Haskell, Ann S.
English Symposium Papers 3 (1973): 1-45.
Characterizes medieval lyrics and various sub-genres by illustrative examples; then comments on several themes and topoi in Chaucer's lyrics and lyrical passages from his longer works.
Cross, J. E.
English: The Journal of the English Association 10, no. 59 (1955): 172-75.
Surveys Astr to identify Chaucer's "teaching method," finding evidence of his attention to teaching "technically-minded small boys" that clashes at times with concern for a wider audience. Considers Astr to be "a dull, intentionally prolix but…
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.
Niebrzydowski, Sue.
English: The Journal of the English Association 64, no. 244 (2015): 1–4.
A general introduction to the "Chaucer Reconsidered" special issue of the journal that focuses on the many genres in which Chaucer worked, as well as his primary topics.
Robinson, Olivia.
English: The Journal of the English Association 64, no. 244 (2015): 27-41.
Argues that Rom should be recontexualized, viewing the work not as a Chaucerian fragment, which perpetuates a fragmentary approach to the work, but as part of a tradition of translation. Analysis of decorated initials and borders in Hunter 409…
Johnston, Alexandra F.
English: The Journal of the English Association 64, no. 244 (2015): 5-26.
Explores the meanings and dating of "miracle play" / "miraculum" as descriptors for medieval drama, discussing a range of historical records and offering WBP (3.543-59) and details from MilT as evidence of fourteenth-century dramatic activities in…
Salter, Elisabeth.
English: The Journal of the English Association 67 (2018): 163-80.
Shows how Chaucer's oeuvre offers many glimpses of readers' and listeners' encounters with the written word, but that last wills and testaments offer more direct insights into "the ways the majority of people interacted with and interpreted 'English'…
This review article assesses four recent books on how the Middle Ages responded to classical literature: Ralph Hexter's "Ovid and Medieval Schooling," the essay collection "Lectures medievales de Virgile," Jean-Charles Huchet's "Le Roman medieval"…
Waterhouse, Michael, dir.
Episode Two in "The Beauty of Books." Tern Television Productions. BBC Worldwide, 2011.
Introduces the manuscript of the Luttrell Psalter and the Oxford copy of William Caxton's second edition of CT (with hand-colored woodcuts), with extensive visual representation of the codices (panning many details) and their library settings,…
Galván Reula, J. F.
Epos: Revista de Filologia 1 (1984): 19-34.
Focuses on NPT as an example of Chaucer's combination of linguistic ambiguity and limited or unreliable narration, his "modern" features. Chaucer's works are classics because his techniques accord well with the narrative theories of modern critics…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
ERA [English Research Association of Hiroshima] 6.1: 14-49, 1988.
Discusses Chaucer's ambiguous use of words such as "sely," "gentil," and "pite" in LGW, clarifying the gap between efforts to define "good women" and their human weaknesses.
Frequently used in ParsT, colloquial anaphora enhances the homiletic style in such repetitious expressions as "Now Comth...," "Look forther...," "Certes...," and "Soothly,...."
Argues that "linguistic irony which results from [an] extended pun on 'amor'" runs throughout CT, supported by the diction and imagery of gold. Spiritual love is associated recurrently with positive images of gold; earthly love, with negative ones.
Morgan, Gerald.
Eric Haywood and Barry Jones, eds. Dante Comparisons: Comparative Studies of Dante and Montale, Foscolo, Tasso, Chaucer, Petrarch, Propertius and Catullus (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1985), pp. 73-95.
"Courtly love" is a critics' term that was never used by medieval poets. To understand Chaucer's treatment of love, we must turn not to the principles of courtly love but to medieval philosophy and the treatment of love by poets such as Dante.
Jager, Eric.
Eric Jager, The Tempter's Voice: Language and the Fall in Medieval Literature (Ithaca, N.Y.; and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 241-98.
In MerT, Chaucer presents a version of the Edenic Fall that emphasizes the roles of language and writing in seduction. Especially in the pear-tree episode, the Merchant's "dark vision" dramatizes Augustinian commentary on the Fall as an abuse of…
Merrill, Rodney
Eric Rothstein, ed. Literary Monographs, Volume 5 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), pp. 1-62.
Challenges traditional perceptions of Mars and Ven as separate poems, arguing that they are better recognized as a single work, "The Broche of Thebes." Traces the history of scribal, editorial, and critical receptions of the complaints, analyzing…
Burnley, J. D.
Erik Cooper, ed. This Noble Craft . . .: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics, Utrecht, 19-20 January, 1989. Costerus New Series, no. 80 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991), pp. 43-57.
Drawing on recent socio- and ethnolinguistic insights, Burnley examines the complex stylistic associations of commonly used language in a variety of spoken and written contexts. The structure of Chaucer's English is not neat and orderly but…
Hertog, Erik.
Erik Kooper, ed. This Noble Craft . . .: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics, Utrecht, 19-20 January, 1989. Costerus New Series, no. 80 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991), pp. 200-21.
Based on Roland Barthes's work on the structural analysis of narrative texts, this essay assesses SumT and two analogues. Hertog describes a model for the recognition of similar events in fiction.
Mann, Jill.
Erik Kooper, ed. This Noble Craft: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of the Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics.... (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991), pp. 173-88.
For Chaucer, the literary traditions of Ovid and Jerome created a dual image of woman as predator or victim. Chaucer refines and deepens the "double-sidedness" of these traditions, bringing the polarized alternatives into complicating relation with…
Mertens-Fonck, Paule.
Erik Kooper, ed. This Noble Craft: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of the Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics.... (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991), pp. 189-99.
Structurally, CT parodies the clerk-knight debate (an early type of courtly-love poem), especially The Council of Remiremont. The idea of a pilgrimage on horseback may derive from these debates as well.
Van Buuren, A. M. J.
Erik Kooper, ed. Medieval Dutch Literature in Its European Context. Cambridge Studies in Medieval LIterature, no. 21. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 151-67.
The Dutch writer Potter (d. 1428) followed a career similar to Chaucer's and also translated the Old French "Melibee." Van Buuren discusses Gower's and Chaucer's uses of Ovid and analyzes Potter's "Der minnen loep" ("The Course of Love") for its use…
Erzgräber, Willi.
Erzgräber, Willi, and others. Europäisches Spätmittelalter (Wiesbaden: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1978), pp. 221-74.
Characterizes "Ricardian Literature" and discusses the major works of William Langland, John Gower, and Chaucer (pp. 246-69), focusing on social criticism and genre.
Examines all fifteenth-century witnesses of WBP, which are available on CD-Rom (SAC 20 [1998], no.11). Some scribes still had a system for the use of final -e, here studied in strong and weak adjectives in early, mid-, and late-fifteenth-century…
