Assesses the relations between universality and particularity as epistemological modes in MLT, exploring allegory and individuality, realism and nominalism, and generalization and specification in the characterization of Custance and how she is…
Considers how the "professional identity" of the teller informs concerns with justice in MLT. Engagement with mercantile law, common law, natural law, divine intervention, and the "limitations of human justice" pervade MLPT and indicate an uncertain…
Johnston, Andrew James.
Claudia Lange, Beatrix Weber, and Göran Wolf, eds. Communicative Spaces: Variation, Contact, and Change: Papers in Honour of Ursula Schaefer (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012), pp. 133-46.
Interprets Custance's use of "Latyn corrupt" to the natives of Northumbria in terms of Isidore of Seville's discussion of linguistic history and suggests that MLT takes an acutely historicist view of the development of medieval Christianity,…
In MLT, Custance's first husband is the "Sowdan of Surrye," and in "Macbeth" the witches plot to scourge a shipmaster who is "to Aleppo gone." That both texts treat Syria and the northern reaches of Great Britain as complementary zones, in space as…
Analyzes John Fletcher's and William Shakespeare's collaboration on "The Two Noble Kinsmen," an interpretation of KnT, and offers how "The Two Noble Kinsmen" represents a "meditation . . . of the vernacular literary canon," as it allegorizes the…
Smith, Peter J.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.
In "Turning the Other Cheek: Scatology and Its Discontents in The Miller's Tale and The Summoner's Tale," pp. 12-59, Smith uses farting in MilT and SumT to explore Chaucer's complex and refined "scatological rhetoric," a trope that has been obscured…
Examines how Lydgate's "Legend of Dan Joos" recasts the opening of GP into a representation of eternal redemption in praise of Mary in his own aureate style.
Chapter 5 focuses on comic uses of brutality in CT, particularly in MilT and KnT. Also addresses how Chaucer refers to torture in MLT, but rejects excessive brutality in PrT.
Pitcher, John A.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Analyzes how Chaucer's rhetorical constructions decenter self-disclosure and resist simplistic notions of gender in WBPT, ClT, FranT, and PhyT. Figurative or allusive speech cannot adequately represent subjectivity and desire. Chaucer's treatments of…
Surveys metaphysical and secular Universalist traditions in world literatures. Chapter 3, "The Literature of the Middle Ages," includes a summary of CT and argues that it depicts a "metaphysical quest" with "metaphysical and secular aspects" of a…
Steel, Karl.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 185-99.
Form Age shares thematic elements with Alexander legends, including vegetarianism and prohibitions against agriculture. In these poems humans live as, and eat as, animals do, a contrast to the mastery described in Genesis. The life described in these…
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 101-12.
TC includes references to animals through frequent analogy and extended imagery, but these are often generically inappropriate. Dreams about animals are largely unexplored. Comparison of Troilus to the horse Bayard not only emphasizes the hero's…
Matlock, Wendy A.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 217-31.
Explores anthropomorphism and the "connaturality" of human and nonhuman animals in PF and Lydgate's "Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep," noting the comments of medieval and modern philosophers on the traditional animal-human binary. Lydgate's…
Kordecki, Lesley.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 249-60.
Argues that the cuckoo-merlin dialogue in PF deconstructs the traditional human-animal binary by presenting a "fleeting realization of anthropomorphism gone awry." The cuckoo's "brood parasitism . . . resolves itself into a mode of communal profit"…
Elmes, Melissa Ridley.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 233-47.
Compares the birds of PF to birds in medieval scientific texts, in sources or analogues (especially Alan de Lille's "De planctu Naturae"), and in the observable environment. Chaucer fills PF with birds known in England, classifying them by diet but…
Roman, Christopher.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 143-55.
Animals figure prominently in BD but are more than mere symbols. Ceyx's dead body is also an "unnatural animal." The birds, horse, whelp, and hart invite, but also resist, interpretation. The juxtaposition of death and animalistic vitality evokes…
Judkins, Ryan R.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 159-72.
Although anthropocentric, BD emphasizes the similarity of animals and humans under the law of "kynde." They share an "embodied state and an ethical system as a result of their shared creation." The hart, object of the hunt, parallels the Black…
Freeman, Carol.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 33-47.
Describes the specific appearance of vellum, the types of quills used in creating a medieval manuscript, and animal-inflicted damage to manuscripts by mice, bugs, etc. Intersperses discussion of NPT with regard to Chauntecleer's appearance and…
Browne, Megan Palmer.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 203-15.
NPT demonstrates the danger of reading "for a single abstract moral" by means of its emphasis on Chauntecleer's humanlike qualities. Among his most human attributes are experiencing and expounding a dream. If "men" refers to both humans and chickens,…
Feinstein, Sandy, and Neal Woodman.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 49-66.
The Pardoner is compared to a hare, goat, and horse, and PardT refers to smaller animals usually considered vermin. The three gluttonous rioters are appropriately called shrews, and the poison used to kill them is ostensibly bought for rats and a…
Schotland, Sara Deutch.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 115-30.
In SqT Chaucer practices a form of anthropomorphism that acknowledges its representational limits. The relationship of Canacee and the falcon shows "a commonality among living creatures" and offers a model of female friendship. Canacee nurses the…
Stock, Lorraine Kochanske.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 85-100.
Themes of "trouthe" and "gentillesse," as well as the threat of suicide, in the SqT falcon episode (5.409-631) anticipate major themes of FranT. Because SqT is prior in the narrative sequence, the human language of FranT parodies avian language…
Wang, Laura.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 131-42.
Classical and medieval antifeminist texts disparagingly compare women and animals. In WBP, Alisoun "redeploys animal similes" to claim the privileges of animal-like status because she is naturally crafty and sly, impatient, and cannot be held…
Withers, Jeremy.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 173-83.
In KnT, warriors are compared to animals, a seemingly desirable condition that would allow warriors to "discharge at will their power and violence." However, several references to shackled, confined, or endangered animals create a contrast between…
