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…
Bolton, W. F.
Modern Philology 84 (1987): 401-407.
Yearbook law reports and plea-roll law records contain information about members of Chaucer's "legal 'circle'" (p. 402) and Thomas Pynchbeck, Chaucer's prototype for the Man of Law. Legal terminology from these sources informs the portrait in both…
Galled by clerical antifeminism (woman is weak and hence evil), the power-obsessed Alison turns for her tale to courtly romance (woman is weak and hence good). Thus, ultimately she subverts the conventions of estates, gender, and genre, proving…
Delany, Sheila.
Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts 15 (1987): 27-35.
By omitting details about the Wife's experiences of work and travel, Chaucer deliberately reduces her complexity. His failure to express her social or psychological reality results from his own experience and desires mediated by gender, social…
"Alys" and its diminutive "Alisoun" have interesting reverberations. The rhyme "Alys"/"talys" may link the Wife with "tales" and have a pun indicating love of drink. "Alisoun" may be a covert pun on "eleison." The popularity of the name Alys is…
Knapp, Peggy A.
Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, eds. Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 142-57.
Arguments against patristic readings in WBP pose the "problem of controlling biblical interpretation in an age of increasing lay literacy." The Wife speaks of herself as "a text to be glossed."
Wurtele, Douglas J.
Arthurian Interpretations 2 (1987): 47-61.
An examination of three analogues--"The Marriage of Sir Gawaine," "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell," and Gower's "Tale of Florent"--illuminates Chaucer's handling of Arthurian motifs such as the lady's transformation and the issue of…
Allen, David G.
Studies in Short Fiction 24 (1987): 1-8.
In SumT 1851-53, the Friar smoothly transforms the mother's concern for her own dead child into his own self-aggrandizement. Hints of the son's death appear throughout SumT to reinforce the Friar's failure with Thomas.
Green, Richard Firth.
English Language Notes 24:4 (1987): 24-27.
A late-fifteenth-century French collection of riddles (Musee Conde Bibliotheque MS 654) may point to an origin of SumT in a familiar riddle rather than in the iconography of Pentecost.
Boucher, Holly Wallace.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1987): 921A.
These two post-Ockham works treat absolute truth as unknowable and explore language and its manipulation, especially in their different renderings of the Griselda story.
Brent, Harry.
Phillip C. Boardman, ed., and Robert Gorrell, pref. The Legacy of Language: A Tribute to Charlton Laird (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1987), pp. 1-19.
At a memorial conference for Charlton Laird, a former student pays tribute to the late medievalist and Chaucer scholar.
Ellis, Deborah S.
College English 49 (1987): 188-201.
Most of the major elements of plot and theme in ClT reappear in Alice Walker's novel of 1982. The heroines of each, Griselda and Celie, passively accept male domination and tyranny but finally achieve reconciliation.
Ellis, Deborah S.
Carole Levin and Jeanie Watson, eds. Ambiguous Realities (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1987), pp. 99-113.
Associations of the home and domestic situation with "ambiguity, insecurity, and women's vulnerability" are most effective in TC and ClT. In the medieval home, the hall was the domain of the male and open to public affairs; the chamber was the…
Though the "Envoy" is in Chaucer's late, masterly style, there is no need to equate the two voices (Chaucer's, the Clerk's). The "carnival" tone of the lines (in M. M. Bakhtin's sense) is appropriate to the Clerk in his "playful, ironic student"…
Swan, Marjorie E.
English Studies in Canada 13 (1987): 136-46.
In telling his tale, the Clerk gradually abandons his allegorical refutation of the Wife's view of marriage by becoming more critical of Walter and more sympathetic to the human plight of Griselda, whom he comes to regard as an embodiment of natural…
Nelles, William.
John Deely and Jonathan Evans, eds. Semiotics 1986 (Lanham, New York, and London: University Press of America, 1987), pp. 15-23.
Reviews interpretations of MerT. To use Genette's terminology, the Merchant as teller is an "intradiegetic" narrator among other narrators--extradiegetic (Chaucer the pilgrim), hypodiegetic (Justinus, Pluto), hypo-hypodiagetic (Solomon)--whose…
Stock applies semiotic theory to MerT: the reason-passion motif in May's stepping on January's back to climb the pear tree; the cough, the garden, and the May-Mary association; the serpent-Damien; the January-creator. The tale's verbal "signes"…
When January shaves for his wedding night, he only makes himself like a "houndfyssh." Earlier, he would join "Oold fissh and yong flessh" (line 1418)--but with himself in the role of a sexually satisfying "pyk," not a disgusting dogfish. The…
Excavations in 1919-21 reveal that Sarai, in the Volga region of southeastern Russia, was an exotic metropolis combining Byzantine and Mongolian splendor. Its artisans produced rings and mirrors, and its Mongol warriors covered their horses with…
