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,…
Hussey, Stanley S.
Wolf-Dietrich Bald and Horst Weinstock, eds. Medieval Studies Conference Aachan 1983 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984), pp. 121-30.
Examines CT characters for individuality not conditioned by the story in FranT, MilT, TC, GP's Host and Merchant, MerP, MerT, and RvT.
Kolve, V. A.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984.
Juxtaposes "visual materials and their literary analogues" to illuminate larger images created by narrative action. Seven chapters treat medieval hypotheses of audience and image; Chaucerian aesthetics of the image in the poem; KnT, the…
Olson, Glending.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 6 (1984): 103-19.
In WBP the Friar promises to tell a tale or two at the expense of summoners by journey's end; the Summoner, not to be outdone, brags that he will do the same at the expense of friars before the pilgrims reach Sittingbourne, i.e., "before" journey's…
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…
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,…
Shaw, Judith.
English Language Notes 21:3 (1984): 7-10.
Augustine's commentary on Matt. 7:3-5 provides context for the discussion of wrath in ParsT. Chaucer uses Augustine's distinction of the false judge, who sees his own faults mirrored in the eyes of another, to show how several of the pilgrims commit…
In GP 6 "inspired" evokes the Vulgate Gen. 2:7, suggesting Lenten spiritual renewal and the natural regenerative effect of the west wind in springtime.
Kuhn, Sherman M.
Wolf-Dietrich Bald and Horst Weinstock, eds. Medieval Studies Conference Aachen 1983 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984), pp. 85-102.
Since the noun "armee" or a variant appears in the "best" and earliest Chaucer manuscripts and was used in Old French and Middle English, "armee" (rather than "aryve") is probably the word Chaucer intended in GP 60.
Nineteen of the tales are concerned with poetry, style, genre. In KnT the Knight uses four rhetorical conventions--"occupatio," "brevitas" formula, "digressio," and "descriptio"--but the Knight is a flawed rhetorician-storyteller.
Burrow, J. A.
J. A. Burrow. Essays on Medieval Literature. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 27-48. Also in Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Medieval and Pseudo-Medieval Literature (Tubingen: Narr, 1984), pp. 91-108.
Analyzes characters, both divine and human, in KnT as "representatives of the "three ages of man: youth, maturity, and old age."
Harder, Bernhard D.
University of Windsor Review (Ontario) 18:1 (1984): 47-52.
The coherence problem in KnT can be solved by viewing the tale as Boethian, but Theseus ironically perverts Boethian arguments from "De consolatione philosophiae" until those arguments contradict Boethian philosophy, typically telling a familiar…
In contrast to the painful stasis of the temples of Mars and Venus, which Chaucer found in Boccaccio's "Teseida," the invented Temple of Diana emphasizes mutability and transformation, revealing the "hidden, more original concern" of KnT with the…
Adams, Roberta E.
Dissertation Abstracts International 44 (1984): 3069A.
Common law, canon law, and contemporary conduct books indicate certain concepts of marriage and the role of the good wife. The Wife of Bath's "good" (arranged) and "bad" (chosen) marriages contrast the ideal with socioeconomic reality. WBT is a…
