Ginsberg, Warren.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983.
The ways of representing character practiced by "highly self-conscious" poets reflect the "shaping imagination" of these authors against the backdrop of tradition--rhetorical, philosophical, and sometimes theological. In Ovid character is poetic…
References to medieval treatises and exegetical tradition suggest that the Pardoner's connection with ale, dove, and tree indicates that, through avarice, he is too literal to preach God's word. The Old Man, taken literally by the Pardoner,…
The interpretive problems with ClT--our ambivalence between human sympathy for Griselda and recognition of the poem's stern moral import--stem largely from the teller himself, whose additions to the source in Petrarch indicate that he does not fully…
Ginsberg, Warren.
Teresa Tavormina and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Endless Knot: Essays on Old and Middle English in Honor of Marie Borroff (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 129-40.
Examines GP sketches of the Wife of Bath, the Miller, and the Franklin to exemplify how Chaucer's arrangements of details can best be understood relationally.
Ginsberg, Warren.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 18 (1996): 55-89.
Irony and allegory displace meaning in opposite directions, and in ManP they conspire to simultaneous affirmation and negation. Like Christ's parable of the wicked servant (Luke 16:1-9), the Manciple's verbal assault on the Cook indicates the way to…
Ginsberg, Warren.
James J. Paxson, Lawrence M. Clopper, and Sylvia Tomasch, eds. The Performance of Middle English Culture: Essays on Chaucer and the Drama in Honor of Martin Stevens (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 125-41.
Assesses how the Host's address to the Clerk reflects effort to shape the identity of the Clerk as a tale-teller, so that even before the Clerk speaks, literary, philosophical, and spiritual discourses compete to define his subjectivity.
Ginsberg, Warren.
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2002.
Developing Walter Benjamin's model of translation and seeking to "rethink the dynamics of cross-cultural translation," Ginsberg explores how Chaucer's borrowings from and dependencies on Italian literature "disarticulate" the legacy of Dante,…
Comments on the five contributions to SAC 25's "Colloquium: The Manciple's Tale," reading them as a "snapshot of some of the ways . . . Chaucerians read today" and exploring how the interruptions and reversals in ManT efface moral distinctions.
Ginsberg, Warren.
Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds. Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 387-408.
Ginsberg considers Boccaccio's tale of Menedon (Filocolo 4) as a "translation" of FranT, as well as vice versa, exploring the "mode of meaning" particular to each version. Differences in ideology between trecento Italy and Chaucer's London encourage…
Although we know of no sustained aesthetic treatise dating from the Middle Ages, medieval people were lovers of beauty who conceived of worldly beauty as a reflection of divine perfection. Ginsberg comments on Chaucer's leave-taking of his poem in…
Ginsberg, Warren.
Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager, eds. Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 145-64.
Ginsberg compares Dante's, Petrarch's, and Chaucer's descriptions of geography in their poems: Dante relied on the landscape of Italy to establish a geographical base; Petrarch allegorized Dante's geography; and Chaucer then "translated Petrarch's…
Ginsberg, Warren.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015
With special consideration of Ovid, Dante, and Boccaccio as models (not sources), explores the relationship between Chaucer's predecessors and CT while conducting in-depth investigation into Chaucer's reworking of the original texts both through the…
Ginsberg, Warren.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 303-24.
Treats Boccaccio's romances, concentrating on "Filostrato" and "Teseida," "as if they were intralingual translations,' by analyzing the collusion and contravention of the narratives' aims by their own prologues. These prologues, apparently unknown or…
Ginsburg, Warren.
John M. Hill, Bonnie Wheeler, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Essays on Aesthetics and Medieval Literature in Honor of Howell Chickering (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2014), pp. 165-76.
Emphasizes Chaucers skillful and "poetic" use of grammar, with special attention to nouns and pronouns in TC. Also addresses Chaucer's focus on rhetoric and logic in GP and ClT.
Giordano, Roberta.
Avellino: Sinestesie, 2014. Open access ebook at https://en.calameo.com/read/005864328fc7b606cf080; accessed March 3, 2022.
Studies Chaucer's and Boccaccio's dream vision narratives and their references to dreaming in light of the history of the genre, focusing on the secularization of the genre, the rising importance of the poet as dreamer-viator, and aesthetic successes…
Giot, P.-R.
Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique du Finistere 90 (1973): 117-19.
Addresses the toponymical references to Penmark and Kayrrud in FranT (5.801 and 807), locating them specifically in Brittany, commenting on the local rockiness and military value, and noting an association with the story of Tristan and Iseult.
Gittes, Katharine S.
New York, Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1991.
In the traditions of Indian and Greek frame narratives, tensions exist between the framing story and the enclosed tales, although Western aesthetics promote tighter structure and more detailed characterization. Medieval framed narratives florished…
Arabic literature--characteristically framed, open-ended, "eye-witness," first-person narrative, often including a journey--prefigures Boccaccio's "Decameron," Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and Chaucer's CT. Petrus Alfonsi's twelfth-century…
Gittes, Katharine Slater.
Dissertation Abstracts International 44 (1983): 1444A.
Frame narratives (Arabic in origin) display open-endedness, structural looseness, and autonomy of component tales. In CT, Chaucer combines Arabic, classical, and Christian elements and draws on their mutual tensions.
The "fragmentary state" of CT and its lack of definitive ending may reflect external circumstances, yet its "open-endedness" may be part of its structural plan.
As a figure of the writer, Pandarus embodies the perverse nature of artist as observer. Having completed his narrative in the consummation scene, Pandarus must invent another tale to make "wommen unto men to comen" and to survive as an author.
Discusses historical reliability of witness lists as evidence of magnate activity and relationship to the crown. Provides tabular inventory of witnesses and percentage of charters witnessed by year.
