Braswell, Mary Flowers.
English Language Notes 23 (1985): 55-70.
Chaucer's influence on Faulkner is evident in the similarities between PardT and "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard." Both stories concern three treasure seekers who make an ironic vow of loyalty and are guided in motion by a figure who represents…
Dane, Joseph A.
Notes and Queries 230 (1985): 155-56.
Three motifs in PardT have antecedents in Virgil's "Eclogue" 10, where basket weaving is a metaphor for making poetry. Rejecting physical labor, the Pardoner asserts "otium," associated with begging. In genre, PardT is a begging poem.
Harrow, Kenneth.
Kofi Anyidoho, Abioseh M. Porter, Daniel Racine, and Janice Spleth, eds. Interdisciplinary Dimensions of African Literature (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1985), pp. 75-87.
Harrow explores social criticism in Sembene Ousmane's novella "Le Mandat" (film version "Mandabi") with references to thematic similarities in Chaucer's PardT. Both Ousmane and Chaucer portray the effects of unexpected treasure on its beneficiaries…
Hermann, John P.
Chaucer Review 19 (1985): 302-37.
The theme of dismemberment initially voiced in the metaphor of the "forstraught" hare (line 1295) reverberates throughout the tale, giving rise to secondary themes of exchange of roles and dissemination of vows, underpinned by references to saints'…
Dachslager, Earl L.
Lamar Journal of the Humanities 11 (1985): 43-50.
The anti-Semitism of PrT is deepened by Chaucer's emphasis on "youth, innocence, and spirituality of the victim." Malamud's "The Fixer"--based on the 1913 trial of a Russian Jew, Mendel Beiliss, for the murder of a Christian boy--humanizes and…
Fleissner, Robert F.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 86 (1985): 197-98.
"Loy" may refer to the law (from Old French "loy"), compounding the irony of the Prioress's oath "by Seinte Loy." In "taking an oath by the Law 'per se'," she would have taken a stand against unprincipled, secular swearing.
Hodges, Laura F.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1985): 1620A
The headdress, cloak, and jewelry of the Prioress, correct or appropriate according to fourteenth-century views, conflict ironically with her character.
Rothwell, W[illiam].
Modern Language Review 80 (1985): 39-54.
Despite earlier movements to standardize French, from which English borrowed heavily, the language of Chaucer's Prioress would have been nonstandard both in pronunciation and in morphology. Analysis of Anglo-Norman documents is needed to assess…
Wurtele, Douglas (J.)
Revue de l'Universite d'Ottawa 55:1 (1985): 33-43.
The Prioress's synthesis of elements from the legends of the martyred schoolboy suggests that she is complying with papal bulls that prohibit accusing Jews of kidnapping and ritual murders, but muances of PrT, and association with Hugh of Lincoln,…
Murphy, Michael.
English Studies 66 (1985): 105-12.
Distinguishes between vow and boast in literary convention, traced down to the burlesques in "The Tournament of Tottenham" and Chaucer's Th. Considers the role of women as "taunters."
Farrell, Thomas J.
Chaucer Review 20 (1985): 61-67.
The introductory lines in question (Th-MelL *2143-54), if analyzed syntactically, lexically, and rhetorically, indicate that the "litel tretys" is Mel itself, rather than CT generally or the source of Mel.
Thomas, Paul R.
Encyclia 59 (1985, for 1982): 45-52
Chaucer's learned audience would have seen great irony in Daun Russell's allusion to the cock in Nigel de Longchamps's "Speculum stultorum": that cock, unlike Chauntecleer, had the intelligence to refuse to crow. The textual Chauntecleer is…
Travis, Peter W.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 81-91.
The elements of NPT--"beast fable, debate, Catonian assertion,Latin translation"--would have evoked in the audience schoolboy memories of Aesop, Cato, and learning exercises.
Dickson, Donald R.
South Central Review 2 (1985): 10-22.
Establishes relationships between CYP and parts of CYT. The Yeoman shows himself as unstable as alchemy, caught between desire for success and fear of losing his soul.
Askins, William.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 7 (1985): 87-105.
Details in ManT parallel the character and life of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix; this is consistent with the tale's interest in gossip and aristocratic misbehavior.
ManP and ManT reveal, through Lacanian insights, Chaucer's position as court poet. The Manciple's silencing of the Cook prefigures the tale in which the regal Phebus, who cages both his free-spirited wife and the truth-telling crow, kills and…
Though often viewed as the most unloved of the CT, ParsT is a fitting climax to the pilgrimage; it is a handbook for the play of the ultimate "sport," the race to salvation.
McGerr, Rosemarie Potz.
Comparative Literature 37 (1985): 97-113.
Like Augustine in his "Retractiones," Chaucer uses Ret to survey his literary career, embodying ideas on the function of memory, experience, literature, and truth.
Machan, Tim William.
Norman, Okla. : Pilgrim Books, 1985.
Although in Bo Chaucer maintains fidelity to his source, he manipulates language through periphrastic derivatives, lexical and syntactic experimentation, combined translations, double and alternate translations, and doublets. Bo as we have it was…
Compares Bo with Jean de Meun's and other versions and discusses Chaucer's translation technique and style. Scholars need more information on Chaucer's use of Jean de Meun and on medieval French translations of "De consolatione philosophae."
Spearing, A. C.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 165-71.
In BD, Chaucer uses "the ambiguous status of the dream, as irresponsible fantasy and as vision of truth," to defend poetic fiction. Only in the "context of the figurative" does "the literal possess its full rhetorical power."
