Corman, Catherine Talmage.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1986): 173A.
Drawing on sources in rhetoric and preaching, Chaucer saw rhetoric "not merely as a collection of stylistic figures, but as a process defined by the interaction between a speaker, his words,...and the audience." He made the audience "active…
Crane, Susan.
Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1986.
Argues that romances produced in England, whether in Anglo-Norman or Middle English, share a consistent series of concerns that distinguishes them from French romances.
Delasanta, Rodney (K.)
Mediaevalia 9 (1986, for 1983): 145-63.
Chaucer's narrative style--describing a host of particulars in minute detail--was influenced by nominalist denial of the ontological existence of universals. But Chaucer's preoccupation with Boethian themes indicates a continuing interest in more…
Desmond, Marilynn Robin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1986): 2687A-2688A.
Studies medieval assumptions about and deformations of Virgil's "Aeneid." Chapter 3 presents the "self-conscious ironic" version of the Dido story in LGW; chapter 4, Chaucer's assumptions about the "Aeneid" in HF. Notes on Chretien, Caxton,…
Erzgräber, Willi.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Intellectuals and Writers in Fourteenth-Century Europe (Tubingen: Narr; Cambridge: Brewer, 1986), pp. 67-87.
Traces the theme of authority versus experience through BD, HF, TC, LGW, WBP, ParsT, and Ret.
Haas, Renate.
Julian N. Wasserman and Robert J. Blanch, eds. Chaucer in the Eighties (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 23-37.
Studies Chaucer's clever exploitation of the ambiguities between the laments of the lover and the mourner and his manipulation of traditional didactic patterns containing laments for the dead in Pity, BD, SqT, LGW (Thisbe), MLT, PhyT, ManT, TC, and…
Hardman, Phillipa.
Review of English Studies 37 (1986): 478-94.
Studies Chaucer's sources, invocations to, and use of the muses in Anel, HF, TC, and CT. The use in CT is humorous. In HF, the muses are a "metaphorical model" for the "art poetical." In TC, muses chart the changing attitudes of the narrator.
Higuchi, Masayuki.
Eigo Seinen (Tokyo) 132.7 (1986): 329-31.
Explores the notion of "comedy" in the Middle Ages, which is based on the idea of the goddess Fortuna, and argues that the comedy Chaucer refers to at the end of TC was realized in NPT.
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson, eds. Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 92-114.
Reviews scholarship and corrects mistaken assumptions about medieval tragedy. The first vernacular writer in Europe to consider himself a tragedian, Chaucer was anticipated by several Latin writers but drew mainly from Boethius. The tragic falls in…
Sees Chaucer's world in the midst of change from feudalism to mercantilism. Threats to society represented by dream visions must yet be integrated into the rational structure. The CT pilgrimage is a Peasant's Revolt in reverse. Knight takes a…
Kratzmann, Gregory,and James Simpson,eds.
Cambridg : D. S. Brewer, 1986.
Nineteen essays by various hands emphasizing religious and ethical change and focusing on Chaucer's religious poetry and "Piers Plowman" but including religious writings in the Old English period and the sixteenth century.
Krochalis, Jeanne E.
Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 234-45.
Hoccleve's request for a portrait (supplied in the Harley 4866 MS of "The Regement of Princes") is something new: the author's likenesses had heretofore been stylized. Hoccleve's lines (4992-5012) place Chaucer in a holy or ecclesiastical setting. …
Mann, Jill.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 75-92.
Chaucer painstakingly "alerts" his sources in Boethius and Boccaccio to "emphasize the role of chance in the events of the narrative." Mann explores relationships among chance, "necessitee," and free will in TC and KnT.
McSparran, Frances, ed.
London: Oxford University Press, 1986.
This edition of the northern version of the Middle English romance "Octovian" complements the editor's earlier edition of the southern version in the MET series (Heidelberg, 1979) and includes a full introduction, apparatus, notes, and glossary. The…
Mehl, Dieter.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 213-26.
The Chaucerian narrator "directs our responses and controls the narrative situation" but does not give definite answers. The narrators of BD, HF, PF, and LGW are not necessarily representative of Chaucer himself. The ever-present narrator of TC…
Mehl, Dieter.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
A revised, expanded translation of "Geoffrey Chaucer: Eine Einfuhrung in seine erzahlenden Dichtungen" (1973), with studies on BD, PF, HF, and CT; an updated bibliography; and an added chapter on LGW.
Miller, Jacqueline T.
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Investigates the "interaction between literary authority and authorship" and "how writers negotiate the related demands for creative autonomy and authoritative sanction." The dream vision is a form "generated by the poet's search for but failure to…
Moi, Toril.
David Aers, ed. Medieval Literature (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp. 11-33.
Reviews controversy (important in TC studies) on courtly love in Robertson, Donaldson, and Benton; naive "reflectionism" is attacked by Marxist theorists. In "De amore," desire is a hermeneutical challenge: "God for Andreas, like death for Lacan,…
Murphy, Michael.
Mediaevalia 9 (1986, for 1983): 205-23.
Argues that if we read CT aloud we should generally do so in our own dialects rather than in "Semblance," the reconstructed version of the fourteenth-century English dialect of the Southeast Midlands.
Njoku, Benedict C.
Thomas Halton, ed., and Joseph P. Williman, ed. and pref. Diakonia: Studies in Honor of Robert T. Meyer (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986), pp. 302-307.
Derivations of words in Chaucer referring to saintliness and morality.
Although technically a "second edition," Payne's "Geoffrey Chaucer" is essentially a new book, having little in common with the first Twayne Chaucer, written by Edwin J. Howard and published in 1964. Payne's seven chapters treat Chaucer's life,…
