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. …
Davidson, Audrey.
Studies in Medieval Culture 4 (1974): 459-66.
The text of the "Alma Redemptoris Mater" in PrT may have been written by Hermannus Contractus. A reconstruction of its tune must depend on the Use of Sarum. This particular text and this tune are especially appropriate to the themes of the tale.
Examines desire and intimacy in TC and "reinterprets the depiction of pleasure" in the poem, "particularly the bed scene in Book III, through an allegorical reading of medieval and modern concepts of desire."
Examines the trauma of sexual violence, focusing on Chaucer's rape of Cecily Chaumpaigne, contextualizing the study of trauma through contemporary theorists Cathy Caruth and Ruth Leys along with Astr. Considers "the relationship between Chaucer's…
Davidson, Clifford.
Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981.
An edition of the Wycliffite "Treatise of Miraclis Pleying" with apparatus. This hostile tract is the most significant dramatic criticism in Middle English.
Davidson, Linda Kay, and Maryjane Dunn-Wood.
New York and London: Garland Press, 1993.
This annotated bibliography of 1,062 entries is analyzed in seven categories: history of pilgrimage, introduction to the study of pilgrimage, Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, other sites, and pilgriamge in the arts. Each category includes…
Davidson, Mary Catherine.
Neophilologus 87: 473-86, 2003.
Examples from "The Chronicle of Peter Langtoft," "Piers Plowman," and CT (WBP and PardP) indicate how patterns of mixed-language speech reflect the social motivations of the speakers, especially their efforts to construct authority and restrict…
Davidson, Mary Catherine.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
In late medieval England, "code-switching" among English, French, and Latin was linked to literacy and social prestige, not to aberrant or nonconformist behavior; code-switching was a means to articulate social identity. Chaucer distanced his…
Davies, Daniel.
New Medieval Literatures 20 (2020): 74-106.
Identifies connections among "war, narrative, and literary technique" in TC to show "how Chaucer constructs . . . siege as a dynamic space in which to imagine the forces that shape and determine human behaviour." Chaucer "reconfigures the idea of a…
Davies, Daniel.
Ph.D. dissertation (University of Pennsylvania, 2021), Dissertation Abstracts International A83.02(E). Freely accessible at https://repository.upenn.edu/entities/publication/59a38ac4-5b08-41e6-a701-26a6f3939e86 (accessed January 30, 2025).
Argues that "the nascent art of international relations . . . among England, Scotland, and France, creates a heightened awareness of the connections between literary and political mediation central to the distinct textures of medieval wartime."…
Davies, Joshua, and Caroline Bergvall, eds.
York: Arc Humanities, 2023.
Collects twenty-six critical essays about Caroline Bergvall's literary output and outlooks, accompanied by three interviews with her, a foreword by David Wallace, an afterword by Rachel Gilmore, and a comprehensive index. Several essays refer to…
Davies, R. T., ed.
London: Faber and Faber, 1963.
[Evanston, Illinois]: Northwestern University Press, 1964.
Anthologizes 187 English lyric poems and lyrical excerpts from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, arranged in chronological order, with an Introduction (pp. 13-49), on-page glosses, end-of-text notes, an appendix of Types and Titles of the…
Davies, W. Beynon, ed.
Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1976.
An edition of the Welsh verse drama "Troelus a Chresyd" (c. 1600), with introduction and commentary that explore the play's debt to Chaucer's TC and Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid." Includes a table of correspondences (pp.143-61) between the play…
Davis N[orman].
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 58-84.
Comments on the limited impact of Chaucer's prose on later tradition, and explores the stylistic dexterity of his verse in light of contemporary linguistic features: his use of open and close vowels in rhyme and the impact of rhyme on his diction;…
Davis Todd F., and Kenneth Womack.
Todd F. Davis and Kenneth Womack. Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 123-35.
In in order to demonstrate the utility of reader-response criticism, Davis and Womack analyze ClT in light of Gérard Genette's theory of narratology and TC, Linda Hutcheon's theory of parody. In ClT, Chaucer controls tempo and reaction through…
Davis-Brown, Kris.
South Central Review 5.2 (1988): 15-34.
Shakespeare's play, though derived from Chaucer, differs from its source in many ways. Shakespeare's Pandarus is a less tender, more hardened figure; his Cressida is psychologically and socially more vulnerable; his Troilus is more openly sexual. …
