Ganim, John M.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 70-82.
CT accommodates apparently conflicting forms of address and confusions of narrative, dramatic, and expository genres. Chaucer manipulates a number of Northrup Frye's "radicals of presentation," allowing perpetual reinterpretation through the overlay…
Ganim, John M.
Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds. Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 344-65.
Explores the reception of Chaucer by William Morris (the Kelmscott Chaucer) and Virginia Woolf ("The Pastons and Chaucer"), arguing that the responses of both individuals are deeply autobiographical and indications of how "modernity privatizes the…
Ganim, John M.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages: Archipelago, Island, England. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 191-208.
The War of the Maidens, a founding myth of Czech history, may have come to England via Anne of Bohemia and may be part of the "political unconscious" of several of Chaucer's works, particularly his depiction of the Amazons in KnT.
Considers the narrative structures of various narrative poems in Old and Middle English, especially as these relate to an "apocalyptic sense of history" and the dislocations it produces. Includes a chapter on TC.
Ganim, John M.
Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry, and Melissa Raine, eds. Contemporary Chaucer across the Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), pp. 188-200.
Argues that the "erotics" of William Morris's "News from Nowhere" constitute "an allegorical emblem of its politics," and suggests that the narrative stance of the novel may have been influenced by Chaucer's dream-vision narrator, an "inquisitive, if…
Ganim, John M.
Brian Gastle and Erick Kelemen, eds. Later Middle English Literature, Materiality, and Culture: Essays in Honor of James M. Dean (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2018.), pp. 71-89.
Traces attitudes toward and depictions of anarchy and apocalypse in medieval political and penitential traditions, suggesting that they can be associated with communalism as well as with disruption, then and now. Includes comments on Chaucer's (and…
Ganim, John, M.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 34 (1991):88-100.
Investigates the ways CT problematizes the medium of speech and, through its self-conscious narrators, comments on the changing value of spoken language. Though Chaucer preserves and allows resistance to the tyrannies of high literary form, his…
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…
Explores international cultural exchange and openness in the Middle Ages, commenting on scenarios of medieval cosmopolitanism in three modern fictions: Youssef Chahine's film "Destiny," Tariq Ali's novel "Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree," and Milorad…
Beyond her concern to remain bodily faithful to her husband, Dorigen also exhibits a commitment to keep faith with her word. But the Tale's denouement suggests that Dorigen's ultimate interest lies less with honoring her promises than with having a…
Garbaty, Thomas 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. 95-102.
Chaucer needs no protection from students who question the more negative aspects of his life. Though Chaucer was "no saint," his life is devoid of anything particularly shameful. The Hainault connection simply gave Chaucer leisure and security…
Garbaty, Thomas J.
Chaucer Newsletter 14:1 (1992): 2, 7.
Even though the Hainault Forest in Essex derives from Old English "hyneholt" ("monastic forest"), owned by the Benedictine abbey of Barking, Chaucer's many connections with Flemish Hainault are evident even here since John of Gaunt contributed to the…
Garbaty, Thomas J.
Studies in Bibliography 31 (1978): 57-67.
Though it has been universally assumed that de Worde's CT of 1498 merely followed the text of Caxton's second edition (c. 1484), recent work for the "Variorum" reveals important differences between the two. Instead, de Worde seems to have used an…
Garbaty, Thomas J.
Paul G, Ruggiers, ed. Versions of Medieval Comedy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), pp. 173-90. Reprinted in Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor (Garland, 1994), pp. 79-99.
There are those Chaucer readers who feel that he failed to take life seriously enough. His view of the world was indeed serious; it was not, however, a tragic view. His art is his love of the human comedy and thereby hang the tales of some of the…
Garbaty, Thomas J.
Chaucer Review 11 (1977): 299-305.
In the epilogue Chaucer addresses his book as "litel myn tragedye," adding that God might prompt him still to make it into "som comedye." This objective is achieved when Troilus (recalling "Paradiso," XXII) transcends tragedy and attains celestial…
Garbaty, Thomas J.
Mediaevalia 19 (1996, for 1993): 319-43.
Examines illumintions in manuscripts of Gower's "Confessio Amantis," arguing that they reflect contemporary difficulties in distinguishing between the author and the fictional persona. Includes depictions of Chaucer in miniatures and comparisons…
Articulates various "levels of perception" manipulated by Chaucer to create comic irony through his personae in BD, HF, PF, LGW, and CT. The "Chaucerian pose" is relatively constant in the early poems where the narrator is a "reasonable man" (but "no…
Garbáty, Thomas J.
Medical History 7 (1963): 348-58.
Adduces medieval and modern medicine to argue that the Summoner's disease described in GP 1.623-66 can best be diagnosed as "a rosacea-like secondary syphiloderm with meningeal neurosyphilitic involvement, with chronic alcoholism playing an important…
Garbaty, Thomas Jay
English Language Notes 5.2 (1967): 81-87.
Argues that Chaucer's role in Spain in 1366 was as a "confidential messenger" of the Black Prince, adducing historical and biographical evidence as well as the attitude expressed about Pedro of Spain in MkT 7.2375ff.
Garbáty, Thomas Jay.
Chaucer Review 8.1 (1973): 1-8.
Identifies the "compound humor" of the "geographic dialect" material in RvT and the GP description of the Reeve, where he is depicted as an "immigrant" from Norfolk to London and thereby the butt of humor for indigenous Londoners.
Garbáty, Thomas Jay.
Modern Philology 67 (1969): 18-24.
Argues that the Monk was the original teller of the MerT, a response directed against the ShT as told originally by the Wife of Bath. Discusses puns and implications in the GP description of the Monk to characterize the Monk is an "amorous man," a…
Garbáty, Thomas Jay.
Romances Notes 9 (1968): 325-30.
Assesses the gate in PF, exploring "remarkable parallels which the inscriptions on the gate and the further description of the garden" in PF "have to certain sections of the Fifth Dialogue" of Andreas Cappellanus's "Art of Courtly Love."
Garbáty, Thomas Jay.
Journal of American Folklore 81 (1968): 342-46.
Adduces evidence from various sources to show that the Wife of Bath has characteristics of the archetype of the old bawd, itself rooted in the earlier figure of "sorceress-intermediary" and associated with aging, trade, extravagant dress, and…
