Milward, Peter, Hideo Okamoto, and Takao Suzuki.
Tokyo: Kaibunsha, 1973.
Item not seen. WorldCat record indicates that this includes English commentary by Milward on GP (and other works of English literature), with notes in Japanese by Okamoto and Suzuki.
Outlines medieval number theory and its applications to literary composition and interpretation, describing the significances of seven and five. Then explores how and where numerological significance is evident in TC: in its five-part structure,…
Hussey, S. S.
Modern Language Review 67 (1972): 721-29.
Treats various features of book 5 of TC (lack of proem, several amplifications, various sources) as "apparently gratuitous or insufficiently integrated matter," evidence that Chaucer intended to write his poem in four books but found that he needed a…
Fisher, John H.
Modern Language Review 67 (1972): 241-51.
Argues that parts 1-5 of CT represent a "wholesale revision that Chaucer was engaged in at the time of his death," while parts 6-10 "represent an earlier stage of composition." Suggests that Chaucer "introduced dramatic interplay between narrator,…
Identifies analogues to the Wife of Bath's contrast between wheat and barley breads (WBP 3.143-44), arguing that she has herself baked "Priapic" barley loaves and that the description in its context exemplifies the combination of "exegetical and…
Demonstrates Chaucer's "skills as a miniaturist," discussing antecedents in rhetorical tradition to the phrase "places delitables" (i.e., "locus amoenus") in FranT (5.899) and the interdependence of "moral and physical gifts" in the description of…
Kellogg, Alfred L.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 276-329.
Reads Boccaccio's, Petrarch's and Chaucer's versions of the tale of Griselda, observing particular emphases, similarities, and differences, especially those that pertain to Griselda in relation to the ideal of the "mulier fortis" of Proverbs 31.10 in…
Kellogg, Arthur L., and Robert C. Cox.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 155-98.
Discusses Chaucer's three references to May 3 as an ambivalent "destinal date," arging that the date is affiliated with tragic fortune in TC, with humanistic outlook in KnT, and with comic reversal in NPT. This sequence comprises a "kind of limited…
Kellogg, Arthur L., and Robert C. Cox.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 108-45.
Describes the backgrounds to Chaucer's reference to St. Valentine in PF (line 309) and explores its contemporaneous contexts in the poetry of Oton de Grandson and Charles d'Orléans. Rooted in Roman Lupercalia seasonal rites of purification and…
Kellogg, Alfred L.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 59-107.
Examines the occasion, structure, and humor of BD, its possible reflections of Chaucer's marriage to Philippa, and the legacy of its heart imagery that derives from Platonic and Arabic thought (Averroes and Ibn Hazm) and the courtly love tradition. …
Kellogg, Alfred L.
New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972.
Collects twenty essays by Kellogg (five co-authored), several of them reprinted. Fourteen of the essays pertain to Chaucer, with four of them printed here for the first time. Includes a subject index. For the new essays that pertain to Chaucer,…
Steadman, John M.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
Studies the "flight episode," Troilus's laughter, and the location of the eighth sphere in TC "against the background of the apotheosis tradition [Lucan, Cicero, Dante, Boccaccio, and various commentaries] and the conventions of classical…
Ando, Shinsuke.
Earl Miner, ed. English Criticism in Japan: Essays by Younger Japanese Scholars on English and American Literature (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1972), pp. 3-18.
Comments on Chaucer's formal descriptions of women in Rom, BD, RvT, and MilT, focusing on his uses of rhetorical conventions, Continental models, and native English alliterative phrases and vocabulary.
Frank, Robert Worth Jr.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Evaluates LGW as a series of brief narrative poems, assessing LGWP as an account of Chaucer's experiment with choosing a new subject matter for poetry (one that is "essentially alien to the code of courtly love") and gauging the importance of the…
Burjorjee, D. M.
Annuale Mediaevale 13 (1972): 14-31.
Surveys nautical imagery and pilgrimage-on-the-sea-of-life metaphors in the sources to TC, and discusses book by book Chaucer's uses of such figures in his poem, especially the sailing heart image, arguing that the varieties of imagery cohere to…
Wimsatt, James I.
Mediaeval Studies 34 (1972): 388-400.
Summarizes similarities between BD and Jean Froissart's "Dit dou Bleu Chevalier," and argues that Froissart imitated Chaucer's poem, commenting on the occasions of the poems and their relative chronology, narrative and linguistics details, and the…
Smith, James.
Essays in Criticism 22 (1972): 4-32.
Focuses on close analysis of words and details in GP description of the Knight ("worthy") and in KnT ("erthely," 1.1166) to argue that Arcite is a morally flawed lover, Theseus is an "anti-hero," and the Knight pompous--especially when read in light…
Schleiner, Winfried.
Comparative Literature Studies 9 (1972): 365-75.
Argues that the theme of testing female patience, found in ClT, Chretien's "Erec and Enide," and Robert Greene's "Friar Bacon and Friar Bongay," "demonstrates the interdependence of traditional motif, aesthetic sensibility, and societal structure."…
Rutherford, Charles S.
Annuale Mediaevale 13 (1972): 5-13.
Characterizes Pandarus as "a public figure, a chameleon, a consummate actor" who plays various roles, including that of "unrequited lover." His unusual moment of private lovesickness at the beginning of Book 2 is Chaucer's device for underscoring the…
Rowland, Beryl
Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 209 (1972): 273-82.
Studies details, allusions, and shifts in speech patterns in WBP, especially those connected with the Wife's false dream of blood and the "tantalizing ambiguous" circumstances of the death of Wife's fourth husband, arguing that they indicate a…
Peeters, L[eopold].
Amsterdammer Beitrage zur Alteren Germanistik 3 (1973): 25-65.
Provides context for the allusion to "Wades boot" in MerT (4.1423), observing in a thirteenth-century Latin homily on humility connections between Wade and Hildebrand, both Germanic heroes, and further associations with the Irish St. Brendan.…
Gauges the implications of the wide range of musical images in GP, exploring the exegetical roots of Chaucer's uses of these images, and assessing concord, discord, and silence as indicators of moral approval or censure. Chaucer's uses are not…
Haymes, Edward R.
South Atlantic Review 37.04 (1972): 35-43.
Affirms Chaucer's familiarity with native English romances by identifying a number of formulaic phrases (some of them oral remnants) that recur in native romances and in a variety of Chaucer's works. Includes comments on Thop as evidence of Chaucer's…