Argues that the "citole" held in Venus's right hand in KnT 1.1959 evinces the influence of "the 'Ovidius moralizatus' of Petrus Berchorius (Pierre Bersuire)," and explores the possibilities of other influences on the depictions of Venus in KnT and in…
Argues that the image of the "citole" in KnT 1959, instead of a "concha" also found in traditional sources, contributes to the theme of "harmonious order" in the poem that is temporarily disrupted by the Venus/Mars strife.
Offers evidence that the "Ovidius Moralizatus" of Peter Bersuire (Petrus Berchorius) was the source of iconographical details associated with Venus in Chaucer's descriptions of the goddess in HF 131-39 and KnT 1.1955-66.
Crockett, Bryan.
David Chamberlain, ed. New Readings of Late Medieval Love Poems (Lanham, Md.; New York; and London: University Press of America, 1993), pp. 67-93.
Reads Lydgate's "Temple of Glas" as a "sustained, ironic treatment of frustrated love," citing the following as sources of details of the poem and influences on its formal techniques: "Roman de la Rose," HF, TC, PF, KnT, and MerT.
Lazarus, Alan J.
Larry D. Benson and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Wisdom of Poetry (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan University, 1982), pp. 145-49.
Plots the course of Venus astronomically to show the planet would have been clearly visible in the northwest in 1374, 1377, 1380, and 1382, and possibly in 1375 and 1379.
Both the Proem to TC 3 and PrP praise celestial ladies, celebrate their influence on the world, and relate closely to the story that is to follow. Moreover, the works discuss the same topics in similar ways. Chaucer praises both physical and…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Chaucer Review 14 (1980): 313-18.
J. E. Hankins' view of the "Pervigilium Veneris" as a source for PF has not caught on because no one has yet found a persuasive verbal echo. Such an echo appears in the list of persons love has destroyed: PF, 286-92 has a counterpart in…
The artist of the Fairfax frontispiece manipulates similarities between traditional depictions of Venus "rising from the sea" (anadyomene) and Christ in baptism. The visual echoes express a form of "Christian skepticism" that parallels questions…
Matlock, Wendy A.
Chaucer Review 55, no. 4 (2020): 462-83.
Positions Mel and ManT as "vivid examples of Chaucer's polyphonic authority that highlight the rich network of gendered speech constituting his mature voice." Argues that Chaucer's ventriloquized women in Mel and ManT translate continental sources…
Analyzes the grotesque Bahktinian realism of inversions and bodily functions in medieval narratives; includes comments on the "prayer-belch" and farting in SumT and on ass-kissing and farting in MilT, compared and contrasted with analogous materials.
Bardsley, Sandy.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
Includes brief discussion of the Wife of Bath's claim that verbal disorder is the special preserve of women; in this way, the Wife shares important parallels with the unruly wife of Noah in the Chester and York Flood plays.
Considers the "floral atmosphere" of the House of Rumor in HF and sees it as a "place of production [that] appears as entwining, encircling vegetation."
Employs the metaphor of the vegetable to examine a variety of poetic works, emphasizing "metamorphic natural processes, and thus the dissolution of boundaries between states of being." Considers CT as an example, focusing on complicated, entertwined…
Pugh discusses the value of "vectored" writing assignments for undergraduate analyses of "multigeneric" texts, focusing on TC. "Vectored analysis"--defined here as the "examination of a text from at least two converging yet separate…
Smith-Laing, Tim.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Oxford University, 2014. Dissertation Abstracts International C74.06. Fully accessible via https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0f4305c6-3c62-4f89-a3b2-d8204893fdfb (accessed March 13, 2026).
Focuses on the "complex textual contingency" of the figure of Theseus in the "history of mythographical discourse," exploring "the fragmentary, fluid and polymorphous nature of mythology" in a wide variety of medieval and early modern texts--English,…
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…
Benson, C. David.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986. (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987): pp. 159-67.
Chaucer experiments with "different aesthetic and doctrinal possibilities" in his religious tales, which, "far from being dull and dutiful," demonstrate his literary virtuosity. Though MLT and ClT tell similar stories, MLT is a religious romance…
Knapp, Peggy A.
Chaucer Yearbook 1 (1992): 157-75.
Curry's and Robertson's critical efforts seek to disclose stable, authoritative meaning; they reflect the hermeneutics of Hirsch, concerned with finding valid interpretation. The efforts of Aers and Patterson reflect Gadamer's reconstruction of…
Three types of secret love can be found in TC and CT--KnT, MilT, RvT, MerT, FranT, ShT. The first type concentrates on secret feelings; the second, on illicit relations. The third, found particularly in TC, is distinct in that the story "follows…
Ohno, Hideshi.
Yoshiyuki Nakao and Yoko Iyeiri, eds. Chaucer's Language: Cognitive Perspectives (Suita: Osaka, 2013), pp. 79-98.
Assesses the significance of variant readings of think ("thinken" or "thenken") in SumT, line 2204, from several linguistic points of view, and emphasizes the semantic and syntactical differences between the impersonal and personal constructions.
Pearsall, Derek.
Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson, eds. Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013), pp. 197-205.
Looks at distinction between "scribal variation" and "authorial revision" in medieval texts. Includes specific discussion of CT and TC.
Johnston, Andrew James.
Regina Toepfer, ed. Tragik und Minne (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2017), pp. 207-24.
Explores tragic fate and the genre of tragedy in TC, arguing that the "double sorwe" of the opening of the poem (I.1) anticipates the "tragedye" mentioned at the end (V.1786) and that each applies to Criseyde as well as to Troilus. Includes…
Vila de la Cruz, Maria Purificacion.
Margarita Gimenez Bon and Vickie Olsen, eds. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Dpto. Filologia Inglesa, 1997), pp. 275-84.
Discusses the women in CT as emotional and intellectual reflections of male characters.
