The "Legend of Dido" explicitly evokes its pretexts: the narrator names Virgil and Ovid and summarizes, paraphrases, and purposefully distorts the texts.
Desmond, Marilynn.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
Surveys understandings of Dido--e.g., historical, Virgilian, Ovidian--and examines what her medieval presentations tell us about intertextual relations, gender attitudes, and the "reading positions" of various medieval authors, including Chaucer,…
Desmond, Marilynn.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006.
Desmond studies the discourse of erotic violence in medieval literature and iconography, surveying depictions of the "mounted Aristotle" and focusing on the adaptations of material from Ovid's "Ars Amatoria" found in the letters of Héoïse and…
Uses two of the "modes of existence" theorized by Bruno Latour--technological and fictional--to examine medieval manuscripts, arguing that the "affordances and ecologies" of codices as technology encouraged the "proliferation" of fictional beings in…
DeSpain, Jessica.
Journal of the William Morris Society 15.4 (2004): 74-90
In his Kelmscott Chaucer, Morris presents Chaucer as a proponent of anti-capitalist socialism, consistent with Morris's own arts and crafts movement. The essay comments on the heteroglot voices of the Canterbury pilgrims and the Kelmscott…
Despres, Denise, L.
Modern Philology 91 (1994): 413-27.
England's implementation of the Fourth Lateran Council's legislation of 1215, two anti-Judaism sermon exempla from medieval manuscripts, and the "child-as-Host" motif suggest how the "ideology of bodily and social purity could become salient for the…
Derived from St. Bonaventure, the Franciscan model of meditation afforded the laity of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries a "means of participating in an eternal present," as demonstrated in "Piers Plowman," "Pearl," and "The Book of…
Despres, Denise.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 527-44.
Discusses iconography and pilgrimage, and Chaucer's investments in and depiction of the "power of images" through tales of CT, including GP, PrT, and PardT. Argues that "Chaucer demonstrates that devotional images . . . are inherently polymorphous…
Dessart, Jamie Marie Thomas.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 4003A, 1999.
Meanings of the words "women," "authority," and "language" change throughout Chaucer's works, depending on the complex and shifting relationships of speaker, persona, scribe, and audience, plus pervasive irony. Treats TC, LGW, ClT, FranT, and SNT.
Deusen, Nancy van, ed.
Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2013.
Ten essays by various authors and an introduction by the editor that consider the influence of Cicero on western language and literature from late Antiquity to the early modern era. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Cicero Refused to…
Although of "no use to chaucerians," the fragmentary text of John Rastell's version of PF reflects the humanist's admiration of Chaucer's works even though he mangled the text.
Devereux, James A., S.J.
Philological Quarterly 44 (1965): 550-52.
Identifies similarities between Criseyde's address to Troilus in TC 3.1309 with "levation" prayers, i.e., popular devotional prayers aligned with the "looking at the host at the elevation of Mass."
Devlin, Mary
San Jose, Calif.: Writers Club Press, 2000.
A murder mystery that incorporates details from Chaucer's life and from CT, featuring Chaucer in the role of detective seeking to solve three murders on the pilgrimage to Canterbury, with the aid of John of Gaunt.
A murder mystery that incorporates details from Chaucer's life, featuring investigations of two murders, the involvement of Philippa and John of Gaunt, and Chaucer's interests in poetry and astrology.
DeVoto, Marya.
Studies in Medievalism 9 (1997): 148-70.
Lanier in the early 1880s produced versions of Malory, Froissart, the Percy ballads, and other works aimed at exposing boys to the chivalry and simple piety of the Middle Ages. The introduction to "The Boy's Froissart" cites Chaucer as a "large and…
DeVries, David N.
Studies in Scottish Literature 27 (1992): 113-27.
The major interpretations of Dunbar's poem fall into two groups: those arguing the poem is representational and those arguing it is reflexive. Comparing "Golden Targe" to Chaucer's dream poetry and to other dream poetry by Dunbar reveals that both…
DeVries, David N.
Chaucer Review 32 (1998): 391-99.
Despite David Wallace's assertion that London is "absent" in Chaucer, and D. W. Robertson's contention that medieval Londoners were content within "an hierarchical classless society," CT depicts London as an "underworld," where unscrupulous…
DeVries, David N.
Nancy M. Reale and Ruth E. Sternglantz, eds. Satura: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Robert R. Raymo (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2001), 248-62.
Assesses the intertextual relationship of Lydgate's "A Balade in Commendation of Our Lady" with TC and with Alan de Lille's "Anticlaudianus," exploring how aureate diction contributes to the poem's "connection between poetry and redemption in…
Critiques editorial decisions in punctuating and glossing TC 3.1751-57, comparing the passage with its original in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy."
Chaucer uses 636 proper names (excluding about 300 additional topographical and geographical names). They fall into four categories: astrological, Biblical, classical, and mythological. Names from Latin and Greek appear in the oblique case (e.g.,…
DeZur, Kathryn Michelle.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 414A, 1999.
Analyzes the relationships of "interpretation, authority, and female sexuality" in works by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Sidney. TC and WBPT contrast a lady seduced by her reading with a woman empowered by hers.
An anthology compiled to promote reading among young readers in Eritrea. Includes international tales, ancient to modern, in modern English adaptation, including ClT (here titled "The Scholar's Tale: The Test of a Good Wife."
A "center-free analysis" of MLT discloses that Donegild is "an embodiment of a folklore motif," while the Sowdanesse (Sultaness) is a hostile ideological construct.
Studies the "co-articulation of the transhistorical issues of gender, race, and sex" in WBPT and Zadie Smith's "Wife of Willesden," arguing that they "invoke similar forms of sexual assault and feminine abuse while undermining analogous abstractions…
di Carpegna Falconieri, Tommaso, and Lila Yawn.
Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones, eds. The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 186–215.
Briefly invokes Chaucer, noting Pasolini's 1971 film, "The Canterbury Tales," and its adaptation of Chaucer's work to highlight increasing cultural degradation as works are transmitted.
