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Gospel Asceticism: Some Chaucerian Images of Perfection
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,…
Anticlerical Satire as Theological Essay: Chaucer's 'Summoner's Tale'
Fleming, John V.
Thalia 6:1 (1983): 5-22.
In SumT, anticlerical polemic serves the religious argument of Chaucer's conservative faith. The caricature of the Friar is purposeful and schematic: the tale mocks his carnality and literalness and calls into question the administration of penance…
From Bonaventure to Bellini: An Essay in Franciscan Exegesis
Fleming, John V.
Princeton, N.J.:b Princeton University Press, 1982.
Examines the iconographic and literary traditions of Saint Francis.
Chaucer and the Visual Arts of His Time
Fleming, John V.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981): pp. 121-36.
Further enquiry can illuminate Chaucer's references and response to the visual arts, the artistic materials actually available to him, the applicability of artistic principles to his literary style, and the extent to and manner in which he…
Daun Piers and Dom Pier: Waterless Fish and Unholy Hunters
Fleming, John V.
Chaucer Review 15 (1981): 287-94.
For his portrait of the Monk in GP, Chaucer probably recalled Dante "Paradiso" 21.118-20, 127-35, an encomium of Peter Damian, and Damian's own words regarding "unholy hunters, cloisterless monks, and waterless fish." "Palfrey" may be an echo of…
Chaucer's Ascetical Images
Fleming, John V.
Christianity & Literature 28.4 (1979): 19-26.
Chaucer is the rule for vernacular poets rather than the exception. His appropriation of monastic patterns of thought and ascetic ideas and imagery were a tradition already becoming a classic in his time. In CT, the Summoner's portrait, the…
The 'Fides Interpres,' or From Horace to Pandarus
Fleming, John V.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Interpretation: Medieval and Modern (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 189-200.
The narrator's fidelity and infidelity to sources are a major theme of TC, reflecting a tradition of translation theory and practice that extends back to Horace and is heavily influenced by Boethius.
Sacred and Secular Exegesis in the Wyf of Bath's Tale
Fleming, John V.
Thomas Hahn and Alan Lupack, eds. Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Peck (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 73-90.
The sources for the Wife of Bath's performance as exegete--and the authorities she cites in her "Tale" (in particular Ovid,for the Midas story)--make clear that the underlying theme and conflict in WBPT concern "surface and substance, letter and…
Bernard, Chaucer, and the Literary Critique of the Military Class
Fleming, John V.
Susan J. Ridyard, ed. Chivalry, Knighthood, and War in the Middle Ages (Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South, 1999), pp. 137-50.
Details of the GP description of the Knight reflect the ascetic ideal of knighthood promoted by Bernard of Clairvaux in Liber ad milites templi. Chaucer's Knight is by no means a Templer, but the description harkens back to a related view, perhaps…
The Pentecosts of Four Poets
Fleming, John V.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp.301-24.
Explores the "iconographic vocabulary" of Pentecost and its affiliations in Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival," Dante's "Inferno," Lus de Cames's "Lusiads," and Chaucer's SumT. Chaucer's version combines details from verbal and pictorial traditions…
Muses of the Monastery
Fleming, John V.
Speculum 78: 1071-1106, 2003.
Discusses hostility toward fiction within ascetic cultures of the Middle Ages; brief references to ParsT, NPT, and MilT.
Madame Eglentyne: The Telling of the Beads
Fleming, John V.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 205-33.
The description of the Prioress's rosary exemplifies Chaucer's word play and his literary engagement with other writers, particularly Jean de Meun and Ovid. Fleming compares the Prioress's rosary with rosaries in medieval art and assesses the…
The Best Line in Ovid and the Worst
Fleming, John V.
Robert G. Benson and Susan J. Ridyard, eds. New Readings of Chaucer's Poetry (Rochester, N.Y., and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 51-74.
Fleming examines Chaucer's mixture of sacred and secular texts and illustrates how Chaucer's idea of the Wife of Bath grew from an amalgamation of Le Roman de la Rose, Ovid, and St. Jerome, particularly in WBP.
