The problem of ascertaining Chaucer's audience(s) is complex, running from the fictional one of GP to the real audiences of the poet's day to the audiences of the present.
Treats CT in context of literary and social conventions of the age, discussing genre, ordering of CT, the diversity of pilgrims and genres in the tales, KnT, links within fragments, themes. CT does not accept the answers in ParsT and Ret, and…
Arabic literature--characteristically framed, open-ended, "eye-witness," first-person narrative, often including a journey--prefigures Boccaccio's "Decameron," Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and Chaucer's CT. Petrus Alfonsi's twelfth-century…
Gittes, Katharine Slater.
Dissertation Abstracts International 44 (1983): 1444A.
Frame narratives (Arabic in origin) display open-endedness, structural looseness, and autonomy of component tales. In CT, Chaucer combines Arabic, classical, and Christian elements and draws on their mutual tensions.
The "fragmentary state" of CT and its lack of definitive ending may reflect external circumstances, yet its "open-endedness" may be part of its structural plan.
Kirkpatrick, Robin.
Chaucer and the Italian Trecento (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 201-29.
Focuses on qualities that distinguish CT from the "Decameron:" the self-deprecating Chaucer persona, Chaucer's concern with human individuality, his willingness to admit the limitations of language and art, and his use of irony.
Discrepancy between intention and outcome is a theme of CT, especially in KnT, WBT, and MerT. Pilgrim narrators produce unintended effects in listeners especially in the Host.
From opening sign of Aries to closing sign of Libra, the pilgrimage moves between the termini of Creation and Doomsday, using symbolism of spring and autumn in the day's cycle.
Traversi, Derek.
Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1983.
This critical reading views the beginning and ending as fixed,"twin pillars...within which the unfolding fresco of the action is contained." Traversi explores that action in three parts: KnT and the two fabliaux; the tales of marriage and…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Douglas Gray and E. G. Stanley, eds. Middle English Studies Presented to Norman Davis in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 65-67.
The traditional reading is that Arcite's horse pitches him to the ground so that Arcite, falling on his head, has his chest shattered by the saddlebow. The words "pomel" and "pighte," however, show that Arcite is not thrown from his horse but is…
Keen, Maurice.
V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds. English Court Culture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), pp. 45-61.
Why is the Knight identified with crusades against the infidel at a time when crusading fervor had supposedly dissipated? Evidence from three contemporary disputes over armorial bearings (at one of which Chaucer testified) suggests that the…
Boenig, Robert.
English Language Notes 21 (1983): 1-6.
The medieval bagpipe was featured in Nativity scenes, depictions of angels, and royal occasions. The Miller's bagpipe was a soft, pleasant, courtly, even celestial instrument--in subtly ironic contrast to his character.
