Moseley, C. W. R. D.
Critical Survey 30.2 (2018): 1-5.
Notes that the canonizing of Chaucer can have the effect of making him less challenging, blunting the force of his concern for the all-importance of "trouthe" and compassion, issues that "every person in every age" must face.
Fyler, John M.
Critical Survey 30.2 (2018): 20-50.
Argues that the narrator in MerT "augments the malignity of the tale itself by debunking all idealism and mocking its naiveté, but in his blindness and rhetorical ineptitude points to a sordid reality that he fails to gloss over." Yet, the tale…
Argues that Chaucer perceives a tension in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" regarding the role of romantic love in the relation of this world to the divine. Chaucer envisages a version of romantic love that is a bridge between this world and…
Argues that not just TC but also Anel has an important function in Henryson's "Testament." Echoes of this poem affect judgment of Cresseid and Troilus, and the question of what constitutes "truth," for lover, narrator, or reader. The notion of…
Considers tears in devotional contexts as a model for viewing tears "as a mode of discourse that is as potent as it is paradoxical: both outward and inward, involuntary and applied, and forming a distinctive voice between passive and active."
Questions whether BD circulated in the fourteenth century and whether it was commissioned by John of Gaunt as an elegy for his wife. The mid-fifteenth-century manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 16 bears the arms of a court functionary,…
Tabulates liturgical references within CT and argues that the poem depicts the secularization of liturgy and its appropriation for social control, while also presenting a carnivalesque celebration of the reversal of social hierarchy.
Surveys feminist criticism of Chaucer from 1977 forward, focusing on representative works rather than aiming to be exhaustive. Briefly contrasts Emelye of KnT with Alisoun of MilT.
Traces the development of English "central government control over local institutions," discussing the emergence of local groups and mentioning the GP Guildsmen.
Describes several "difficulties" in the close reading of medieval poetry, and then examines complex "interplay between the real and apparent plots" of "Pity," reading the addressee as both a Lady and as an abstract emption, and tracing shifting…
Argues that January's foolish fantasy is MerT "is a version" of the Merchant's own, tracing the teller's "increasingly ambivalent attitude" toward his character "from detachment to attack." In January, the Merchant "tries to destroy his former self,"…
Longsworth, Robert (M.)
Criticism 13 (1971): 223-33.
Characterizes the Physician of GP as "inscrutable," although "smelling mildly of hypocrisy," and argues that the "narrative uneasiness" of PhyT is well suited to this "man of the world [who] seeks to mask his worldliness in affected piety." The…
Gauges the implications of the wide range of musical images in GP, exploring the exegetical roots of Chaucer's uses of these images, and assessing concord, discord, and silence as indicators of moral approval or censure. Chaucer's uses are not…
Imitative indirect discourse in the portraits of the Monk, Friar, and Parson presents attitudes not Chaucer's in language not his. Examining personae in early tales may alter the pilgrim's portrait or the tone, as when the Merchant's ironic praises…
The interpretive problems with ClT--our ambivalence between human sympathy for Griselda and recognition of the poem's stern moral import--stem largely from the teller himself, whose additions to the source in Petrarch indicate that he does not fully…
The primary mode of discourse, conversation, emphasizes the difficulty of communication. BD oscillates between two opposing views: the existence and dissolution of the self and the other. Chaucer gives the reader an awareness of the conditions…
The Franklin is a gentleman with old-fashioned but praise-worthy standards. FranT treats the fourteenth-century interdependent virtues of "trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie" (A46)--moral values in ambiguous wrappings.
Presents evidence of a coherently conceived allegory in ClT: God is to Man as Perfection is to Imperfection, a hierarchy based not on rank but on virtue. Thus God is to Man as Griselda is to Walter.
ManT expresses ambivalence about verbal signification and asserts the power of poetry. The role of Phoebus (a figure of poetry), imagery of caging, the figure of the crow, and violations of poetic decorum affirm humanist poetics, despite the…
Examines how "some popular moral lyrics based upon traditional proverbs were modified and reworked" through manuscript transmission in late medieval England, commenting on materials found in the Findern manuscript (Cambridge University Library MS…
Accepts that the first eighty-eight lines of WBP are a late addition, and argues that they reflect comic awareness of the unorthodox movement, the Brotherhood of the Free Spirit, echoing its valorization of sexual activity and multiple marriages,…
Maintains that the characterizations of the Monk in GP and in MkPT are consistent, and attributes their differing tones to the Monk's decision to "change his image" in the eyes of his fellow pilgrims while requiting the Host's derision with the…
