169-213
Pouzet surveys the late medieval activities of Augustinian canons in the production of Anglo-Norman and Middle English manuscripts and texts. Considers evidence of the commitment of members of the order to the transmission of Chaucer material.
Phelan, Walter S.
Computers and the Humanities 12 (1978): 61-69.
Computer studies of Chaucer's vocabulary can teach the modern philologist much about Chaucer's "logosphere" that earlier concordances or historical dictionaries could never do. Such proposed computerized projects would include the comparative…
Spencer, Matthew, Barbara Bordalejo, Li-San Wang, Adrian C. Barbrook, Linne R. Mooney, Peter Robinson, Tandy Warnow, and Christopher J. Howe
Computers and the Humanities 37 (2003): 97-109.
Construction of a stemma for CT based on gene-order analysis supports the idea that there was no established order when the first manuscripts were written. The resulting stemma shows relationships predicted by earlier scholars, reveals new…
Reeves traces the evolution of old wives' tales (including WBT) and assesses how such tales represent fancy and superstition in early scientific theories of the Copernican system. However, the tales also promote the theory of extraterrestrial life,…
Explores Chaucer's play "with the very concepts of finished and unfinished" in CT, surveying the ends of several tales and Ret. Suggests that Chaucer's sense of an ending distinguishes him from modern sensibility.
Steadman suggests "a possible connection between the fictional date of the poet's dream, its tripartite structure, the feast of Saint Lucy, and the Dantesque associations of Chaucer's eagle," discussing major images and motifs of the poem.
The influence of KnT on Conrad's "The Lagoon" is evident in several details, in narrative method, and, more distantly, in the fact that each is written in English that is "unfixed and de-centered."
McMillan, Ann.
Constance H. Berman, Charles W. Connell, and Judith Rice Rothschild, eds. The Worlds of Medieval Women (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1985), pp. 122-29.
In LGW, Chaucer explodes "the notion that women are, or should be, self-ordained victims." Women in Cupid's Paradise wallow in an "orgy of self-congratulation" for having died for love. The pathos of women destroyed by passion is emphasized in the…
Hagen, Susan K.
Constance H. Berman, Charles W. Connell, and Judith Rice Rothschild, eds. The Worlds of Medieval Women. (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1985), pp. 130-38.
From the perspective of feminist criticism Hagen opposes the Kittredge "Marriage Group," insisting that what the Wife implies in "who peyntede the leon" applies to critics' versions as well as to the clerks' versions of the Wife's behavior.
Wright, Constance S.
Constance S. Wright and Julia Bolton Holloway, eds. Tales Within Tales: Apuleius Through Time: Essays in Honor of Professor Emeritus Richard J. Schoeck (New York: AMS Press, 2000), pp. 55-72.
Compares depictions of Cupid and Psyche in Plato's Phaedrus, Apuleius's Metamorphoses, Origen's Commentary on the Song of Songs, and ClT (Walter and Griselda), noting their different constructions of gender and viewing them as reflections of…
Schoeck, Richard J.
Constance S. Wright and Julia Bolton Holloway, eds. Tales Within Tales: Apuleius Through Time: Essays in Honor of Professor Emeritus Richard J. Schoeck (New York: AMS Press, 2000), pp. 97-106.
Explores various kinds of game or play in TC: rhetorical games, war games, courtly games, and the games of life. Suggests Troilus may be seen as homo ludens (man playing).
McTaggert, Anne.
Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture 19 (2012): 41-67.
Reassesses gender violence in WBPT in terms of René Girard's theory of mimesis that complicates surface oppositions and suggests that we can read the Wife of Bath as parallel to the rapist-knight rather than to the loathly lady. The mirroring of…
Milosh, Joseph.
Contemporary Literature 19 (1978): 48-57.
Gardner strikingly alters "Beowulf" by granting Grendel spiritual development, by portraying the absurdity of war, and by undercutting the validity of poetic making. The changes transforms epic material into an elusive genre characterized by its…
Personal account that assesses several influential pilgrimage/travel narratives, including Homer's "Odyssey," Dante's "Divine Comedy," and CT, with comments on Chaucer's narrator, his debt to Dante, intertextuality, and the experience of reading GP…
Illustrates a variety of ways astrology has been used in literature, drawing examples from Chaucer, Shakespeare, John Webster, and Samuel Beckett. Cites examples from Mars, MilT, and FranT, as well as Hypermnestra in LGW.
Mann, Nicholas.
Convegno Internazionale Francesco Petrarca: Roma-Arezzo-Padova-Arquà Petrarca, 24-27 Aprile 1974. Atti dei Convegni Lince, no. 10 (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1976), pp. 59-69.
Includes very brief mention of Chaucer's uses Petratrch in TC, ClT, and CYT.
Includes discussion of Chaucer's works (pp. 35-45), commenting on the idealized settings found in BD, PF, and LGWP in comparison with their sources; also comments on the lack of such settings in TC and CT.
