Explores the "interstitial pattern of errors about things literary" in MLPT that characterize the teller as a "not-quite scholar" and highlight a tension between his "rhetorical excess and religious exhibitionism" and his penchant for legalisms,…
Delasanta, Rodney.
Studies in the Literary Imagination 4.2 (1971): 1-10.
Assesses the pros and cons of applying patristic criticism to the study of Chaucer, arguing for typological rather than allegorical (or tropological) analyses and discouraging limited readings.
Delasanta, Rodney.
Modern Language Quarterly 31 (1970): 298-307.
Presents the Host as the figure of Judge in CT and identifies the judgment imagery in ParsP and elsewhere in CT, along with its Biblical and iconographical roots. This theme of judgment anticipates the concern with penance in ParsT.
Rejects exegetical readings of BD that construe the poem as a wholesale Christian allegory, but argues that Christian consolation is nevertheless conveyed through resurrection imagery (birds, horns, harts, etc.) and details of "sleeping, dreaming,…
Identifies a "number of medieval commonplaces" in KnT that support the notion that "greater idealism" is what distinguishes Palamon from Arcite, i.e., a "loftier" view, more a matter of theodicy than determinism.
Describes three groups of equestrians among the Canterbury pilgrims: those who ride proud horses, those who "ride either poor or at least un-caparisoned horses," and "those whose characters seem compromised by their 'inefficiency' as horsemen."…
Deligiorgis, S.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969): 297-306.
Analyzes the relations between verse form and meaning in ShT and PF. In the first, patterns of closed and open couplets (where rhymes do or do not "coincide with syntactical closure") align with sententiousness and its uses; in the second, the…
Deligiorgis, Stavros.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 129-41.
Chaucer used elements from linguistic to cosmological in raising CT to the anagogic level of symbolism (cf Frye's "Anatomy of Criticism"). Various tales illustrate this progression to anagogy.
Dell contends that Brian Helgeland's film A Knight's Tale offers an alternative to capitalistic perpetual accomplishment, the model of desire that critics associate with the film. This alternative is courtly love, a paradigm drawn from the Lancelot…
Dello Bouro, Carmen J.
Darby, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1981.
Includes essays by Leonhard Schmitz (1881), George Dawson (1886), William Calder (1892), John W. Hales (1893), Frank J. Mather (1899), Henry C. Beeching (1900), Alfred Ainger (1905), George H. Cowling (1934), and "Chaucer at Woodstock" (1882).
Delony, Mikee C.
Priscilla Pope-Levison and John R. Levison, eds. Sex, Gender, and Christianity (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), pp. 33–57.
Examines connections between women's weaving and preaching by focusing on Alisoun. Uses the metaphor of weaving to establish how Alisoun "wove textiles and words as a mode of female expression and critique of the patriarchal church's interpretation…
Reads the Wife of Bath as "Chaucer's construction of the . . . female body as a literal and metaphoric text," and explores how depictions of the Wife in modern films respond to her critical reception as well as his original creation.
DeLuca, Dominique.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 239-61.
Refers to the death-bearing rioters in PardT as an example of the theme, found in medieval art, of "death as living within" the body.
DeMarco clarifies the classical and medieval distinctions between "public" and "private" violence and explores efforts to justify each type of violence, showing that Prudence's advice to Melibee is "secular," "pragmatic," and ultimately Ciceronian.…
DeMaria, Robert, Jr., and Robert D. Brown, eds.
Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007.
Collects excerpts from various "British, Irish, and Caribbean Writers" (Chaucer to Seamus Heaney) and from various classical writers (Homer to Juvenal) to demonstrate classical influence. Opens (pp. 3-10) with a selection from WBP (ll. 627-822) in…
DeMaria, Robert, Jr., Heesok Chang, and Samantha Zacher, eds.
Chichester: Wiley, 2014.
lxix, 458 pp.
Includes twenty-six essays by individual authors that survey a range of issues in understanding the concept of "British literature" in the medieval period, considering history, politics, modes of production, literary forms, reception, religion,…
Demetriou, Tania.
Review of English Studies 71, no. 298 (2020): 19-43.
Refers to a sidenote in Gabriel Harvey's copy of Speght's 1598 edition of Chaucer that is supposed to shed light on the date of Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Argues that the ambiguities in the various interpretations circulating may be unriddled to produce…
Modernizations of Chaucer's short poems, maintaining original rhyme schemes and metrical patterns, with facing-page texts from The Riverside Chaucer and Walter Skeat's edition. Includes, in the following order, ABC, Pity, Lady, Mars, Ros, Wom Nob,…
DeNeef, A. Leigh.
Journal of Narrative Technique 3 (1973): 85-96.
Shows that confusion of literal and metaphoric understanding characterizes the Pardoner, the rioters of PardT, and the pilgrim audience (including the Host), who fail to "separate the immorality" of the Pardoner from the morality of his exemplum. The…
DeNeef, A. Leigh.
Chaucer Review 2.4 (1968): 205-34.
Critiques--pro and con--Robertsonian criticism, also known as exegetical, Augustinian, or historical criticism, describing its theoretical and practical strengths and limitations, and exploring its possibilities for further illuminating medieval…
Denery, Dallas D. II, Kantik Ghosh, and Nicolette Zeeman, eds.
Turnhout: Brepols, 2014.
Interdisciplinary collection examines "disciplinary and methodological forms" of medieval Scholasticism and questions of knowledge in the Middle Ages. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Uncertain Knowledge under Alternative Title.
Denley, Marie.
Helen Phillips, ed. Langland, the Mystics, and the English Religious Tradition: Essays in Honour of S. S. Hussey. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990, pp. 223-41.
Includes brief discussion of ABC in light of alphabetic poems and other medieval teaching devices.
