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Geoffrey Chaucer: Poet and Pilgrim
[n. a.]
Pleasantville, N. Y.: Guidance Associates, 1985.
"Examines the life and ideas of Geoffrey Chaucer and traces the route of his pilgrimage" [quoted from WorldCat; video not seen].
The Miller's Tale
Cunningham, John E., ed.
Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1985.
Classroom text of MilT, with study-guide Introduction, notes, brief glossary and bibliography. The Introduction includes commentary on Chaucer's life, the "Framework and Origin" of CT, "how to read" Chaucer, the "Miller and his Language," and…
The Merchant's Tale and the Shipman's Tale.
Mills, Ruth.
Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1985.
Adaptation for the stage of MerT and ShT, framed by introduction by "Chaucer" of the two narrators, who then stand aside and comment on the characters while the action proceeds as drama. In Modern English pentameter couplets; intended "for use in…
The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
Cunningham, John E., ed.
Middlesex: Penguin, 1985.
Classroom text of GP in Middle English with facing-page notes, study-guide Introduction, a brief glossary, and brief bibliography. The Introduction includes commentary on Chaucer's life, the "Framework" of CT, "how to read" Chaucer, and "Further…
Chaucer and the Middle Ages
Ross, Stewart.
Hove, East Sussex: Wayland, 1985.
Social history of late-medieval England, designed for adolescents, including discussion of Chaucer as "royal servant," poet, and "father of the English language" (pp. 1-9). Recurrent mention of Chaucer in subsequent discussions of historical topics.…
The Everyman History of English Literature
Conrad, Peter.
London: Dent, 1985.
A history of English literature that emphasizes the continuity of ongoing forms and thematic concerns. Two chapters pertain to Chaucer: "Chaucerian Epic and Romance" and "Chaucer, Langland and the Treachery of the Text." The first traces how Chaucer…
The Book of Sorrows
Wangerin, Walter, Jr.
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985.
Fantasy novel, loosely based on NPT, featuring Chauntecleer and Pertelote, along with various barnyard, woodland, and mythic animals. Sequel to Wangerin's "The Book of the Dun Cow" (1978).
Hyapatia Lee's The Ribald Tales of Canterbury
Lee, Bud, director.
Cabellero Control Corporation, 1985.
Erotic film adaptation of CT; loosely adapted. Screenplay by Hyapatia Lee.
Humour in Chaucer.
León Sendra, Antonio R.
Alfinge: Revista de filología 3 (1985): 241-52.
Focuses on Chaucer's humor and irony in the love consummation scene in TC, and how he frames terminology as courtly love, while undermining the concept.
The Language of Prayer in Middle English, 1200-1400.
Tarvers, Josephine Koster.
Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1985. Dissertation Abstracts International A46.11. Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses; accessed August 18, 2025.
Identifies "nine components commonly found in prayers," exploring their presence in various devotional poems in Middle English and interpolated in narrative works by the "Gawain"-poet, Langland, Gower, and Chaucer, observing superior style in the…
Courtly Speech in Chaucer
Burnley, David.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 24 (1986): 16-38.
Discusses the sociomoral and aesthetic qualities that constitute courtly speech, including social attitude, voice quality, brevity, plainness of speech, and sensitivity and understanding. Based on passages spoken "curteisly" in Chaucer, Burnley's…
Criseyde Through the Boethian Glass
Sanyal, Jharna.
Journal of the Department of English (University of Calcutta) 22 (1986-87): 72-89.
Chaucer's portrayal of Criseyde had to remain true to Boccaccio's account of her as a betrayer of Troilus, both underlining and undercutting her traditional character and conveying Boethius's idea of the nature of "human felicite."
Spenser's 'Shepheardes Calendar' and Protestant Pastoral Satire
King, John N.
Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, ed. Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation. Harvard English Studies, no. 14 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 369-98.
