Hsy, Jonathan, and Candace Barrington.
David Hadbawnik, ed. Postmodern Poetics and Queer Medievalisms: Time Mechanics (Boston: De Gruyter, 2022), pp. 159-77.
Explores how the "circular and recursive form" of Agbabi's poetic adaptations of CT in her "Telling Tales" (2015) "showcases" the "queer time of medievalism and the queer form of adaptation." Focuses on Agbabi's versions of Mel ("Unfinished…
Hadbawnik, David.
David Hadbawnik, ed. Postmodern Poetics and Queer Medievalisms: Time Mechanics (Boston: De Gruyter, 2022), pp. 179-204.
Describes the "inbetweenedness" of language in Caroline Bergvall's poetic/performative "trilogy--"Meddle English" (2011), "Drift" (2014), and "Alisoun Sings" (2019)--including discussion of her uses of forms of "Chaucer's Middle English, as well as…
Barrington, Candace.
David Hadbawnik, ed. Postmodern Poetics and Queer Medievalisms: Time Mechanics (Boston: De Gruyter, 2022), pp. 61-80.
Assesses Jos Charles's "transpoetics" in "feeld" (2018), showing how the collection of poems capitalizes on the "historical ruptures" and other constitutive features of Middle English, mimicking its "malleability and fluidity." Also suggests that…
Fludernik, Monika.
David Herman, ed. The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), pp. 69-100.
Shows that modern understandings of and distinctions among speech, thought, and signifying gesture do not necessarily obtain in Middle English discourse, and that Middle English literature "displays much more extensive narrative depictions of…
Hsy, Jonathan.
David Hillman and Ulrika Maude, eds. The Cambridge Companion to the Body in Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 24-40.
Explores how disability studies have expanded to include consideration of relations between "embodiment and literary form," focusing on representations of deafness in the fifteenth-century Castilian "Arboleda de los enfermos" (Grove of the Infirm) of…
LaPorte, Charles.
David Latham, ed. Writing on the Image: Reading William Morris (Toronto and Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 209-19.
Morris's decision to present Chaucer's works in "clear-text" format (without editorial apparatus) conflicts with Victorian theories of editing. Yet, his presentations of Ret and the envoy to TC belie his efforts to imitate medieval traditions.
Kaplan, M. Lindsay.
David Lee, ed. Signs of the Early Modern 1: 15th and 16th Centuries. EMF, Studies in Early Modern France, no. 2 (Charlottesville, Va.: Rookwood, 1996), pp. 101-28.
Kaplan explores medieval and early modern legal discourse about slander and defamation. Though HF is concerned with the relation between poetry and slander, in Chaucer's time "defamation was not understood as having temporal consequences for the…
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 109-40.
Until 1369, Wyclif, powerful and influential, dominated Oxford; the "Lollard Knights" were prestigious men of court;and John of Gaunt was patron of both Chaucer and Wyclif. Appendix applies Wyclif's ideas to Chaucer's poetry: Gent, Truth, Form Age,…
Peck, Russell A.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 143-70.
A reworking of the author's "Saint Paul and the 'Canterbury Tales'" (Mediaevalia 07 (1981): 91-131). Saint Paul is invoked in NPT to justify use of fables; in ParsT, to reject them. Chaucer's own attitude is the Nun's Priest's. Pauline ideas…
Fleming, John V.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 183-95.
For his worldly, depraved clerics, Chaucer draws not on the actual world but on "crabbed Latin texts monkish in their aspirations and unworldly in their doctrines," i.e., upon scriptural exegesis and ascetic theology, as in GP's Summoner, Friar,…
Alford, John A.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 197-203.
On "glosing" and scriptural authority in WBP, WBT, FrT, and SumT. The groping motif of SumT is informed by Gen. 24:1-4 and 47:27, requiring an oath on the genitals.
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 207-28.
The Aeneas story as cliche is appropriate for the poem's subject: fame. The fame of Aeneas was important in Christian historiography, but ambivalent because of his betrayal of Dido. Biblical language and allusion rather than "the story of Troy or…
Robertson, D. W.,Jr.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 3-32.
Understanding medieval literary use of scriptural tradition requires knowledge of relevant social history, especially for Chaucer--not merely a "textual" man but a "moral, social, and political man." The complex Christian tradition, functioning…
Reiss, Edmund.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 47-61.
The 700 biblical quotations and allusions in Chaucer are used to support arguments, to suggest "a plethora of significances," to evoke, to echo; or, alternatively, to alter, pervert, or misapply biblical themes, exposing human folly, as in MilT,…
Besserman, Lawrence [L.]
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 65-73.
Chaucer used the "Glossa ordinaria" in WBT and MerT; his use of the term "glosing" shows his awareness of fraudulent exegetes. ParsT is more literal than exegetical. Chaucer's attitude toward exegesis was shaped by the antifraternalism of the…
Caie, Graham D.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 75-88.
Puzzling marginal glosses in Ellesmere, Hengwrt, and Cambridge Dd.4.24 may be intended to guide interpretation, as was customary even in vernacular texts. Accepted as integral to the text for a century, glosses serve various purposes in MLT, glossed…
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
David Lyle Jeffrey. House of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (Waco, Tx,: Baylor University Press, 2003), pp. 111-16.
Explores ecclesiastical connotations of the word "rente" in the GP description of the Friar, in SumT, and elsewhere in medieval usage.
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
David Lyle Jeffrey. House of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (Waco, Tx,: Baylor University Press, 2003), pp. 87-110.
Considers the three-part structure of HF, the poem's references to Virgil's "Aeneid," and its allusions to Dante's "Divine Comedy" and to Ezekiel, arguing that, thematically, it abandons history as a source of truth, considers the potential of…
Patrouch, Joseph A., Jr
David M. Hassler, ed. Patterns of the Fantastic (Mercer Island, Wash.: Starmont House, 1983), pp. 63-66.
Opens a discussion of Harlan Ellison's uses of a "speaking voice" in his fiction by commenting on Chaucer's multiple narrative voices and the depiction of "Chaucer reading aloud" in the Troilus frontispiece (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 61).
Brooke, Christopher (N. L.)
David M. Smith, ed. Studies in Clergy and Ministry in Medieval England. Purvis Seminar Series; Borthwick Studies in History, no. 1 ([York]: University of York, 1991), pp. 1-19.
Explores the life of Edmund Gonville--cleric, shrewd land agent, and man of affairs--and Chaucer's depiction of the Parson. Despite his considerable financial successes, Gonville was like the Parson in that he did not rent out his benefice.
Sanders, Barry.
David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance, eds. Literacy and Orality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 111-28.
In GP, Chaucer poses himself as a "liar," capable of impossible feats of memory; in tales such as MilT, he capitalizes on the oral genre of joking. As a liar and a joker, the literate Chaucer manipulates oral expectations, compelling his audience to…
Wenzel, Siegfried.
David Raybin and Linda Tarte Holley, eds. Closure in The Canterbury Tales: The Role of The Parson's Tale (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000), pp. 1-10.
Surveys scholarship pertaining to ParsT, describing the recent emphasis on interpretation rather than on philology. Identifies a "perspectivist" approach that regards ParsT as equivalent to the other Tales and a "teleological" approach that sees it…
