Perry, Sigrid Pohl.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1981): 2125A.
In Chaucer, as in patristic writings, true marriage proceeds from physical to psychological to spiritual union, even emblematizing the relationship of God to church or soul. Analysis of marriage in CT further reveals sexual politics.
Reiss, Edmund.
John P. Hermann and John J. Burke, eds. Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry (University: University of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 27-42.
Symbolic details in Chaucer may also be thematic, e.g., the five etymologies of Saint Cecilia's name in SNT, and certain features of GP, MerT, FranT, others of the CT, and TC. Words and phrases also are often thematic.
Ridley, Florence H.
Chaucer Review 16 (1981): 101-106.
Chaucerians should welcome the new critical techniques, which will help them determine what it is in the words that causes us to respond as we do. The application of these methods will transcend cultural differences that separate us from Chaucer.
Ridley, Florence H.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 37-51.
Descriptive rather than interpretative approaches are preferred for Chaucer literary studies, according to Bloomfield, but we need to know "how" the poet constructed his work; thus semantics, the philosophy of speech acts, sociology, etc., are…
Robertson, D. W.,Jr.
John P. Hermann and John J. Burke, eds. Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry (University: University of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 11-26.
Concerned with the practical and beneficial impact of his work, Chaucer drew figurative language from everyday sources, e.g., the visual arts. Knowledge of these sheds light on GP, WBT, and RvT.
Classical and medieval theories of allegory profoundly affected the interpretation and creation of medieval allegorical literature. The medieval audience believed that all worthwhile writing represented some truth, not necessarily Augustinian…
Rose, Donald M., ed.
Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981.
Commissioned originally to be read at the Second International Congress of the New Chaucer Society, these thirteen essays demonstrate the validity of recent critical trends in Chaucer. Several essays on historical approaches to Chaucer suggest new…
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.,and Patricia Lee Youngue.
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 55 (1981): 19-43.
The Virgilian "Iuppiter descendens" in CT combines the sacred and the profane. Sexual motivation governs the behavior and storytelling of some of the pilgrims. Medieval man was able to integrate the serious with the comical because he possessed a…
Ruud, Jay Wesley.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1981): 2146A.
Chaucer's lyric mode developed from the conventional toward the original, from everyman-speaker toward individual voice,from vague to concrete, from realist toward nominalist in philosophical outlook.
Chaucer's optimism, humor, and satire as well can be properly appreciated only in the light of his Catholic view of life. Some typical mistakes in translation are also made from lack of enough knowledge of Catholicism: the doctrines, liturgies,…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 83-103.
Modern literary theory is concerned with the problem of "how language 'refers' in the critical text that has lost faith in the communion between language and reality." Shoaf observes this faith, which was stronger in the Middle Ages, at work in the…
Southmayd, David Edward.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1981): 3596A.
Chaucer develops original significances for birds, especially in HF, NPT, and PF. Birds variously represent the bestial in humanity, models for human society, objects of ridicule, and mediators between God and man. All four can be seen in the…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 71-81.
Modern critical theory demonstrates the radically traditional closed systems of medieval poetry. In his negative examples and examples of abuse and falsification, especially in TC, Chaucer is also aware of what the classical tradition "is not."
Allen, Judson Boyce,and Theresa Anne Moritz.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1981.
Medieval literary theory in general, and commentary on Ovid's "Metamorphoses," the tales-in-a-frame book most certainly important to Chaucer, suggest that CT can best be understood when grouped in four kinds: natural, magical, moral, and spiritual. …
Benson, Larry D.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981): 77-120.
By analysis of manuscript traditions Benson argues that there were at most two early orderings of CT. All later orderings in manuscripts are scribal rearrangements or distortions of these two. Both orders, one of which is the Ellesmere order,…
None of the structural orders that critics have strained to produce are totally satisfactory for a poem in such an obviously fragmentary state as CT by an author whose plans and intentions are as enigmatic as Chaucer's.
Buffoni, Franco.
Trieste: Nuova Del Bianco Industrie Grafiche, 1981.
The CT are seen as a single unit. In particular, Mel and MLT are analyzed in the light of Marsilio of Padua's "Defensor Pacis" and Wyclif's religious position.
Duder, Clyburn.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1981): 4707A.
Contains a glossary of all saints referred to in CT, with notes relating them to medieval art, plus commentary on fourteen associated with Reeve, Wife of Bath, and Pardoner or named in FrT, SumT, and CYT.
Edsall, Donna Marie.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1981): 2663A.
The fourteenth century accepted literary conventions of the love code and approved warfare with honor and profit conjoined. Chaucer understands chivalry without attacking it: Theseus, in KnT, is an idealized knight modeled on Edward III; Th…
Holloway, Julia Bolton.
American Benedictine Review 32 (1981): 114-21.
Recent Princeton performances of the "Officium Peregrinorum" (from Luke 24) reveal probable echoes in CT of the liturgical drama of Christ's pilgrimage to Emmaus in the pilgrimage frame itself, in the poet who like Christ uses "lying" fables to…
Kahlert, Shirley Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1981): 1629A.
The Breton lay evolved from Celtic tradition to generic identity with Marie de France to art form in Chaucer's WBT and FranT. Most clearly characterized by the "merveilleux," it has crossed cultural boundaries in such a way as to lose its motives…
Morgan, Gerald.
English Studies 62 (1981): 411-22.
The portraits of GP, which depict types, belong to the tradition of rhetorical description, not of satire. Epideictic rhetoric provides for representation of virtue and vice alike and aims at the unity of perspective that we find in the descriptions…
Examines GP 369-84 in light of the guild feud in London in the 1370s and 1380s, reviewing opinions of Kuhl and Fullerton, and Skeat. "In his attitudes toward the guildsmen...the pilgrim Chaucer shows himself as more petty-bourgeois than bourgeois."
