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The End of an Adventure: 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' and Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'
Haruta, Setsuko.
Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds. Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 353-60.
Chaucer, in TC, and the Gawain poet "understate" the prowess of their heroes and emphasize the negative aspects of courtly love. The heroes fail to realize their chivalric ideals--Troilus, because he is vulnerable to Criseyde's inconstancy; and…
Criseyde's Honor: Interiority and Public Identity in Chaucer's Courtly Romance
Collette, Carolyn P.
Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds. Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 47-55.
Criseyde's status as a widow and her self-conscious concern with her "honour" and "estat" help characterize her as someone "concerned with maintaining herself and her household as independent units." Her inconstancy is a rational response to her…
The Position of Widows in the Later Fourteenth-Century English Community and the Wife of Bath's Prologue
McCarthy, Conor.
Donald Mowbray, Rhiannon Purdie, and Ian P. Wei, eds. Authority & Community in the Middle Ages (Phoenix Mill, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1999), pp. 101-15.
Because they were not subject to fathers or husbands, widows posed a challenge to dominant views of women in late fourteenth-century England. Chaucer's Wife of Bath is portrayed as lecherous, yet she may also embody broader concerns about widowhood.
'Inviolable Voice': Philomela and Procne in Dante's 'Purgatorio' and Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'
Lutton, Jeannette Hume.
Donald Palumbo, ed. Spectrum of the Fantastic (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1988), pp. 3-19.
Drawing on the myth of Proche and Philomela, Dante uses birds to symbolize night and day, while Chaucer uses them to symbolize the love of Troilus and Criseyde. Both writers invoke images from the myth to represent love-gone-wrong.
The Hidden Life of the Friars: The Mendicant Orders in the Work of Walter Hilton, William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Their Literary World.
Bart, Patricia R.
Donald Prudlo, ed. The Origin, Development, and Refinement of Medieval Religious Mendicancies (Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2011), pp. 307-34.
Comments on the presence and treatments of friars in three Middle English writers, including discussion of Chaucer's depictions of friars and the Friar in CT and his uses of anti-mendicant literature as source material.
King Ælle and the Conversion of the English : The Development of a Legend from Bede to Chaucer
Frankis, John.
Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg, eds. Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, no. 29. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 74-92.
Frankis compares how Chaucer's MLT and Gower's "Tale of Constance" diminish Trevet's historiographical concern with Anglo-Saxon England. From the time of Bede, Aelle was associated with the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, a motif retained by…
The Errors of Good Men: 'Hamartia' in Two Middle English Poems
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Donald V. Stump and others, eds. Hamartia: The Concept of Error in the Western Tradition: Essays in Honor of John M. Crossett. Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 16 (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1983), pp. 171-91.
Chaucer's treatment of Troilus, the good man flawed by error, is compared to the treatment of Gawain in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," with a source study of the "Poetics" of Aristotle and "De consolatione philosophiae" of Boethius.
Specularita e parodia: La mise en abyme' nel 'Nun's Priest's Tale' di Chaucer
D'Agata D'Ottavi, Stefania.
Donatello Izzo, ed. Il racconto allo specchio: 'Mise en abyme' tradizione narrative. Testi & Studi, no. 2 (Rome: Nuova Arnica, 1990), pp. 37-66.
Surveys medieval literary uses of "mise en abyme" and assesses how the interpolated tales of NPT break up the linear narrative and produce a "mise en abyme" effect. The contrasting structures of NPT and MkT parallel the contrast between text and…
Satura : Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Robert R. Raymo
Reale, Nancy M., and Ruth E. Sternglantz, eds.
Donington : Shaun Tyas, 2001.
Fourteen literary studies that range across Old English, Old French, Anglo-Latin, Middle English, and medieval Irish, Spanish, and Italian. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Satura under Alternative Title.
Issues for a New History of English Prosody
Cable, Thomas.
Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell, eds. Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 125-51.
Surveys twentieth-century developments in describing and analyzing the prosody of early English poetry, summarizing and assessing the views of Wimsatt and Beardsley, Halle and Keyser, Kiparsky, and others on meter, stress, ictus and their relations.…
Chaucer: Folk Poet or Littrateur?
Youmans, Gilbert, and Xingzhong Li.
Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell, eds. Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 153-75.
