Suggests that Chaucer "creates a literary imitation of a real pilgrimage" in CT, exploring the extent to which this enables him to accommodate the sacred and social, a version of the medieval "earnest and game" topos. Focuses on WBPT and PardPT.
Considers the narrative structures of various narrative poems in Old and Middle English, especially as these relate to an "apocalyptic sense of history" and the dislocations it produces. Includes a chapter on TC.
Holloway, Julia Bolton.
DAI 35.04 (1974): 2225-26A.
Compares and contrasts CT, Dante's "Divine Comedy," and Langland's "Piers Plowman" as pilgrimage narratives, particularly their emphasis on the poet as pilgrim and movement toward salvation as structure.
Tallies Chaucer's varieties of word-play and explores their thematic value in relation to his concern with the interconnectedness of pilgrimage and play. Focuses on rhetorical tradition, play on "child" in PrT, the unity of SqT and FranT, and the…
Studies how the movement from divine to mundane love is bridged by figural allegory in CT (especially PardPT) and in the Arcipreste's "Libro de Buen Amor."
Compares several of Chaucer's works (ABC, Bukton, and sections from LGW, TC, and CT) with their sources and analogues to clarify Chaucer's dependence upon the English literary tradition.
Considers the uses of gestures in Chaucer's poetry: "simplistic" uses in HF and PF, broad variety in CT, and the complex characterization of Pandarus in TC. Focuses on expressive movements and postures of body and face, along with laughing, moaning,…
Reads TC allegorically, with sustained attention to astrological imagery, characterization, narrative structure, the biblical Book of Daniel, and the Augustinian theme of the transference of power.
Defines "exemplum" and describes the history of the genre before Chaucer; then focuses on Chaucer's innovative uses of the device to produce comedy in MilT, SqT, and SumT, also commenting at length on exempla clusters in HF and FranT.
Uses Morris Halle and Seymour Jay Keyser's metrical theory to describe "English decasyllabic verse of the later Middle Ages" and explore why Chaucer's iambic pentameter was not followed more closely by poets such as Hoccleve, Lydgate, Dunbar, and…
Argues that "in Chaucer's poetry women are consistently portrayed as seeking out a niche in the social (or religious) hierarchy which will permit them to serve in the subordinate position St. Paul insists they were intended to fill." Discusses all of…
Reads CT as a unified, encyclopedic "symposium on what men should seek, and what they should avoid," focusing on variety in the GP, the pilgrimage motif, and the "three longest tales": KnT, Mel, and ParsT.
Wass, Rosemary Thérèse Ann.
DAI 35.08 (1974): 5124A.
Counters "Robertsonian" or exegetical criticism of Chaucer's works, particularly its neglect of "later scholastic philosophy," focusing on views of individuality and experience found in writers such as Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.…
Language, money, and gender are "signifying systems" that underlie notions of law and order in medieval tradition. Cady examines how Chaucer presents the interactions of these systems in WBPT, MerT, and PardT.
Chaucer's use of the Vulgate parables influenced the frame structure of CT, provided a number of images, and strongly affected PardT. Wheeler tallies allusions to and quotations from the parables throughout CT.
Feminist poststructuralist approach to TC, LGW, HF, and MLT that emphasizes the instability of readers as well as texts and indicates possibilities for subversive readings.
Assesses the first-person narrator of CT as a "portrayal of a poet in the act of constructing a poem," focusing on how diction and syntax call attention to the narrator.
Sheridan explores ways that language is like money in acts of interpretation, examining the role of the Host in CT, readers' valuations of various tales, patronage and interpretive control, and the "mercantile" strategies of May (MerT) and the Wife…
Both Boccaccio and Chaucer use the figure of the "woman reader" to represent changing interpretive strategies that, in turn, reflect changes in social complexity. Lartigue focuses on the Teseida, the Decameron, LGW, and CT.
An iconographic analysis suggesting that the illustration of Chaucer reading to the court of Richard II benefited the Lancastrian campaign to recognize "English as the national language of England" (exemplified by Chaucer as supreme "user and…
Leech attempts to formulate a context for understanding medieval body images, using Rolle, Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and Kempe along with Chaucer. Chapter 5 considers KnT, GP, WBT, and ParsT.