Connects Spenser's "association of pastoral with a Protestant gospel ethos" in "Shepheardes Calendar" with the Renaissance construction of medieval anticlerical satire as proto-Protestant. The spurious attribution of the "Plowman's Tale" to Chaucer…
Dido, Emily, and Constance: Femininity and Subversion in the Mature Chaucer
Russell, J. Stephen.
Medieval Perspectives 1 (1988, for 1986): 65-74.
Chaucer's Dido, Emelye, and Custance differ from their respective literary ancestors. In each case, Chaucer gives to his heroine a significant speech or set of speeches that subverts the narrative in which she appears, counterpointing the dominant…
Reading the 'Pardoner's Tale'
Edden, Valerie.
Malcolm Coulthard, ed. Talking about Text. (Birmingham: English Language Research, 1986), pp. 61-74.
Analyzes how readers respond to PardT, using a theory of "narrative competence" that has its roots in transformational grammar.
Written City: A Literary Guide to Canterbury
Brown, Peter, Stuart Hutchinson, and Michael Irwin.
Canterbury: Yorick Books, 1990.
Contains sixteen short, illustrated chapters, thematically arranged and based on upwards of fifty authors from Bede to Virginia Woolf who wrote about Canterbury. "'The Holy Blisful Martyr'" covers Erasmus, Stanley, Tennyson, and T. S. Elliot, while…
Horoscopes and History
North, J. D.
London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1986.
Studies development (up to the 1500s) of seven modes of "domification"--i.e., the construction by mathematics of mundane houses used in horoscopes. Includes applications through the seventeenth century.
Doctors and Medicine in Medieval England, 1340-1530
Gottfried, Robert S.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.
A survey of the organization, theory, and practice of medicine and surgery from the Black Death until the founding of the Royal College of Physicians.
Chaucer's Handling of a Medieval Feminist Hierarchy
Lee, B. S.
UNISA English Studies 24:1 (1986): 1-6.
Augustine and Jerome influenced the medieval Church's use of hierarchy to evaluate a woman's spiritual standing. Chaucer, however, refuses to be bound by the limitations of theological stereotypes. He shows that women often neither choose nor get…
The Shrine of Little St. Hugh
Stocker, David.
T. A. Heslop and V. A. Sekules, eds. Medieval Art and Architecture at Lincoln Cathedral (London: British Archaeological Association, 1986 (for 1982)).
Stocker's is the first full publication on and attempted reconstruction of the shrine of the child invoked at the end of PrT. The shrine is associated with Edward I's royal propaganda.
The Double Role of Criseyde in Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'
Cook, Mary Joan,RSM.
Florilegium 8 (1986): 187-98.
"By developing an inner and outer Criseyde, by occasionally indicating a disparity between the two, by raising questions about her behaviour and usually acknowledging that he, the narrator, does not have the answers, (Chaucer) convinces the reader…
Unedited Poems from Cotton Titus A. XX with a Note on Chaucer's Sparrowhawk
Binkley, Peter.
Scintilla: A Student Journal for Medievalists 2-3 (1985-1986): 66-100.
Cotton Titus A. XX, an anthology of fourteenth-century Latin poems, contains no. 19, "Proprietaties multorum animalium et aliarorum," some antimedical satires and bestiary poems. One of the latter, a poem on the sparrowhawk, may be the source of the…
Le Roman De Thebes (The Story of Thebes.)
Coley, John Smartt, trans.
New York and London: Garland, 1986.
The first complete English translation of a work that influenced KnT and TC.
A Small Sound of the Trumpet: Women in Medieval Life
Labarge, Margaret Wade.
Boston: Beacon, 1986.
Despite repressive laws and the misogyny of clerical writers, it appears that wives, widows, religious women, mystics, townswomen, and peasant women had more control, respect, and influence than has been thought. Labarge presents the whole social…
Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity
Miller, James L.
Toronto and Buffalo, N. Y.: University of Toronto Press, 1986.
Looks at classical and early patristic views of the dance in "in bono" and "in malo" both as actual practice and as symbolism.
