Chaucer makes his commentary on alchemy by presenting the Yeoman as a simple, plain man. While in most of his works the poet inserts an absolute point of view, here he looks at the physical world from a physical point of view.
The disjuncture between the confessional (yet not moral) part 1 and the fabliau-like part 2 of CYT derives in part from the essential split between the futile effort toward production in part 1 and the nonproductive but successful cheating of part 2.…
Allen, Mark.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 77-96.
Wrongly used speech and counsels to silence in ManT should be read in terms of fourteenth-century Lenten sermons indicating the necessity of speech for the sacrament of penance. Like SNT and CYT, ManT with its emphasis on transformation prepares…
McGavin, John J.
Chaucer Review 21 (1987): 444-58.
In ManT, Chaucer gives us no information about the crow's personality, motives, or style. He and the Manciple have paradigmatic significance as users of speech and tellers. However, the poet does focus on the narratorial personality of the…
Ovitt, George,Jr.
Mark Amsler, ed. Creativity and the Imagination: Case Studies from the Classical Age to the Twentieth Century (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987): pp. 34-58.
Written for "Lyte Lowys" (Chaucer's son), Astr is a concise, brilliant translation of Masha'allah's "De compositione et utilitate astrolabii." Chaucer best displays his comprehension in his definitions of the equinoctial. Although written for a…
Copeland, Rita.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 41-75.
Medieval vernacular translation recovered the classical merger of rhetorical theory with hermeneutic practice. Ancient and medieval contexts for translation are traced: the practice of rhetorical theory in translation is illustrated in Chaucer's…
Cherniss, Michael D.
Chap. 9 in Michael D. Cherniss, ed. Boethian Apocalypse: Studies in Middle English Vision Poetry (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1987), pp. 169-91.
Two factors have prevented BD from being recognized as a Boethian Apocalypse: its elegiac nature and its debt to French love vision. Chaucer reshapes the "Boethian structure" in various features: the troubled first-person narrator, the dialogue,…
Chaucer's use of sources, traditions, and images leaves his text too open-ended and ambiguous to admit of any single interpretative pattern for the "matere" of BD. Diverse incidents of the poem are united by Chaucer's "structural integrity,"…
Martin, Ellen E.
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 17 (1987): 83-109.
BD is an "open-ended legend of imagination in which grief is accepted rather than eradicated...(Its) main theme is the reanimation of imagination." It proceeds by "structures of inconsequence that draw attention away from theme to poetic method." …
Rooney, Anne.
Review of English Studies 38 (1987): 299-314.
Reviews scholarship and examines the hunt in BD in the context of other portrayals of the hunt in medieval literature. Because of its portrayal of sudden and shocking death, the "ubi sunt" tradition is an appropriate context: the poem ends with the…
Spearing, A. C.
Chap. 4 in A. C. Spearing, ed. Readings in Medieval Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 83-106.
In BD, Chaucer relies on Latin "artes poeticae" and French courtly poetry for sources and models. "Amplificatio" is prominent: "expolitio," "circumlocutio," "collatio," "apostrophatio," "prosopopeia," "digressio," "descriptio," and "oppositio." …
The two descent scenes in the tale of Ceyx and Alcyone are similar to epic descents. The descent of Ceyx is typical and traditional; that of Alcyone, nontraditional and unheroic.
Carruthers, Mary J.
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. 179-88.
Concerns the influence upon Chaucer exerted by the "rhetorica ad herennium," specifically in the art of memory training, which was largely ignored in medieval commentary until it was revived in Italy. Both Dante and Chaucer make use of the…
Matheson, Lister M.
Notes and Queries 232 (1987): 289-91.
The favored manuscript reading "Prison, stewe, of gret distress" appears in CX1 and TH "Pryson, stryfe, or grete dystress." "Stryfe" was often spelled "striue," and "stewe" can be derived from abbreviated "striue" and not vice versa. The sense of…
Reader theory helps us better appreciate LGW: the schema trust/doubt/questioning/self-reliance reveals subtle complexities in the relationships among reader, poet, and moral and literary traditions.
Cowen, J. M.
Notes and Queries 232 (1987): 152-53.
The handwritten collations in the British Library 643.M.1 copy of Urry's "Chaucer" are in the hand of Samuel Pegge the elder, antiquary and vicar in Kent, 1730-51. The collations are from British Library MS Add. 9832, which Pegge evidently owned.
Chaucer's line "Betynge with his heles on the grounde" (LGW 863) echoes Geoffrey's description of Frollo's death ("Historia regum Britanniae" 9.9) and in turn suggests that Chaucer viewed Geoffrey's work with skepticism.
Despite totally different tone and purpose, Chaucer's LGWP parallels Dante's "Purgatorio" significantly: both poets present their narrators as undergoing penance; both Alceste and Beatrice, allegorically garbed and attended, serve as spiritual…
Arthur, Ross G.
American Benedictine Review 38 (1987): 29-49.
Critics such as Bennett and Lumiansky discuss Chaucer's Christianization of classical thought, but his adaptation of the "Somnium" in PF actually critiques its limitations. The naive narrator, looking for the "certayn" divine knowledge, is vaguely…
Asaka, Yoshiko.
Studies in Medieval Language and Literature (Tokyo) 2 (1987): 15-29.
A closely argued analysis of the meaning and design of PF. The three parts are designed to give harmony and balance to the poem, which explores debate on the question of love.
