The last eighteen stanzas are doomed attempts to forge a fixed moral for the tale--the reader must do it himself. The "contemptus mundi" theme is tried unsuccessfully to unify it. The last nine stanzas are compared to "Paradiso's" cantos 13 and 14…
Diekstra. F. (N. M.)
English Studies 62 (1981): 215-36.
In most of his poems Chaucer exploits the traditional material to create a double view, one inherent in the material and the other produced by his handling of them. He inherited this technique from Jean de Meun; in BD and the "Roman," for example,…
Fisher, John H.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 177-91.
In his early poetry Chaucer tried to use a purely native English vocabulary; his later works show a more comfortable use of the cultural vocabulary with which he and his bilingual audience were familiar.
Fleming, John V.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981): pp. 121-36.
Further enquiry can illuminate Chaucer's references and response to the visual arts, the artistic materials actually available to him, the applicability of artistic principles to his literary style, and the extent to and manner in which he…
Friedman, John Block.
Studies in Philology 78 (1981): 138-52.
As contrasted to W. C. Curry's "humoral physiognomy," another type, "affective physiognomy," involving such details as movement of eyes or eyebrows and color of cheeks, is restricted in use to aristocratic or courtly characters, not those of the…
Fries, Maureen.
John F. Plummer, ed. Vox Feminae: Studies in Medieval Woman's Songs (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, 1981), pp. 155-78.
The vernacular "woman's song" focuses passively on the beloved (not the speaker's feelings), powerless to control the beloved. Such features serve as a context to analyze the "comic sex- and/or class-role reversal" in RvT, MerT, and Antigone's Song…
Gardner, John.
John P. Hermann and John J. Burke, eds. Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry (University : University of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 195-207.
While "Robertsonianism" has produced scholastically defensible but totally lunatic readings, such as MilT as a "Christian meditation," it has also brilliantly illuminated BD. Its chief failure is tone deafness toward WBT, HF, etc. PF, LGW, TC,…
Hendrickson, Rhoda Miller Martin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1981): 1140A-41A.
Proverbs appear conventionally in most of Chaucer's early works, usually to lament changes in fortune. In the short poems, For, Buk, and Scog, however, Chaucer's proverbs become personal. In TC and CT proverbs spoken by characters (especially…
Heyworth, P. L., ed.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
The festschrift includes fifteen essays on medieval topics: Langland, medieval music, Gower, poetry and art, drama, punctuation, the "arbor caritatis," Thomas More, Sir John Fastolf, and articles on Chaucer and related matters. For six essays that…
Kane, George.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 5-19.
Comparisons of Chaucer and Langland may rescue CT from the Bradleian fallacy (i.e., treatment of Chaucer's literary characters as historically actual).
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 107-20.
In the Middle Ages the term "art" meant the liberal arts or almost any serious endeavor (other than the visual arts), also involving Gregory the Great's dictum that "the art of arts is the rule of souls." Chaucer was less influenced by the visual…
Lanoue, David G.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1981): 1141-42A.
Medieval musical allusions provide an internationally shared set of signs for allegorical poetry and help unify medieval literature stylistically. Ruiz ironically conflates the fleshly and heavenly aspects of music, and Machaut employs harmony to…
Leffingwell, William Clare,Jr.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1981): 3592A.
Chaucerian irony works variously: in PardT to show unadmitted brotherhood in sin; in MLT to reveal the narrator's limitations; in KnT to undercut chivalry; in TC to show the self-subversion of courtly love; in PF to ridicule the narrator's neglect…
So rarely does medieval poetry combine comedy and allegory that superficially the two modes seem irreconcilable: for some, humor undermines allegory's decorum of high seriousness; for others, it provides (at best) only badly needed comic relief. …
Lindahl, Carl.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1981): 5204A.
Records of medieval pilgrimages and parish guilds indicate that groups like that of CT actually gathered; thus the frame may have been modeled on the contemporary scene rather than a literary source. The pilgrim churls' mutual insults follow a…
Martin, Wallace,and Nick Conrad.
Papers on Language and Literature 17 (1981): 3-22.
The Levi-Strauss formula for the structure of myth can be applied to analogues of ShT to illuminate disputed interpretations. In a list of similar actions in columns, not chronological, the ShT shows eight implications of the Levi-Strauss formula.
McGann, Jerome J.
New Literary History 12 (1981): 269-88.
William Blake avoided the normal publisher-author relationship. "To know the publishing options taken (and refused) by Chaucer...enables the critic to explain the often less visible, but more fundamental, social engagements which meet in and…
Minnis, A. J.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 53-69.
In response to Morton Bloomfield, "Contemporary Literary Theory and Chaucer," Minnis distinguishes between the "alterity" and the "modernity" of medieval literature, arguing that medieval theories of literature should be applied to Chaucer.
The academic prologue, which introduced commentaries on "auctores," developed an Aristotelian form in the thirteenth century. Chaucer did not employ any of the traditional prologue paradigms, but many of his literary attitudes seem to have been…
Muscatine, Charles.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981): 3-11.
(Presidential address to the New Chaucer Society). Chaucerians must engage undergraduate minds, going beyond source studies, textual studies, and narrow explications into cultural history, sociology, historiography, and ethnography.
Neuss, Paula.
Review of English Studies 32 (1981): 385-97.
For Chaucer poetry and love are closely related: both are creative arts to which the verb "make" is applied. Chaucer uses writing and book imagery to symbolize a creative love act.
Payne, F. Anne.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.
A difficult form requiring of the reader a complex consciousness and thus hitherto largely neglected by critics, Menippean satire provides a meaningful context for Chaucer. The works of the third century B.C. satirist, themselves being lost, come to…
Modern readers must resist the limitations of twentieth-century literary-critical approach and interpret Chaucer in the traditional critical context: studies of manuscript tradition, text, and lexical context.
