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…
Compares the theme of forced marriage in WBT, "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine," "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell," and Gower's "Tale of Florent." While all the works concern forced marriages, Chaucer's knight undergoes "greater coercion,"…
Meyer, Robert J.
Chaucer Review 18 (1984): 221-38.
Structural unity is achieved by the back-to-back romances in the tale, the first a mock quest, the second a narrative that asks what men most desire (gentility, youth, beauty). The Midas exemplum and the pillow talk of gentility are integral parts…
Murphy, Ann B.
The Centennial Review 28:3 (1984): 204-22.
The Wife's personality develops through five marriages from a materialistic, mercantile desire for power and wealth to "an earthly form of spiritual transformation through marital love." WBP traces how Allison learns to love and to stop equating…
Quinn, Esther C.
Chaucer Review 18 (1984): 211-20.
WBT is an ironic Arthurian romance, particularly when viewed alongside Marie de France's "Lanval" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," which parallel it in several ways.
Robertson, D. W.,Jr.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 6 (1984): 1-20.
Discuses Ovid, "Roman de la Rose," and the theme of Midas in WBT. The Wife alters the story of Midas, ironically exposing both her own shortcomings and those of the knight in her tale.
Fleming, Martha H.
Peter Cocozzella, ed. The Late Middle Ages (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1984 (for 1981)), pp. 89-101.
Presents evidence of a coherently conceived allegory in ClT: God is to Man as Perfection is to Imperfection, a hierarchy based not on rank but on virtue. Thus God is to Man as Griselda is to Walter.
Arrathoon, Leigh A.
Language and Style 17:1 (1984): 92-120.
Throughout MerT synonyms for the Boethian values of true bliss and sorrow are juxtaposed to develop the theme of the woe that is in marriage--parallel to the "contemptus mundi" theme of the "Consolation." The protagonist of MerT uses Boethian…
Hira, Toshinori.
Bulletin of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Humanities (Nagasaki) 24.2 (1984): 97-111.
The narrator of MerT evokes the same moral response from the audience as the authors of the "Comedy." Although the narrator appeals to the superiority of the audience over his dramatic characters, he perhaps admires their crudeness, which the…
