Benson, C. David.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 93-108.
The characters in CT are neither fully developed nor consistent; tellers and their tales are loosely connected. Thus, Kittredge's "dramatic theory" is limited: it leads readers to focus on personalities of the pilgrims rather than on Chaucer's…
Benson, C. David.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Despite the tenets of "dramatic theory" from Kittredge to modern times, the links between the pilgrims and their tales are not reliable bases on which to build valid literary criticism. Not the psyches of the pilgrims but the different styles of the…
Braswell, Laurel.
Julian N. Wasserman and Robert J. Blanch, eds. Chaucer in the Eighties (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 209-21.
In SNT and PrT, hagiography is used in an orthodox form, while in MLT and ClT, the devices of hagiography are used to amplify the moral character of secular tales. Hagiographic devices indicate that these tales are serious, not satire.
Burnley, J. D.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 195-218.
Chaucer's characters are not psychologically consistent but (like the Host, or Pardoner) are illusions based on familiar voices and attitudes to engage the audience in moral concerns, as in MerT, PardT.
Burrow, J. A.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 109-24.
Discusses the five "romances" in CT. WBT, ostensibly an Arthurian romance, is actually a "fairy tale, told by a woman and dominated by women"; Th is an "outright burlesque" of contemporary English roamnces; SqT, unfinished, does not offer the…
Cook, Jon.
David Aers, ed. Medieval Literature (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp. 169-91.
CT shows extensive evidence of "Carnival" (Bakhtin) influence. GP, Miller, and Host show evidence of the carnivalesque approach to life. The clerk, on the other hand, reasserts "official values." CT offers the first English model of secular and…
A comparison, not a source study, which discovers parallel attitudes toward style, character, and tradition, especially on the role of humor in "Ulysess" and CT.
Curtis, Penelope.
Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson, eds. Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 128-45.
An "earthscape of renewals and pilgrimages," CT is chiefly incarnational and pluralistic, with four exceptions. As pious tales with separate value structures and terms of reference differing from the GP principle of "purifying, abstracting and…
Elliott, Ralph W. V.
Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson, eds. Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 146-55.
Analyzes clerical speech habits in Chaucer's GP "ars descriptionis personae"; affective tone in PrT, SNP, SNT, MkT, and ClT; and, where appropriate, the connection with the stately rhyme-royal stanza--with contrasts to language, verse styles, and…
Treats problems of authority and artistic originality encountered by the medieval narrator of a religious story, and the solutions in CT. Parallels between translating and producing the narrative appear in ClT, SNT, PrT, and Mel; subversion of the…
Frank, Robert Worth,Jr.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 143-58.
Although Chaucer's "tales of pathos"--MLT, ClT, PhyT, PrT, and MkT--do not constitute a genre, they share characteristics: lack of comedy, absence of irony, little complexity, abstract settings, and characters "motivated by a single virtue." Each…
Glover, Kyle Stephen.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1986): 3346A-3347A.
Covenants, a pervasive theme in CT, may bind guest and host, ruler and subject, spouses, kin, or God and humanity. The covenant supports a willingly assumed hierarchy, a model for order; yet these bonds may be reversed.
Green, Donald C.
Modern Philology 84 (1986): 18-23.
Distinguishes among "maistrie," "soveraynetee," "servage," "servyse," "governance," and "assente" in CT. These words thematically link WBT and ClT: individually defined relationships are signaled by "maistrie" and "servyse"; role-defined…
Halliburton, Thomas Laughlin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1986): 3027A.
In attempting to make of literary criticism a science, the profession falls into illogic and absurdity. Readings of KnT and MerT differ wildly. From Kittredge to 1980s, critics have been self-deluded.
Kamowski, William.
Julian N. Wasserman and Robert J. Blanch, eds. Chaucer in the Eighties (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 193-207.
CT entails two levels of reader response: the fictional listeners on the road to Canterbury and the reader audience. The reactions of the pilgrims warn the reader not to misinterpret the tales by responding to them uncritically, as many of the…
Knight, Stephen.
Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson, eds. Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 156-66.
As early as the fifteenth century, two views of CT prevailed: (1) the entire CT is a religious work, and (2) only ClT, PrT, MLT, MkT, ParsT, and SNT are religious. In arguing the first position, Knight addresses difficulties arising from the Hengwrt…
Lomperis, Linda Susan.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1986): 2688A.
CT is read as an experiment in allegory in the sense of Isidore of Seville's "alieniloquium." The School of Chartres, the "Cosmographia" of Bernardus Silvestris, and Guillaume de Lorris contribute to the techniques of tension between rhetoric and…
Olson, Paul.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.
CT reflects the social, political, economic, and intellectual milieu of the late fourteenth century: the tales arise from Chaucer's deep concern about contemporary crises and his conviction that the "parlement"--all levels of society engaged in…
Owen, Charles A.,Jr.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 179-94.
Portraying himself as a participant in a supposedly actual pilgrimage, Chaucer freed his characters from his control and avoided predetermining the meaning of their tales.
Pearcy, Roy J.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 329-84.
The comic, satiric, and philosophic sophistication in Chaucer's narratives has no precedent in the fabliaux, but there are models in twelfth-century Latin comedy--notably for MilT (Geta) and MerT (Lidia). Also discusses the theories of Northrop…
Pearsall, Derek.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 125-42.
Treats setting, tone, and structure of the six comedies in CT: MilT, RvT, ShT, MerT, FrT, and SumT. Discusses the first four as fabliaux, the last two as "masterpieces of satirical anecdote" that do not deal with sex and marriage.
Rogers, William E.
Victoria: University of Victoria, 1986.
Manuscript evidence is inconclusive in discovering Chaucer's intention or the coherence and unity of CT. Chapter 2 reacts to D. Howard, "The Idea of the 'Canterbury Tales'," in the concern for genre, text, and reader.
In CT, sentences are interlinked. Structures are repeated: MilT is a bawdy version of KnT; RvT, a nasty version of MilT. The structure may reflect interlinked concepts in the Great Chain of Being.
In WBT, PardT, and NPT, Chaucer exploits many facets of medieval dream and fable lore, including the ambiguous situation of a dream within a fiction and the Augustinian motif of the liar who tells the truth in order to deceive. Shakespeare pushes…
