Reichl, Karl.
Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 133-52.
In TC, philosophical terminology "provides a continual gloss on the text." A philosophical reading of the poem--free will versus determinism, fantasy versus reason--does not, however, detract from the poem's narrative, "an intensely moving story of…
Kim, Hyonjin.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 16 (2008): 77-111.
Surveys critical approaches to KnT, particularly New Critical, Feminist, and New Historical, focusing on discussions of order and disorder in the Tale. KnT functions as a "second prologue" to CT and, with GP, asserts and affirms the diversity of…
Steadman, John M.
Notes and Queries 201 (1956): 374-75.
Offers support for the notion that the whelp episode in BD (387-96)--likely derived from Machaut's "Dit dou Lyon"--serves as a "symbol of fidelity," adducing instances of Renaissance "canine symbolism" and the appearance of dogs "on medieval tombs."…
Duncan, Edgar H.
Modern Philology 66 (1969): 199-211.
Shows that in the Wife of Bath's account of her three "goode" husbands Chaucer "adopted a means of amplification which he found described and illustrated in the 'Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi' . . . attributed to Geoffrey of…
Folks, Cathalin Buhrmann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 50 (1990): 2062A.
Neither WBT nor "Gawain" presents straightforward satire on late-fourteenth-century English romance. At once ironic and idealistic, the two works provide a human redefinition of the genre as exemplified in contemporary chivalric writing.
Salisbury, Eve.
Eve Salisbury, Georgiana Donavin, and Merrall Llewelyn Price, eds. Domestic Violence in Medieval Texts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), pp. 73-93.
"Daungerous," the term Alisoun uses to describe Jankyn's love, reflects an ambiguous relation between courtly love and marriage; canon and civil law clarify the nature of physical and psychological violence in WBP and FranT.
Salisbury, Eve.
Jacek Fisiak and Hye-Kyung Kang, eds. Recent Trends in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Young-Bae Park (Seoul, South Korea: Thaehaksa, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 347-75.
Assesses how WBT, FranT, and other Breton lays in Middle English "underwrite and reinforce the laws of the land"--laws that allowed for domestic violence and left ambiguous the relations between rape and marriage.
Klinefelter, Ralph A.
Explicator 24.1 (1965): item no. 5.
Argues that the "allegory of the Four Daughters of God" (also known as "The Reconciliation of the Heavenly Virtues" and "The Parliament of Heaven") influenced several details of ABC.
Pearcy, Roy J.
Notes and Queries 212 (1967): 322-25.
Explains the use of "impossible" as a noun in SumT 3.2231, discussing the term as a label for classroom examples of logical sophistry and commenting on Chaucer's familiarity with such academic practice.
A pattern of Chaucerian poetics emerges through four themes--courtly love, morality, order, and poetry--found in his early poetry (BD, HF, and KnT). Starting as a poet of courtly love, Chaucer overcame limitations of this theme by analyzing its…
O'Connell, Brendan.
Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith, eds. Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 189-211
Observes that in sixteenth-century editions of CT, ManT follows NPT, and that after c. 1550 the pair is followed by the story of the Pelican and Griffin from the apocryphal "Plowman's Tale," then the references to fables in ParsP, providing a…
Four essays and two appendices place Bo in the "tradition of the academic study and translation of the 'Consolatio,'" clarifying the relative importance of such predecessors as William of Conches, Jean de Meun, anonymous commentators, and especially…
Machan, Tim William, ed.
Heidelberg: Winter, 2008.
A critical text of Bo, collated "with all medieval and late-medieval authorities and also with the modern critical editorial tradition." Includes a list of glosses and an extensive introduction, with a survey of interpretive responses to Bo.
Reads HF as Chaucer's "vindication of poetry," even though he comically proposes to eschew it. Identifies the various echoes of classical and medieval sources in HF, particularly Virgil's "Aeneid," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Alain de Lille's…
Buermann, Theodore Barry.
Dissertation Abstracts International 28.12 (1968): 5009-10A.
Shows how Biblical narratives underlie the CT, not only allusively but in narrative plots and figural schema, focusing on how materials from Genesis are present in GP (springtime creation), KnT (brotherly conflict similar to Cain and Abel), MilT…
Wimsatt, James Irving.
Dissertation Abstracts International 27.04 (1966): 1041A.
Describes the French influences on BD of, among others, three poems by Machaut, one by Froissart, and Guillaume de Lorris's portion of the "Roman de la Rose," demonstrating the dependence and innovations of Chaucer's work in the tradition of the…
Malone, Kemp.
Arno Esch, ed. Chaucer und Seine Zeit: Symposion für Walter F. Schirmer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), pp. 71-95.
Scans the verse in the first 100 lines of BD, with commentary on emendations and unusual features; then offers a catalog of scansion (with analysis and extensive notes) of the entire poem, concluding that the "basis of Chaucer's metrics" in BD (and…
Fumo, Jamie C., ed.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018.
Includes nine essays, plus a response, by various authors, with an index and an introduction by the editor. Argues for a reassessment of the critical relevance of BD, which has often been marginalized, as a work that is simultaneously "multilingual"…
Rowland, Beryl.
English Language Notes 2.1 (1964): 6-8.
Exploring the "bukke and hare" of Th 7.756 for their "traditional attributes" rather than as suggestive game animals, documents that their associations with timidity and, reading "bukke" as "goat rather than "male deer," sexual pursuit.
Ichikawa, Sanki,and Tamotsu Matsunami,trans. and eds.
Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1987.
Revised edition of the late Ichikawa's introduction to Chaucer's English (reprinted many times since 1934), with text on the left side and it pronunciation in IPA notation on the facing page with a Modern English prose translation underneath. Notes…
