Summarizes critics' attention to the Eucharistic references in PardT and explores how the Eucharist and the Mass as a reenactment of sacrifice underpin a number of details and images in the tale.
Middle English version of GP [Skeat edition], accompanied by numerous b&w reproductions of woodcuts from editions of CT by William Caxton (1484), Wynkyn de Worde (1494), and Richard Pynson (1526). Includes a seven-inch phonograph recording (33 1/3…
Argues that Boccaccio's "Decameron" influenced MerT deeply, even though it may not be the primary source of the plot. The characterizations of MerT (especially the "mental blindness" of January) are more like those in "Decameron" 7.9 than those in…
Adkins, Lieuen, trans.
San Francisco: Bellerophon, 1973.
Parallel-column version of MilPT in Middle English [Skeat edition] and modern rhymed couplets, accompanied by numerous b&w illustrations in comic-book style by Gilbert Shelton.
Wass, Rosemary Thérèse Ann.
DAI 35.08 (1974): 5124A.
Counters "Robertsonian" or exegetical criticism of Chaucer's works, particularly its neglect of "later scholastic philosophy," focusing on views of individuality and experience found in writers such as Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.…
Argues that "in Chaucer's poetry women are consistently portrayed as seeking out a niche in the social (or religious) hierarchy which will permit them to serve in the subordinate position St. Paul insists they were intended to fill." Discusses all of…
Uses Morris Halle and Seymour Jay Keyser's metrical theory to describe "English decasyllabic verse of the later Middle Ages" and explore why Chaucer's iambic pentameter was not followed more closely by poets such as Hoccleve, Lydgate, Dunbar, and…
Reads CT as a unified, encyclopedic "symposium on what men should seek, and what they should avoid," focusing on variety in the GP, the pilgrimage motif, and the "three longest tales": KnT, Mel, and ParsT.
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.
Clarifies medieval understanding of the romance genre by exploring medieval catalogs of romances and applying George Lakoff's theory of "radial" categories. Includes comments on several of Chaucer's works and on several medieval lists that do not…
Explores historicity and fictionality in medieval narratives of early. mythic Thebes. Includes brief commentary on the sources of Chaucer's knowledge of Oedipus and his conflation of Egyptian and Boeotian Thebes in KnT 1.1470ff.
Examines shame as a force in identity construction and a constraint on female agency, focusing on Criseyde in TC and Dido in HF, and briefly mentioning LGW. As an historical force, shame also determines narrative possibilities in these poems.
Argues that Criseyde is a "willful agent," who reveals "nominalist intentions" and is guided by her own desires and "misdirected will" in her love of Troilus.
Analyzes Criseyde, arguing that Chaucer forces the reader's "active engagement" with the language in Criseyde's soliloquy, which reinforces the ambiguity of her character.
Suggests Chaucer's portrayal of Criseyde challenges the "traditional 'descriptio' as a restrictive benchmark of feminine beauty." Describes Criseyde's transformations in TC as an "experiential journey through love and war."
Focuses on how the idiomatic phrase "for goddes love" is used in TC as "an expression of power" and how the phrase "appeals to a divine system of mercy and justice" when used by Troilus, Criseyde, and Pandarus.
Hernández Pérez, María Beatriz.
Dulce María González Doreste and María de Pilar Mendoza Ramos, eds. Nouvelles de la rose: Actualité et perspectives du "Roman de la rose" (La Laguna: Servicio de Publicaciones, 2011), pp. 455-78.
Assesses Rom as a translation and also as a key moment in Chaucer's literary career that will make him the father of English poetry.
Havely, Nick.
Seeta Chaganti, ed. Medieval Poetics and Social Practice: Responding to the Work of Penn R. Szittya (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), pp. 109-23.
Reads the relationship between the formel and Nature in PF in light of late medieval practices of wardship, informed by attention to "yerde" as an emblem of authority. Comments on the formel's decision not to marry and on parallels between the formel…
Argues that fourteenth-century English allegories and dream-visions "open up utopic spaces" and enable proposals for social change. Considers a variety of texts, including HF, which "discusses the potential inherent in both art and language to shape…
Examines HF and other medieval dream-visions from a stand-point of performance theory, while considering the role of the narrator/dreamer as perceiver and creator of meaning, with ramifications for how narrative may be viewed as process, rather than…
