Cherniss, Michael D.
Chap. 7 in Michael D. Cherniss, Boethian Apocalypse: Studies in Middle English Vision Poetry (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1987), pp. 119-47.
Demonstrates how PF uses the naive Boethian narrator--who, confused about love, turns "Ciceronian virtue and vice into varieties of 'love'." Reader expectation is frequently thwarted: the narrator misperceives his "own relationship to the locus of…
Spearing, A. C.
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. 169-77.
Examines the pervasiveness of love iconography and tradition in PF. Reviews various interpretations, political and social, and sees the "center" of the poem in the central line on the treacherous lapwing, a model for Chaucer's method with its many…
apRoberts, Robert P.
J. Bakker et al., eds.; J. C. van Meurs, foreword. Essays on English and American Literature and a Sheaf of Poems (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), pp. 11-25.
Neither linguistic nor contextual evidence justifies the stance that Criseyde and Pandarus have sexual intercourse. Incest is incompatible both with the Italian source and with other elements in the poem itself.
Heijnsbergen, Theo van.
Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo-American Letters 17 (1987): 115-28.
Compared to Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato," TC is characterized by ambivalence in language, imagery, dialogue, theme, structure, and character, seen particularly in Criseyde as she follows her own sense of reality and social code while Troilus obeys the…
Lydgate's "Troy Book" describes the classical theater as a semicircle with a raised pulpit in the midst. This is what is portrayed in the Corpus Christi College (Cambridge) manuscript: finely dressed figures mime the roles of the principals while…
Four stanzas that seem out of place in the conclusion can be removed and reinserted, resulting in improved syntactic and thematic continuity. There is no manuscript authority for the mistaken position (all manuscripts have the order of the received…
Owen, Charles A.,Jr.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 155-72.
Against the revision theories of R. K. Root, Barry Windeatt's edition of TC argues that Chaucer began by translating Boccaccio, then filling in "reflective and 'philosophic' material." Arguments from context support Root rather than Windeatt;…
Patterson, Lee.
Speculum 54 (1979): 297-330. Reprinted as Chap. 4 in Lee Patterson. Negotiating the Past (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 115-53.
Literary meaning is not an "atemporal constant but a historical variable." The appropriate challenge to exegetical criticism comes through a history of reading. Examines TC in light of the medieval understandings of love articulated as the "seven…
Rehyansky, Katherine Heinrichs.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1987): 123A-124A.
Rehyansky studies classical allusions Chaucer introduced into TC: they underscore its themes. Oenone, Daphne, Europa, and Venus represent the folly and tragedy of love; Niobe, Tantalus, Ixion, and Tityus show the folly of pride, greed, and…
Spearing, A. C.
Chap. 4 in A. C. Spearing, Readings in Medieval Poetry. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 107-33.
It is not necessary to claim unity in the love, death, and heavenly reward of Troilus. Endings mark the boundaries between the work and the world (a central theme in modern social anthropology concerns boundaries or threshold crossing).
Wack, Mary.
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. 127-33.
The language of love as illness is a significant Chaucerian addition to his source, the "Filostrato." In Pandarus's first conversation with Troilus, allusions to Boethius and Ovid "define the depth and complexity of Pandarus's role as physician,"…
Chaucer's insertion of an imitation of a passage from the "Poetria nova," in place of the proper matter translated from "Il Filostrato," suggests Chaucer's disdain for the "rough haste" of Boccaccio's style and his "impetuosa manus" (TC 1.1067).
Close analyses of grammar and diction, including shifts in verb tense, show a considerable range of both poetic role playing and distancing between author and speaker--self-mockery and travesty (Buk, For, Lady, Pity, Ros, Scog).
Chaucer works with a poetic genre; within it, however, he directs his attention to a specific occasion, probably Richard II's difficulties with royal prerogative in 1387.
Barlow, Richard G.
Theatre Southwest 14 (1987): 9-12.
The love ballad "Rosemounde" is a "sophisticated dramatic monologue" in which Chaucer unconventionally develops the theme of carnal versus spiritual love "through the 'persona' of a boastful knight." Through the comic irony of the ballad and the use…
Pearsall, Derek.
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. 17-29.
Analyzes TC 2.449-62, 3.568-81, and 5.1016-29 to show syntactically "the process by which Criseyde exercises her will, makes a choice, without acknowledging (it)...while preserving her image...as a passive instrument of forces greater than herself"…
Rhetorically and thematically, the association of Theseus with solempnytee in KnT strains against the chaotic forces at work in the world of the Tale. Shakespeare opens the gap between Theseus's solemnity and comedy in A Midsummer Night's Dream for…
