Dauphant, Clothilde.
In Miren Lacassagne, ed. Le rayonnement de la cour des premiers Valois à l'époque d'Eustache Deschamps (Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2017), pp. 81-94.
Traces changes in the putatively fixed form of the balade as used by Eustache Deschamps, John Gower, Chaucer, and others, commenting on variations in number of stanzas, rhyme schemes, the inclusion of envoys, etc. Includes comments on Ven, For, Ros,…
Passages from ShT and MLT suggest that men have a right to beat their wives; furthermore, MilT and passages from Mel and WBT (in the wife's marriage to Jankin) seem to suggest masochism in female characters. MkP suggests that women are naturally…
Davenport, Tony.
Notes and Queries 246: 222-24, 2001.
Argues that the pilgrimage of HF 116 was to the medieval hermitage of St. Leonard, two miles west of Windsor Castle; the associated weariness evokes the use of pilgrimages for amorous trysts.
Davenport, Tony.
Helen Cooney, ed. Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry (Dublin and Portland, Ore.: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 129-51.
Examines two mid-fifteenth-century complaints that reflect public distrust of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, arguing that these complaints are more Lydgatian than Chaucerian, since Chaucer's own complaints had little influence at the time. An appendix…
Davenport, W. A.
Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen, eds. Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry. King's College London Medieval Studies, no. 5 (London: King's College Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1991), pp. 66-83.
Davenport's survey articulates formal, thematic, and verbal influences of PF and HF on a wide variety of late-medieval English bird poems, also mentioning those in which Chaucer's influence is not apparent.
Complaints--courtly, religious, philosophical, moral--were an integral part of Chaucer's poetry, and different combinations of lyric and narrative led to experiments in literary structures. Davenport contends that Chaucer adapts the complaint…
Davenport, W. A.
Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig, eds. Medieval Studies Presented to George Kane (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Wolfeboro, N.H.: D.S. Brewer, 1988), pp. 127-45.
Discusses Middle English debate poems but touches on dialogue in CT, TC, and PF.
Tragedy, comedy, debate, mask, and theatrical "epic" are found in fifteenth-century drama. Davenport explores factors to explain the scope, style, and variety.
Davenport, W. A.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Chaucer was influenced by his English contemporaries, particularly John Gower, William Langland, Thomas Chester, and the Gawain poet; yet he chose to seek new literary directions. Chaucer was on a pilgrimage of self-discovery and a quest for…
Argues that Chaucer uses rhyme words in the ballade form (Ros, Ven, For, Purse, Sted, Gent, Wom Nob, Buk, Scog, Truth, Wom Unc) for stylistic effects, not because of linguistic limitation. As a translator, Chaucer employs several methods of…
Feminist poststructuralist approach to TC, LGW, HF, and MLT that emphasizes the instability of readers as well as texts and indicates possibilities for subversive readings.
Argues that the Franklin's gentility is a "watered-down version" of traditional gentility, aligning FranT with eighteenth-century bourgeois "sentimental comedy." Contrasts KnT and FranT, maintaining that "virtue releases man from the bonds of…
David, Alfred.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, n.s., 2 (1991): 23-30.
Individual GP pilgrims represent distinct groups or organizations within medieval society, epitomizing social diversity--yet the community functions as a cohesive whole.
David, Alfred.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 35-54.
Considers BD, ABC, Pity, and HF to be Chaucer's "Edwardian" poetry, produced when he was closely associated with the royal family--first with the households of Elizabeth of Ulster and her husband, Prince Lionel, and then with the king's household.
David, Alfred.
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1976.
As Chaucer struggled to reconcile "auctorite" and "experience" the concern in his poetry evolved from "love celestial" to "love of kynde." In TC the moralist in Chaucer opposes the artist, and the poem's didactic failure is its artistic success. …
David, Alfred.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 105-15.
Chaucer plays with sources, including echoes of his own works in KnT, LGWP, SqT, MerT, PF, and Anel.
David, Alfred.
Jane Chance and R. O. Wells, Jr., eds. Mapping the Cosmos. (Houston, Tex.: Rice University Press, 1985), pp. 76-97.
Examines physiognomical traditions of noses in medieval "descriptio" in rhetoric books, noses of the Miller and Prioress in GP, noses in RvT, and noses in French romances and in later literature.
David, Alfred.
Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, eds. Acts of Interpretation (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1982), pp. 147-57.
Although the format (alphabetical) of ABC limits it somewhat, it follows the style of fourteenth-century religious courtly lyrics with a heightened sense of emotionalism. The struggle of the Virgin with the devil in ABC can be equated with the…
David, Alfred.
Mary Salu, ed. Essays on Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge: Brewer, 1979), pp. 90-104.
Recently critical emphasis has been upon the sustained irony in the tragic tale of TC. Along with it is a peculiarly Chaucerian kind of comedy that may best be labeled "bodily laughter," because although it laughs "at" the body, it does so out of…
David E. Lampe's thesis that the word "Vache" in "Truth," 22, is an iconographic pun is falsely reasoned on several accounts, the most glaring of which is that "vacca" has several evil connotations in addition to the favorable "worldly renunciation"…
David, Alfred.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 (1993): 5-21.
Explores the "deep structure" of nostalgia in Chaucer's works. New/old and young/old oppositions indicate that BD and TC reflect Chaucer's desire for lost courtliness, while CT--especially WBP, WBT, PardP, and PardT--suggests his wish to accomodate a…
David, Alfred.
Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library; Tokyo: Yushodo, 1995), pp. 307-26.
Traces the ownership of Ellesmere from (speculatively) Thomas Chaucer and the de Vere family to Henry E. Huntington.
David, Alfred.
Thomas Hahn and Alan Lupack, eds. Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Peck (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1997.), pp. 61-72.
A consideration of the four "Adams" in CT (MkT, Mel, MerT, NPT) clarifies Chaucer's continuously revised sense of the allusive potential of the biblical figure, as well as the changing, expansive meaning within the various "Tales."
David, Alfred.
Larry D. Benson, ed. The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature. Harvard English Studies, no. 5 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 19-29.
Identifies a source for HF 1229-32, where Marsyas is gendered female: a group of mansucripts of the "Roman de la Rose" that interpolate a comic account "in which Apollo flays a female satyr called 'Marse'."
