Arguing that "Chaucer changed the direction of the Middle English lyric," Robbins comments on Chaucer's lyrics, on fifteenth-century lyrics, and on the influence of TC on the latter.
Windeatt compares several of Chaucer's works and their sources to show that through variations in narrative pace and increased attention to pinpointing time, Chaucer makes something quite new. Considers PF, MLT, TC, KnT, and several of the tales in…
Flavin argues that Milton may have been influenced by Chaucer: like Chauntecleer in NPT, Milton's Eve ignores her prophetic dream and falls victim to flattery. Milton's Adam is also similar to Chauntecleer in passionate submission to beauty.
Lanham, Richard A.
Lanham, Richard A. Literacy and the Survival of Humanism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 41-57.
The "homo ludens" tradition from Erasmus to Huizinga and the recent development of sociobiology reveal three motives in life and art: play, purpose, and game. Critics focusing on allegory or "idea" see purpose as Chaucer's primary motive, but his…
Assesses depictions of the working class by Langland, Chaucer, Gower, and the chronicler Walsingham, considering what they disclose about conditions and attitudes at the time of the 1381 Uprising (Peasant's Revolt). Sharply criticizes Gower's and…
Traces the medieval tradition of translating or adapting Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" into vernacular languages, especially French, and argues that Walton's verse translation of 1410 is an "improvement upon his model, Chaucer's prose" Bo,…
McWhir, Anne.
SEL: Studies in English Literature 23 (1983): 413-23.
Explores comic allusions in John Gay's pastorals "The Shepherd's Week" and "Trivia," along the way identifying "several allusions" to Chaucer's work in "The Shepherd's Week"--allusions to the Wife of Bath's red stockings, the use of "queynte" and the…
Owen, Charles A., Jr., Caroline D.Eckhardt, and Katharine Slater Gittes.
PMLA 98 (1983): 902-04.
An exchange of letters in the PMLA Forum section that comment on openendedness and closure in CT and the influence of Arabic literary models on Chaucer.
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Classical and Modern Literature 3.2 (1983): 89-98.
Explores the allusion to Virgil's "Georgics" in "Faerie Queene" 1.1.50-53, arguing that Spenser "desexualizes the Vergilian model by removing [its] generative principle" (90) and thereby re-makes the Classical/Christian topos that underlies Chaucer's…
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Renascence 35.3 (1983): 167-82.
Reads the allusions to Chaucer's GP, Virgil's "Aeneid," and, most extensively, Pope's "Rape of the Lock" in Eliot's "The Waste Land" as signals to his rejection of the "Classical/Christian tradition."
Traces the development of Yeats's concern with "writing for a listening audience," and identifies his reading of Chaucer in 1905 as crucial to this process. As several of his letters and lectures attest, Yeats for a time regarded Chaucer as the…
Matsuda, Takami.
Studies in English Literature, English number, 59 (1983): 101-25.
Traces the "growing versatility" of the "ubi sunt" motif in Middle English literature--its emotional impact, its relations with the theme of mutability, and its potential for expressing nostalgia--concluding with a comparison of Chaucer's uses of the…
Pearsall, Derek, ed.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983
Nine essays, an Introduction, and Response derive from a 1981 Conference at the University of York. For the two essays that include substantial attention to Chaucer, search for Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England under Alternative…
Burrow, J. A.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Gower's "Confessio Amantis": Responses and Reassessments (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 5-24.
In an analysis of Gower's combination of confession, "dits amoreux," and concern with old age in the "Confessio Amantis," observes a number of comparisons and contrasts with Chaucer: the individuation of Amans and of the lovers in TC, uses of the…
Pearsall, Derek.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Gower's "Confessio Amantis": Responses and Reassessments (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 179-97.
Surveys the "history of Gower's reputation," beginning with Chaucer's reference to him as "moral Gower" at the end of TC and his possible allusions to Gower's works in ManT and MLP. The idea of a "quarrel" between the two poets is perhaps…
Opie, Iona and Peter, eds.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
An anthology of British narrative verse, ranging from Chaucer to W. H. Auden; includes Middle English versions of NPT ("The Cock and the Hen") and PardT ("Death and the Three Revellers"), with bottom-of-the-page glosses and diacritical marks to…
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).
Boffey, Julia.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 3-14.
Investigates the "manuscript context" of courtly love lyrics, identifying their incidence and the implications of their groupings and solo occurrences. Recurrent mention of Chaucer's lyrics, and discussion of manuscripts that include "clusters" of…
Smith, Jeremy J.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 104-12.
Demonstrates how specific linguistic features can be used to disclose "scribal attitudes to the text being copied," using as a primary example a number of linguistic forms from "one of the most notorious manuscripts" of CT, British Library MS Harley…
Dramatic adaptation of GP, WBT, MerT, MilT, RvT, PardT, NPT, and FrankT, with production notes and extensive stage directions that emphasize frolicsome vitality. Text in modern English, irregular couplets.
A selection of Jennings' personal favorites among English poems, beginning with selections from GP (lines 1-78, 101-62, 219-330, 411-76, and 822-35), in Middle English.
Ridge, George Ross, and Benedict Chiaka Njoka.
George Ross Ridge and Benedict Chiaka Njoka. The Christian Tragic Hero in French and English Literature (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983), pp. 73-84.
Impressionistic survey of four Catholic motifs in the CT: the journey of Everyman, fate versus free will, marriage as a sacrament, and the Stoic notion of the "nobleness of man," considering them for the ways that, in Chaucer's presentation, they…
Scattergood, V. J.
V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds. English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 29-43.
Argues that Chaucer and Gower were "hardly essential reading " at the court of Richard II, although some evidence indicates that they were being read. Such evidence includes comments on Sted, TC, LGW, Scog, and works by Gower.
Green, Richard Firth.
V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds. English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 87-108.
Surveys evidence for the existence of "courts of love" in late medieval French and English culture, considering historical evidence such as Charles VI's "cour amoureuse," and the literary evidence of the love debate, the "demande d'amour," the flower…
