Frost, William
Western Humanities Review 27 (1973): 39-59.
Seeks to define the phrase "Canterbury tale," by exploring the relative usefulness of various critical approaches to Chaucer's tales. Comments on how the tales engage their respective genres in "unpredictable" ways, how they characterize their…
Donner, Morton.
Western Humanities Review 27 (1973): 189-95.
Argues that Chaucer adapts his first-person narrators throughout his career in order to explore aspects of the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. Chaucer achieves a greatest sense of objectivity when his subjective narrator is most…
Brennan, John P.
Studies in Philology 70 (1973): 243-51.
Surveys critical discussions of Chaucer's authorship of the "substantive" glosses that appear in his manuscripts, shows that the glosses to PrT 7.579-85 derive from Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum" rather than from the liturgy of the Holy Innocents,…
Critiques Morton W. Bloomfield's "The Man of Law's Tale: A Tragedy of Victimization and a Christian Comedy," commenting on the artistic quality of MLT and the Man of Law as narrator.
Singh, Catherine.
Leeds Studies in English 7 (1973): 22-54.
Claims that William Dunbar's debt to Chaucer (WBPT) in his "Tua Meriit Wemen and the Wedo, "although "important and considerable, is often exaggerated beyond helpfulness." The poem owes a great deal to earlier alliterative poetry, in particular…
Rowland, Beryl.
English: The Journal of the English Association 22 (1973): 3-10.
Surveys major works of Chaucer criticism, focusing on works published between ca.1960-1970 and identifying trends. The bibliography lists some 40 works.
Rothman, Irving N.
Papers on Language and Literature 9 (1973): 115-27.
Observes structural and thematic parallels between ClT and its Envoy, arguing that both refute the Wife of Bath's attitudes, one through alternative perspective and the other through mockery.
Fry, Donald K.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 71 (1972): 355-68.
Considers manuscript variants of MkT and NPP, historical contexts of various details, and the dramatic effectiveness of the interruption that bridges the two. Argues that the so-called "Modern Instances" should conclude the Monk's sequence of…
DeNeef, A. Leigh.
Journal of Narrative Technique 3 (1973): 85-96.
Shows that confusion of literal and metaphoric understanding characterizes the Pardoner, the rioters of PardT, and the pilgrim audience (including the Host), who fail to "separate the immorality" of the Pardoner from the morality of his exemplum. The…
Brewer, D[erek]. S.
Essays and Studies 26 (1973): 1-19.
Defines the private and social aspects of "honor" in Chaucer's works, exploring its relations with related concepts such as "worth," "worship," shame, gentility, heritability, and, for women, chastity. Focuses on TC and FranT, but comments on these…
Blake, Kathleen A.
Modern Language Quarterly 34 (1973): 3-19.
Examines in KnT the rhetorical and thematic concerns with order, choice, and the difficulties of achieving resolution. Reads Palamon and Arcite as a balanced pair, and Theseus as a figure of the limited human ability to avert fortune and determine…
Colmer, Dorothy.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 72 (1973): 329-39.
Argues that the WBT is appropriate to the "Marcien" Wife, who represents a rising social class that challenges the "old courtly privilege." This class challenge parallels the Wife's sexual challenge, and her speech on "gentilesse"--a "complaint…
Adams, Percy G.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 71 (1972): 527-39.
Exemplifies the varieties and density of assonance in Chaucer's poetry, commenting on assonance in French, Italian, and English predecessors, and on Chaucer's uses of assonance in combination with other devices of sound and emphasis.
Argues that PhyT was designed to critique the Man of Law, an extension of the ancient "feud between law and medicine." Explores this tradition in classical and medieval sources, and identifies ways that Chaucer evoked it through adjustments to Livy…
Argues that in LGWP Chaucer derives his tone from Jean de Meun's self-conscious narratation in the "Roman de la Rose," as well as many "particularities . . . of himself as love and writer." Chaucer's narrator is a caricature of Jean's Amant, an…
Joyner, William.
English Review of Salem State College 1.2 (1973): 28-41.
Examines ways in which the dreamer's journey in HF parallels his summary of the "Aeneid," identifying verbal echoes as well as similarities in plot and detail. Emends traditional punctuation of lines 109-13 to reinforce the parallel.
Examines the "psychological realities" of Troilus's fear of losing Criseyde after she departs from Troy, comparing Chaucer's and Boccaccio's versions to show how, in TC, the hero's "immoderate fear distorts perception" and causes him to judge…
Justifies various differences between FrT and its analogues by attributing them to the literal mindedness of the narrator, "one who takes distinctions seriously."
Ruggiers, Paul G.
Chaucer Review 8.2 (1973): 89-99.
Comments on Chaucer's "serious" poetry for the ways that it relates to various kinds of tragedy and tragic outlook--classical Greek, Boethian, "pathetic tragedy," ethical or moral tragedy, etc. Except in extreme cases such as MkT, Chaucer inflects…
