McCarren, Vincent P.,and Douglas Moffat, eds.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.
Nineteen essays by various authors that together seek to "raise the standard of scholarly editing for Middle English texts," describing theories and problems of editing and offering practical recommendations on how to edit. The contributors explore…
Perfetti, Lisa Renée.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
Explores literary representations of women's laughter from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries and examines the contexts that shaped how women told jokes. The Wife of Bath's use of play coincides with Chaucer's own, dramatizing antifeminism as…
Adams, Jenny, and Nancy Mason Bradbury, eds
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.
Collection of essays that represents multifaceted views of gender and material culture in late medieval France and England. For seven essays that pertain to Chaucer search for Medieval Women and Their Objects under Alternative Title.
Nakley, Susan.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.
Examines the views that accept Chaucer's nationalism as a given and those that focus on his international or European identity and vision. Draws on concepts of sovereignty and domesticity appearing "primarily in romantic and household contexts," and…
Blurton, Heather, and Hannah Johnson.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.
Explores the anti-Semitism of PrT, producing "a discussion animated by the ways in which antisemitism has emerged as the problematic that organizes scholarly response," and resists dismissing or excusing prejudice and hate in PrT. Tracks history of…
Staley, Lynn.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020.
Concentrates on Anne of Bohemia, Chaucer and the trinity, and the figure of the medieval merchant: "three 'offices' of the active life as they underpin Chaucer's growing understanding of the relationship between individuals and their communities."
Boenig, Robert.
Ann Hurley and Kate Greenspan, eds. So Rich a Tapestry: The Sister Arts and Cultural Studies (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1995), pp. 181-99.
Like the "Cloisters Apocalypse," HF depicts the Day of Judgment. Both works "select, rearrange, and fragment" the biblical account of the apocalypse, reminding us that interpretation is necessary for sinners.
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Ann W. Astell and J. A. Jackson, eds. Levinas and Medieval Literature: The "Difficult Reading" of English and Rabbinic Texts (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009), pp. 185-206.
Reads courtly love in TC through a Levinasian lens: courtly desire is ethical because it is never satisfied. Yet, Criseyde's case disallows a direct application of Levinasian ethical theory. Mitchell comments on the role of fortune in TC, the…
Astell, Ann W.
Ann W. Astell and J. A. Jackson, eds. Levinas and Medieval Literature: The "Difficult Reading" of English and Rabbinic Texts (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009), pp. 255-80.
Two talmudic tales interpreted by Levinas complement PardT in "uncanny ways." While Chaucer explores the impossibility of forgiveness from the perspective of the offender, the talmudic tales explore the impossibility of forgiveness from the…
Yager, Susan.
Ann W. Astell and J. A. Jackson, eds. Levinas and Medieval Literature: The "Difficult Reading" of English and Rabbinic Texts (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009), pp. 35-56.
Examines parallels between Levinas's writing and medieval allegory. Yager reads ClT in a Levinasian mode to generate an open-ended reading or "an exercise in ifs." ClT can be read as an ethical allegory; Chaucer, as an ethical allegorist. Yager…
Takada, Yasunari.
Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton, eds. Platonism and the English Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 45-51.
Chaucer's treatment of Neoplatonic concerns with love, ascent to heaven, and nature is characterized "by obliqueness, a sense of humour and even irony."
Schaefer, Ursula.
Anna Kathrin Bleuler and Manfred Kern, eds. Poesie des Widerstreits: Etablierung und Polemik in den Literaturen des Mittelalters (Heidelberg: Winter, 2020), pp. 271-98.
Shows not only that Th is a send-up of the tail-rhyme romance and its conventions, but that the poem's metadiscursive horizon of expectation, established by means of the characterization of Chaucer the Pilgrim, resonates in the tale and reveals…
Yvernault, Martine.
Anna Kukułka-Wojtasik, ed. Translatio i Literatura (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2011), pp. 371-83.
This comparative study of the two texts, based on the same motif of the gathering of birds, aims at exposing the spiritual and moral differences of the works. The theological and philosophical intention in Attar has disappeared in Chaucer's treatment…
Bertolet, Craig E.
Anna Riehl Bertolet and Carole Levin, eds. Creating the Premodern in the Postmodern Classroom: Creativity in Early English Literature and History Courses (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018), pp. 83-93.
Describes how to use Pierre Bourdieu's notion of "habitus" and the modern idea of public relations to help students explore how and to what extent the punishments in MilT are or are not "fair"; students are grouped as PR advocates for each of the…
Weisl, Angela Jane.
Anna Roberts, ed. Violence Against Women in Medieval Texts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 115-36.
Though Chaucer grants women agency in CT, they act against a background of violence that is often ignored or mitigated. The fabliaux, the romances, and the religious narratives all present violence against women as a normal part of society. WBT comes…
Argues that Chaucer's similes cannot be explained in terms of imitation of Dante and Boccaccio or direct imitation of classical models. Instead, following the example of Dante and Boccaccio, Chaucer practiced a "poetics of vernacularization,"…
Beal, Rebecca S.
Annali d'Italianistica 18: 175-98, 2000.
Concerned with issues of closure in texts of Guillaume de Lorris, Dante, and Boccaccio. Introduction notes recent criticism treating Chaucer's "open endings."
Dauby, Hélène.
Anne Berthelot, ed. "Pur remembrance": Mélanges en mémoire de Wolfgang Spiewok. WODAN, no. 79; Greifswalder Beitrge zum Mittelalter, no. 66. (Greifswald: Reineke-Verlag, 2001), pp. 131-41.
TC illustrates the mechanisms of perception, memory, and imagination as defined by fourteenth-century scientific theories. The two protagonists are enmeshed in a net of gazes--their own as well as those of others--and the narrative unfolds as viewed…
Labère, Nelly.
Anne Birberick, Russell J. Ganim, and Hugh G. A. Roberts, eds. Obscenity. EMF: Studies in Early Modern France, no. 14 (Charlottesville, N.C.: Rookwood, 2010), pp. 41-57.
Explores the nature and constitutive motifs of obscenity in the twelfth-century "Lidia," Boccaccio's "Decameron" 7.9, MerT, and the fifteenth-century "Cent nouvelles nouvelles."
Lane, Robert C.
Anne C. Hargrove and Maurine Magliocco, eds. Portraits of Marriage in Literature (Macomb: Western Illinois University, 1984), pp. 107-24.
The marriage speech of Averagus and Dorigen is of pivotal importance in understanding the dynamics of their marriage. Human interaction does not guarantee valid or shared meaning.
Schmidt, Gary D.
Anne C. Hargrove and Maurine Magliocco, eds. Portraits of Marriage in Literature (Macomb: Western Illinois University, 1984), pp. 97-105.
Chaucer uses enfolding irony in MerT and FranT to examine the good marriage, with insights on courtly love and adultery through shifting perspectives and character conflict.
