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'."
Reads Scog as a playful, comic version of a "moral ballade" or "balade of bon conseyl" that shares similarities with French models, portions of TC, and several of Chaucer's other lyrics. Comments on the unity of the poem, its possible occasion or…
Contrasts the moral seriousness of MLT with the comic mode of MLP and MLE, arguing that they combine to present the Man of Law as Chaucer's "ironic portrait" of pedantic, dogmatic, or moralistic readers and critics (perhaps John Gower) who would…
Argues that in PardT the Old Man "reveals the Pardoner's real secret, the joylessness of the life he professes to relish so much." The Pardoner is a "young-old man, and the confrontation between the three rioters and the old man in the tale brings to…
Traces the development of Troilus' character in TC, arguing that he grows from ignorance to wisdom in confronting the "fundamental mystery of the human condition": his noble, "tragic error . . . is to have tried to love a human being with an ideal…
Examines HF as a literary satire, a comic send-up of the love vision genre, evident in the naiveté of the narrator and his failure to attain love or information about it. The poem's "central structural idea" is "comic disillusionment," underscored…
Davidoff, Judith M.
Rutherford, N.J.; Madison, Wis.; and Teaneck, N.J.:
Basing her work on a study of 189 poems, Davidoff analyzes common features of "framing fictions." With attention to Chaucer's sources and literary tradition, she offers readings of BD, demonstrating relationship of meaning to structure; of HF,…
Davidoff, Judith M.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 5 (1983): 103-25.
Frame and vision are linked according to late-medieval literary expectations which establish in the dreamer a state of "need" and in the audience the expectation of that need to be "fulfilled."
Davidson, Arnold B.
Annuale Mediaevale 19 (1979): 5-13.
Though aspects of ManT seem hopelessly irreconcilable, the tale itself is a coherent whole, its incongruities intentional. While the Manciple cunningly pretends to be a fool, he is, in a different sense, a far greater fool than he pretends to be. …
