Explores the meanings and implications of the phrase "spiced conscience" in Middle English and later English language history, arguing that in both the GP description of the Parson (1.526) and the Wife of Bath's admonition to her husband (WBP 3.435)…
Bowden, Muriel.
New York: Macmillan; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1967.
Reprints the original version of 1948, with a very brief second preface (half page) and appended additional material and bibliography (pp. 317-28). Throughout the reprinted text, the additional material is signaled by means of daggers included in the…
Zimbardo, Rose A.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 11 (1966): 11-18.
Reads WBPT as concerned with the "reconciliation of opposites that to human perception seem irreconcilable." WBP poses a range of oppositions dialectically (experience and authority, female and male, physical and metaphysical), resolving them through…
Argues that the Summoner "triumphs over" the Friar in their tale-telling competition, revealing his greater intelligence and competence, but also indicating that his social success discloses a more fundamental "malignancy and egotism." Compares the…
Considers medieval knowledge of tidal patterns and details about astrology and the seasons in FranT to support the argument that the clerk of Orleans predicts rather than magically causes the rise of the sea, disguising the presence of the coastal…
Adduces details from the Old French "Floire et Blancheflor, Version 1" as evidence that Chaucer's "catalogue of magical accomplishments" in FranT 5.1139-51 was commonplace, i.e., part of a well-known tradition, deployed by the Franklin to outdo the…
Winny, James, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
Presents ClPT in Middle English (based on Robinson's 1957 edition), with notes and glossary at the end of the text, along with an appendix (pp. 91-99) that offers lines 4.813-924 of ClT in facing-page juxtaposition with one of its source texts, "Le…
Wentersdorf, Karl P.
Studies in Philology 63 (1966): 604-29.
Anatomizes motifs in the sources and analogues of the pear tree episode in MerT, focusing on several modern Irish analogues that have details of characterization which parallel those in MerT and have an intervention by male and female fairies.…
A series of literary portraits, each combining biography and appreciative criticism. The section on Chaucer, entitled "Founder of English Literature" (pp. 17-31), emphasizes his careers in business and diplomacy, his poetic "borrowings," and his…
Stewart, Donald C.
CEA Critic 29.3 (1966): 1, 4-6.
Suggests that interpretations of the Pardoner are overwrought, arguing that he acts "perfectly in the character given him by his creator" and that his somewhat troubling offer of relics to the Host is best understood as a joke.
Treats the narrator-dreamer of BD as the poem's "central character" and a device of unity and dramatic irony. The character does not "develop" psychologically, but his polite good nature--comically limited by his ignorance of courtly idiom--enables…
Scheps, Walter.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 11 (1966): 35-43.
Describes and paraphrases Thop, focusing on its style, vocabulary, genre, and adaptation of conventions to show that a tension between "the heroic and the bourgeois" underpins much of the bathos of the Tale and its parodic impact.
Rowland, Beryl.
University of Toronto Quarterly 35 (1966): 246-59.
Comments on the prevalence of horse-and-rider imagery in Western culture, and explores Chaucer's uses of the imagery in BD (the hunt), TC (Bayard and Troilus's ride-bys), Wife of Bath (spurs, bridles, and other sexualized images), and various other…
Describes the advantages of close reading of Chaucer's lyrics and shorter poems, examining ABC and Ros in detail for their riches of prosody, tone, structure, and meaning, with attention to narrative voice.
Documents the influence on WBPT, SumT, PardT, and, to a lesser degree, other parts of CT of the "Communiloquium" of John of Wales (or another fraternal compendium much like it), showing that a number of biblical, classical, and medieval quotations or…
Assesses Gower's virtues and achievements as a narrative poet rather than as a moralist in "Confessio Amantis," occasionally comparing and contrasting his techniques and accounts with analogous ones by Chaucer. Considers the frame of LGW to be…
Owen, Charles A., Jr.
Studies in Philology 63 (1966): 533-64.
Surveys Chaucer's "use of rhyme as it contributes to poetic effect," examining rhymes in his complaints and balades, in Anel, and in Tho, and demonstrating his unobtrusive dexterity with rhyme royal in TC and with decasyllabic couplets in CT.…
Norton-Smith, J[ohn].
Roger Fowler, ed. Essays on Style and Language: Linguistic and Critical Approaches to Literary Style (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), pp. 157-65.
Explores Chaucer's "reading and use" of the genre of verse epistle, drawing on evidence from LGW, the two letters in TC, Scog, and Buk. Considers the influence of Ovid's "Heroides" and Horace's "Satires" to argue that Chaucer was adept in the Ovidian…
Nist, John.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 11 (1966): 1-10.
Coins the term "pathedy" to describe Chaucer's "serene middle ground" between tragedy and comedy, applying the term to the "quality of love" that characterizes Troilus in TC and to the tragicomic contradictions and essential humanity of several of…
Describes Chaucer's arrangements of multiple adjectives (preposed, postposed, and combined), contrasting his practice with other Middle English writers, and exploring the poetic value of his usage, suggesting that he seems to have been "the writer…
