Twelve essays by Donaldson, eight of them previously printed, with a comprehensive index. For the four newly published essays, search for Speaking of Chaucer under Alternative Title.
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Speaking of Chaucer (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 46-64.
Explores suggestive ambiguities in the characterizations of Emily in KnT, May in MerT, Criseyde in TC, and the Prioress in GP, considering narrative techniques, points of view, and ways that Chaucer adapts and manipulates the ideal of a romance…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Speaking of Chaucer (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 65-83.
Shows how the narrator's "wildly emotional attitude" toward Criseyde contributes to her characterization in TC, describing how and where nuances of style and point of view raise questions for the reader despite--even because of--the narrator's…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Speaking of Chaucer (New York: Norton, 1970), pp.164-74.
Focuses on the single use of the word "sin" in MilT (1.3589), suggesting that the Tale and, more generally, the "best medieval literature" do not "necessarily have anything to do with sin," but offer "joy to the reader."
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Brown, Arthur, and Peter Foote, eds. Early English and Norse Studies: Presented to Hugh Smith in Honour of His Sixtieth Birthday (London: Methuen, 1963), pp. 26-45.
Explores the "literary value" of Chaucer's "pretended inferiority complex on the subject of poetry," commenting on the "modesty convention" (or humility topos) in the GP description of the Prioress, the moralization of NPT, the question of Providence…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 1-26.
Challenges patristic criticism for its claim that medieval literature is univocally concerned with asserting Christian "caritas" allegorically, arguing instead that poetry has a right to "say what it means and mean what it says." Illustrates the…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
In Speaking of Chaucer (London: Athlone, 1970), pp. 102-18. Published originally in Ilva Cellini and Giorgio Melchiori, eds. Lectures and Papers Read at the Sixth Conference of the International Association of University Professors of English Held at Venice, August 1965 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1966).
Describes illusions of objectivity in recension, the genetic method of textual editing, cleverly though earnestly articulating that subjectivity--or "common sense"--is needed in the process of editing. Challenges the principle of grouping manuscript…
Distinguishes between Chaucer the poet. and Chaucer the pilgrim-narrator of CT, characterizing the "persona" of the latter as "shy" but "gregarious," one who admires the "values" of high society, the "material prosperity" of the bourgeoisie, and good…
Donaldson, Kara Virginia.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 139-53.
Absolon appropriates the language of courtly love, thereby rendering himself deaf to Alisoun's realistic language and setting himself up as a glossator of Alisoun's body/text. When Alisoun disrupts his gloss by exposing "hir hole" (i.e., her…
Donavin, Georgiana.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1993): 2807A.
MLP and other comments suggest that late-medieval readers were "disconcerted" by Gower's repeated treatments of incest. Examination of his poem reveals him (through Genius) turning Amans from the incestuous love of Venus and Cupid to pure heavenly…
Donavin, Georgiana.
Scott D. Troyan, ed. Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 25-39.
ABC is intended not for private prayer but as a pedagogical "English-teaching" text. The poem's manuscript illuminations, visual imagery, and rosary-like structure reinforce the general medieval association of the Virgin with the education of youth…
Donavin, Georgiana.
Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012.
Investigates "constructions of Mary as Lady Rhetorica, 'magistra' for language studies, muse for poetry, and exemplar of perfected speech in a fallen world." Chapter 4, "Chaucer and Dame School," considers how ABC, PrT, and SNT "depict a hierarchy of…
Doniger, Wendy.
Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press, 2000.
A cross-cultural, transhistorical anatomy of one motif in the "mythology of sex" in literature and film--the "story of going to bed with someone whom you mistake for someone else." Discusses structuralist and psychoanalytic explanations of variations…
Donnelly, Colleen Elaine.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1987): 4381A-4382A.
Chaucer's method of creating romance (unlike the techniques of Milton, Hawthorne, and Faulkner) requires scrutiny of the placement of formulaic phrases to reveal meaning and theme.
Chaucer's use of sources, traditions, and images leaves his text too open-ended and ambiguous to admit of any single interpretative pattern for the "matere" of BD. Diverse incidents of the poem are united by Chaucer's "structural integrity,"…
Donnelly, Colleen.
Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 11 (1990): 19-32.
Chaucer's "open-endedness" and "lack of an ending" relate to the fact that he was writing in a "time of crisis" (the Black Death, the corruption of the church). He sought to confront conditions of his time through pluralism, and his lack of closure…
Donnelly, Colleen.
Language and Style 24: 433-43, 1991.
Surveys interactions between women's speech and silence, on the one hand, and generic conventions, on the other, in KnT, WBT, ClT, MerT, FranT, and ShT. Chaucer variously confirms or complicates the expectations about female speech embedded in the…
Donner, Morton.
Mediaevalia 9 (1986, for 1983): 125-44.
Chaucer was not an inept translator in Bo, as some contend, but an innovator who expanded the vocabulary of English ideological writing by some 500 constructions, anglicizing new Latin and Romance terms and extending the meanings of existing English…
In translating Bo from the original Latin and a French translation, Chaucer often adapts a word from the latter to create new concepts, especially with English gerunds.
Chaucer freely coins derivations, such as the Summoner's "preambulacion" from "preamble" (D837), for the sake of rhyme, rhythm, economy, and forcefulness.
Donner, Morton.
Western Humanities Review 27 (1973): 189-95.
Argues that Chaucer adapts his first-person narrators throughout his career in order to explore aspects of the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. Chaucer achieves a greatest sense of objectivity when his subjective narrator is most…