Criseyde's Poem: The Anxieties of the Classical Tradition
Fleming, John V.
Cindy L. Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. New Perspectives on Criseyde (Fairview, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004), pp. 277-98.
Against the backdrop of two of his own studies exploring the classical roots of TC, Fleming argues that Chaucer subverts gender stereotypes and the force of literary tradition as much as he can by giving Criseyde a measure of agency and by depicting…
Natura Lachrymosa
Fleming, John V.
Susan J. Ridyard and Robert G. Benson, eds. Man and Nature in the Middle Ages (Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South Press, 1995), pp. 19-35.
Assesses various medieval depictions of personified Nature lamenting human error, and comments on Prioress's "ambiguous" motto (Amor Vincit Omnia) as a "reordering" of the phrase "omnia vincit Amor" from Virgil's tenth "Eclogue," modified by the…
Geoffrey Chaucer: A Poet's Pilgrimage
Fleming, John V.
Sante Fe, N. M.: Della Robbia Productions, 1994.
Item not seen. WorldCat reports that it is "a brief introduction to the poet Chaucer and his times, and to the state of the English language (Middle English) in the late fourteenth century."
Some Traditions of Poetical Pathology in Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'
Fleming, John V.
Susan J. Ridyard, ed. Death, Sickness, and Health in Medieval Society (Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South, 2000), pp. 123-32.
Describes Chaucer's fusion of sources--Boccaccio, Boethius, the Bible, and Horace--in his presentation of Troilus' love as sickness and as analogous to the art of writing, focusing on Troilus' complaints and Pandarus' advice about letter-writing.
The Summoner's Prologue: An Iconographic Adjustment.
Fleming, John V.
Chaucer Review 2.2 (1967): 95-107.
Traces the iconographical motif of "Maria Misericordia" as it developed from its early roots into the satire of friars found in SumP. Originally found in treatise by Caesarius of Heisterbach, the motif was adapted by Dominican and Franciscan friars…
The Antifraternalism of the "Summoner's Tale."
Fleming, John V.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 65 (1966): 688-700.
Challenges arguments that seek to identify the friar of SumT with a specific fraternal order and adduces the Rules of various fraternal orders and commentaries on these Rules to show that "general antifraternal literature" underlies many details of…
Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986
Fleming, John V.,and Thomas J. Heffernan,eds.
Philadelphia, Pa. and Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987.
Papers presented at the Fifth International Congress of the New Chaucer Society, March 20-23, 1986, Philadelphia, Pa.
Chaucer's Squire, the "Roman de la Rose," and the "Romaunt."
Fleming, John.
Notes and Queries 212 (1967): 48-49.
Explores relations among details of the GP description of the Squire (CT 1.94-96), the "Roman de la Rose," and a passage from fragment B of the "Romaunt of the Rose," suggesting that Chaucer influenced the fragment and that the two passages derive…
Chaucer's "Syngeth Placebo" and the "Roman de Fauvel."
Fleming, John.
Notes and Queries 210 (1965): 17-18.
Suggests that the French "Somme le Roi" may be the ultimate source of the reference to "Placebo" in SumT 3.2075 and that "Roman de Fauvel" is a "more likely immediate source."
Chaucer's Clerk and John of Salisbury.
Fleming, John.
English Language Notes 2.1 (1964): 5-6.
Posits that John of Salisbury's "Policraticus" is the source of the closing comment of the GP description of the Clerk (GP 1.308); "gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche."
The "Figure" of Chaucer's Good Parson and a Reprimand by Grosseteste.
Fleming, John.
Notes and Queries 209 (1964): 167.
Offers the image of unholy clerics as rusted gold in Robert Grosseteste's "Epistolae" as a possible source of the use of the image by Chaucer's Parson in GP 1.500.
Chaucer's Prayers in the Dream Visions and the 'Canterbury Tales'
Fleming, Kevin Sean.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 4419A, 1999.
The pagan prayers of Chaucerian characters are granted twice as often as the Christian ones. Pagan deities function as poetic machinery; the Christian God, as source of divine truth. Throughout his oeuvre, the poet treats prayer in accordance with…
