By comparing Chaucer's TC with Boccaccio's "Filostrato" in sounds, grammar, word choice, similes and metaphors, ambiguities, and construction, the article investigates Chaucer's literary and linguistic imitation and humorous innovation.
Trigg, Stephanie.
Seth Lerer, ed. The Yale Companion to Chaucer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 297-323.
Trigg considers recurrent issues in the reception of Chaucer: responses to his self-shaped "poetic signature," admiration for his rhetoric and sentiment, and mourning for the loss of his genius by poets who seek to emulate him. Surveys rewritings and…
Identifies three aspects of Robert Henryson's uses of proverbial wisdom in his "Fables," locating precedent for each of them in a work by Chaucer: use of proverbs by fable characters (NPT), comic misapplication of proverbial wisdom (MilT), and…
Shigeo, Hisashi.
Hisao Turu, ed. Reading Chaucer's Book of the Duchess. Medieval English Literature Symposium Series, no. 5 (Tokyo: Gaku Shobo Press, 1991), pp. 142-70 (in Japanese).
Analyzes the relationship of the real world to the dream world in BD and surveys noncourtly innovations derived from French romances, taking account of Chaucer scholarship of the late twentieth century.
Lynch, Kathryn L.
John M. Hill, Bonnie Wheeler, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Essays on Aesthetics and Medieval Literature in Honor of Howell Chickering (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2014), pp. 115-28.
Explores metaphors of eating, drinking, hunting, and food preparation, within the framework of the "storytelling performances" of the Wife of Bath in WBT and the unnamed Wife in ShT.
Myles, Robert.
Dissertation Abstracts International 54 (1993): 172A.
Although Chaucer has been seen as a medieval nominalist or realist, or both at once, he should actually be recognized as an "intentional realist" in the modern (John F. Searle) sense.
Lightsey, Scott.
James M. Dean, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer (Ipswich, Mass.: Salem Press, 2017), pp. 171-85
Contends that Chaucer's "international presence," due to his European travels connected to his position and service within the court, "instilled in him a European sensibility distinctly at odds with his modern image as the avatar of Englishness."
Hicks, James E.
Essays in Medieval Studies 3: 78-98, 1986.
In PardPT, Chaucer inverts three major precepts of Augustinian sermon rhetoric ("De Doctrina Christiana"): the preacher must pray before preaching, the preacher must maintain a grave and appropriate demeanor, and the preacher must maintain Christian…
Ginsberg, Warren.
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2002.
Developing Walter Benjamin's model of translation and seeking to "rethink the dynamics of cross-cultural translation," Ginsberg explores how Chaucer's borrowings from and dependencies on Italian literature "disarticulate" the legacy of Dante,…
Interpretive biography and critical exploration of Chaucer's professional, diplomatic, and literary engagements with Italy, Italians, and Italian culture, seeking to "follow in Chaucer's footsteps--to Milan, Genoa, Florence, Pavia, and beyond--and…
Examines how the Jailer's Daughter of Shakespeare and Fletcher's play, a character not found in KnT, reflects a complex form of influence derived not only from KnT, but from MilT and RvT as well. Considers water imagery and liquidity, and "madness,…
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univeristy of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 59-69.
Glosses in Class Alpha mss of Claudian's "De Raptu Proserpinae," which Chaucer could have used at school, explain his description of Pluto and Proserpina as Fairies, his "many a lady" following Proserpina, the terrifying tone of Pluto's "grisely…
Carlson, David R.
New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Chaucer's occupations--domestic servant, customs agent, justice of the peace, and clerk of the King's Works--shaped his literature, and his "servility" enabled him to become the "father" of English poetry. His biography and his works alike reveal…
Scattergood, John.
Notes and Queries 51.3 (2004): 233-34.
Argues for the adoption of "thy selven" instead of "they shynen" (line 1015) as the "lectio difficilior: and as the reading supported by Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 16, the copy-text for most editions of HF.
Silar, Theodore I.
Philological Quarterly 69 (1990): 409-17.
The epithet "joly" or "jolif," used seven times to characterize Absolon in MilT, is inadequately translated as "jolly." Chaucer makes use of many Middle English meanings of the word to portray Absolon as "happy and light-hearted, amorous, a…
Galway, Margaret.
Times Literary Supplement, April 4, 1958, p. 183.
Argues from the evidence of life-records that Chaucer might well have accompanied Prince Lionel to Milan in 1368 when the latter wedded Violanta Visconti. Presents this in support of Ethel Seaton's discussion of PF (Medium Aevum 25.3 [1956]: 168-74)…
Saito, Isamu.
Poetica: An Internatioanl Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 41 (1994): 51-58.
The two references to kneeling in SumT help create irony. The friar's kneeling in the first half of the tale "forecasts" his "spiritual downfall" in the last scene.
The GP description of the Knight engages late-medieval questions of war and pacifism, confronting the audience with an "ethical and political dilemma."
