Hamaguchi, Keiko.
Doshisha Literature 33 (1988): 1-24.
Examines the women in Chaucer's fabliaux in connection with the antifeminist tradition. Hamaguchi argues that Chaucer's view of women was complex, partly affected by the antifeminist tradition yet partly sympathetic to the feminist position.
Holloway, Julia Bolton.
J. Stephen Russell, ed. Allegoresis: The Craft of Allegory in Medieval Literature (New York and London: Garland, 1988, for 1987), pp. 109-32.
Using CT, "Piers Plowman," and Dante's "Commedia," Holloway looks at traditions of pilgrims and pilgrimages in their figural connections, the role of play and playfulness as correctives for error, and the pilgrim as "pharmakoi," "scapegoat figures of…
Holt, John Douglas Gordon.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1988): 257A-258A.
Lists references both to the Vulgate and to the mass, prayers,holy office, and hymns, as noted in the Baugh, Benson, Fisher, Pratt, and Robinson editions. The Latin passage, modern English translation, and Chaucer's treatment follow.
Hussey, S. S.
Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig, eds. Medieval Studies Presented to George Kane (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Wolfeboro, N.H.: D. S. Brewer, 1988): pp. 153-65.
Examines the Host as the "unifying feature of the whole pilgrimage fiction." Chaucer's "revisions" of the character and function of the Host increase his "realism" and serve as a structural device.
James, Max H.
Christian Scholars' Review 18 (1988): 118-35.
Although many of Chaucer's works are bawdy, modern readers can find contemporary ethical and moral issues resolved or discussed according to Christian values. "Christlike" faithfulness, steadfastness, and truth underlie TC, WBT, ClT, MerT, and…
Kendrick, Laura.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Using "paradigms" of human behavior drawn from psychology, psychoanalysis, and anthropology, Kendrick studies play in CT. Chaucer's tales involve either "pathetic fictions that foreground individual accommodation to exterior reality or public…
This concordance, a complement to "The Structure of Chaucer's Rime Words (Tokyo, 1964), examines the relationship between "rime words" and the syntactic structure, style, and rhetoric of CT.
Sleeth, Charles R.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 89 (1988): 174-84.
The invocations of a mother's advice in WBP, PardT, and MkT, in contrast to the wisdom of "Oure Lady" invoked by the two nuns in CT, become an ambiguous source of authority not in themselves but because of the actions they appear to justify.
Taylor, Paul Beekman.
Neil Forsyth, ed. Reading Contexts. Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature, vol. 4 (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988): pp. 133-46.
Parodied in MilT, exposed as "disordered and violent" in RvT, Theseus's "faire cheyne of love" (KnT 2991) is the first of several "images of mediation which cluster in interlocking fashion" throughout CT. Like other comedies of mediation, CT reveals…
Explores the relationship between fragments I and II and the "Marriage Group," reading the tales in I and II and III through V as "an ongoing discourse between Chaucer and the ultimate narrator and reader." Argues that Kittredge's concept of the…
The anti-Robertsonian introduction (pp. 1-7) argues that Chaucer's art is realistic rather than a "system of tropes." Given over to the study of "codes, conventions,...and 'language,'" criticism fails Chaucer, and modern critical approaches…
Harwood, Britton J.
Review of English Studies 39 (1988): 413-17.
The haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, and tapestry maker of the GP must each have belonged to his own "communitas," or mystery, and the five could not (by law and custom) be members of a sixth company. Harwood shows that the "fraternitee" was…
Henderson, Jeff.
Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 14 (1988): 13-24.
Argues that Chaucer perhaps intended to allow the GP pilgrims to serve as the "'dramatis personae' of the Tales themselves" and to move among the complicated levels of reality in CT.
The red hose of the Wife of Bath may be her method of preventing venereal disease. According to the "doctrine of signatures," a fancied resemblance of a color to a disease could aid in remedy of prevention. Red was thought to be obnoxious to evil…
Richardson-Hay, Christine.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1988): 43C.
Discusses the artistry of Chaucer's GP portraits: their relationship to contemporary literary expectations and the "conventional medieval portrait," their order, their importance in creating a "sense or 'reality,'" and their "interaction" with…
Anderson, David.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
Explores Boccaccio's use of Statius's "Thebaid"--his "systematic transformation" of the epic in the historical context of Boccaccio's day--and Chaucer's reshaping of the epic in KnT. Chapter 4, "Imitation of the 'Thebaid' in the "Knight's Tale,"…
The anti-Robertsonian introduction (pp. 1-10) sees Chaucer's KnT as a "triumph of Chaucer's comic rhetoric, monistic and life-enhancing." A collection of eight previously published articles on KnT by various hands.
Mroczkowski, Przemyslaw.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Genres, Themes, and Images in English Literature from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988), pp. 40-58.
Elucidates the puzzling portrait of the GP Knight by "historical information on chivalry" and especially on knights who went to Prussia as "Crusaders"; modifies opposing views of the Knight (as chivalric ideal or murderous hypocrite).
Nicholson, R. H.
English Language Notes 25:3 (1988): 16-22.
The reference to the slaughter of Antonius in KnT 2032 is not to Mark Antony, as is commonly believed, but to Antonius Bassianus. Usually known as Caracalla, Emperor Antonius was betrayed and murdered--a reference far more suitable to Chaucer's…
Nicholson, R. H.
Chaucer Review 22 (1988): 192-213.
The public ceremonies--the triumph, trial by battle, and the state funeral--underlining the Knight's conversion of romance into figurative narrative suggest that the public personality of Theseus, the ruler, is the dominant personality in KnT.
Sanderlin, George.
USF Language Quarterly 26:3-4 (1988): 11-12.
Addresses two questions: Is KnT a romance? and Whose story is it, Palamon's or Arcite's? More lines are devoted to these issues than to philosophic matter and Theseus. Arcite shows more nobility than any other character in KnT, and the story…
Cowen, J. A.
Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig, eds. Medieval Studies Presented to George Kane (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Wolfeboro, N.H.: D. S. Brewer, 1988), pp. 147-52.
Examines the lexicographical records of "child" in Middle English and suggests that like Thopas, Absolon may be a Narcissistic figure, influenced by the "Roman de la Rose."