Argues that Chaucer's decasyllabic lines are based on metrically significant, statistically normative feet, with clear and significant caesuras. Chaucer's and Shakespeare's iambic lines deviate from prototypical lines in similar ways. See Thomas…
A Rejoinder to Youmans and Li
Cable, Thomas.
Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell, eds. Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 177-82.
Critiques Youmans and Li's assessment of Chaucer's verse (in this same volume, pp. 153-75), urging metricists to avoid "importing phonological analyses" into theory of meter.
Emendation and the Chaucerian Metrical Template
Minkova, Donka, and Robert Stockwell.
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. 129-39.
Of roughly 30,000 lines of Chaucer's iambic pentameter, only a tiny subset are variant. The majority of his lines follow a template of ten syllables, each foot beginning with a weak syllable. The essay refers specifically to FranT.
A Franciscan Reads the 'Facetus'
Olson, Glending.
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. 143-55.
Olson examines Gerard of Odo's "Facetus, multa documenta," a commentary on Aristotle's "Nichomachean Ethics," as background to the Prioress's description in GP. The Franciscan commentary may indicate that the courtliness of the description is more…
The Imagined Chaucerian Community of Bodleian MS Fairfax 16
Tinkle, Theresa.
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. 157-74.
The treatment of Cupid in the various works of Bodleian MS Fairfax 16 reveals a cultural transition from the Gallic tradition of the supremacy of love-and from the Latinate tradition of the supremacy of religion-to a new English poetic tradition.…
The Disappointments of Criseyde
Condren, Edward I.
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. 195-204.
In TC, Criseyde's appeals to Hector for clarification of her status in Troy suggest that Criseyde seeks a romantic response from Hector rather than the official response she receives. This disappointment acts as a catalyst for future behavior in the…
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 Cook, the Miller, and Alimentary Hell
Brosamer, Matthew.
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. 235-51.
Brosamer investigates hell-mouth imagery in PardT, MLT, and LGWP, drawing upon a number of sources, especially De miseria condicionis humane by Pope Innocent III. The corruption of sin has an alimentary dimension, from ingestion to defecation.
The Shipman's Tale: Merchant's Time and Church's Time, Secular and Sacred Space
Jager, Eric.
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. 253-60.
Jager draws upon commentary by Jacques Le Goff and Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum regarding how time was measured in the late Middle Ages. He argues that ShT indicates how merchant time, space, and values triumph over those of the Church, because of an…
Looking at the Sun in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde
Kolve, V. A.
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. 31-71.
Kolve investigates the iconic importance of Criseyde's dream of the eagle and Troilus's dream of the boar and their embedded affiliations with the sun. In TC, these images illustrate the gap in the worth of two men and underscore the poor choice…
Mary Shelley, Godwin's Chaucer, and the Middle Ages
Ganim, John.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York: Lang, 2003), pp. 175-89.
Ganim argues that Mary Shelley was influenced by her father, William Godwin, who wrote "Life of Chaucer" and from whom she learned a dual attitude toward the Middle Ages: people are shaped by historical circumstances, and they must seek to rise above…
Die Lust am Widersinn: Chaos und Komik in der mittelalterlichen Kurzerzahlung
Haug, Walter.
Dorothee Lindemann, Berndt Volkmann, and Klaus-Peter Wegera, eds. "Bickelwort" und "wildiu maere": Festschrift fur Eberhard Nellmann zum 65. Geburstag (Goppingen: Kummerle, 1995), pp. 354-65.
Compares RvT with its analogue in Boccaccio's "Decameron" and with the Middle High German "Studentenabenteuer," exploring their concerns with disorder and its effects.
Patristic Exegesis in the Criticism of Medieval Literature: The Opposition.
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 1-26.
Challenges patristic criticism for its claim that medieval literature is univocally concerned with asserting Christian "caritas" allegorically, arguing instead that poetry has a right to "say what it means and mean what it says." Illustrates the…
Classical Fable and English Poetry in the Fourteenth Century.
Green, Richard Hamilton.
Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 110-33.
Summarizes theories and meanings of conventional mythographic images and allusions in medieval literature, derived from classical fables and allegorized in late-classical and medieval commentaries on such fables. Includes comments on the allusion to…
Chaucer and Dante.
Schless, Howard.
Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 132-54.
Advocates a "contextual" approach to source study, arguing that several discussions of Dante's influence on Chaucer depend upon weak correspondences, better treated as shared tradition than direct influence. Discusses the lists of lovers in PF and…
