Hardman, Phillipa.
Modern Language Review 85 (1990): 545-54.
Chaucer employs the Orpheus story from Boethius in KnT and TC as an archetype of the tragedy of love. He relies on the Orpheus myth primarily as a narrative pattern, not as a philosophical fable or moral allegory.
Kaske, R. E.
David G. Allen and Robert A. White, eds. Traditions and Innovations: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990) pp. 11-34.
KnT and MLT are complementary philosophical narratives. In KnT, Chaucer turns "Boccaccio's narrative of event . . . into a narrative poem about wisdom." The treatment of Fortune is pagan, with Palamon and Arcite representing contrasting patterns of…
Nolan, Edward Peter.
Edward Peter Nolan. Now Through a Glass Darkly: Specular Images of Being and Knowing from Virgil to Chaucer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990) pp. 193-217.
Contrasts Dante's clarity and order in the dead world of the "Commedia" with Chaucer's living world of CT, seen "in a glass darkly." Discusses Chaucer's appropriations from Dante: passages, images and ideas, and subtle influences--how the "living…
Axton, Richard.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp.21-38.
Dr. Johnson called Gower "Chaucer's master." But who is creditor and who is debtor? The two poets allude to each other's work and appear to be mutually indebted; also, they share a large body of common stories, themes, and forms in their works. …
Baldwin, Anna.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp.199-212.
By looking at two surviving "Patient Grissel" plays, the prose chapbook, and the ballad on the same subject, Baldwin shows that the popularity of Chaucer's ClT extended into the sixteenth century. Greene loosely modeled his "Pandosto" on the story…
Boitani, Piero.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1990), pp. 185-98.
Boitani studies the chain of literary works that stem from Chaucer's KnT, namely "The Two Noble Kinsmen" of Shakespeare and Fletcher and Dryden's "Palamon and Arcite." The story of Palamon and Arcite has features in common with that of Troilus and…
Burrow, J. A.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1990), pp. 54-61.
Hoccleve, a personal acquaintance of Chaucer, received personal instruction from Chaucer in the art of English poetry. Hoccleve remains firmly subordinated to his master poet of imaginary worlds, but his distinctive strength is his being "a poet of…
Dor, Juliette.
Emmanuele Baumgartner and Jean-Pierre Leduc-Aldine, eds. Moyen Age et XIXe Siecle: Le mirage des origines. Actes du Colloque Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle, Parix X-Nanterre, 5 et 6 mai 1988. (Litterales 6 (1990): 107-16.)
After a short survey of France's discovery of medieval English literature, especially Chaucer, in the nineteenth century, Dor describes the main features of Chatelain's first complete translation of CT into French, published in London from 1857 to…
Esolen, Anthony M.
Studies in Philology 87 (1990): 285-311.
Spenser imitated Chaucer's bumbling narrative stance and tone and employed Chaucerian allusions to feign a humility that dismarmed criticism and enabled him to undercut the Tudor myth. Further, he expected his reader to understand the pretense. …
Gray, Douglas.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1990), pp. 81-90.
King James, Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas were influenced by Chaucer rhetorically and stylistically, as well as in their choices of genre; but Gray emphasizes the influence of Chaucer's ideas and themes--noting particularly how Chaucer's "powers" of…
Heffernan, Thomas J.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1990), pp.155-67.
Chaucer's canon evolved alongside a substantial body of virtually contemporary apocryphal texts attributed to him. But before the end of the last century, judgment concerning a text's authenticity was often indebted to extratextual biases: the…
Scattergood, John.
Keith Busby and Erik Kooper, eds. "Courtly Liberature: Culture and Context" (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1990), pp. 499-508.
Much of the scholarship on Chaucer's "Adam" has focused on identification. But "many of Chaucer's shorter poems are genre pieces in which personal statement emerges by way of a treatment of conventional matters; a traditional type of poem is…
Crampton, Georgia Ronan.
Medium Aevum 59 (1990): 191-213.
Provides critical analysis of Chaucer's "ABC," examining in turn its genre, plot, two characters, style, and reception, and comparing it to its source.
Watts, William H.
Dissertation Abstracts International 51 (1990): 1224A-1225A.
Though read as tragedy, comedy or satire, TC can be understood as "compilatio" or Bakhtinian "polyglossa." With Boccaccio's plot of tragic love, Chaucer incorporates a subtext of Boethian philosophy (as treated by Jean de Meun) and allusions to…
Despite pressures of late-twentieth-century scholarship to make Chaucer's poetry as difficult and allusive as possible,scholars need to distinguish between Chaucer's use of sources that would have been obscure or unobtainable for his…
Shigeo, Hisashi.
Meiji Gakuin Ronso 453: English and American Literature 75 (1990): 1-32.
Criseyde's love of Troilus could be the cause of her love affair with Diomede. This article corrects, supplements, and reinforces the conclusion of an article by the same name in "Poetica" 29-30 (1989): 39-57.
Orr, Patricia R.
Jane Chance, ed. The Mythographic Art: Classical Fable and the Rise of the Vernacular in Early France and England (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1990), pp.159-76.
Traces the allegorical tradition of the Judgment of Paris from Fulgentius through Bersuire and other fourteenth-century writers (especially sources of the Troilus story) and examines Chaucer's use of and allusions to the myth. The journey of Troilus…
Hiscoe, David W.
David G. Allen and Robert A. White, eds. Traditions and Innovations: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), pp. 35-49.
Although the narrator of TC tries to separate pagan from Christian and body from spirit, the poem's allusions to 2 Corinthinians are an "indictment of (his) disastrous attempt to sunder the heavenly and the earthly."
Heffernan, Carol F.
Neophilologus 74 (1990): 294-309.
Considers the medieval medical views on "amor hereos" and Chaucer's descriptions of it, first in KnT and BD, then in TC. In TC 1, Chaucer shows Troilus as suffering from the lover's disease, to which the consummation of his love in bk. 3 is, from a…
Hanly, Michael G.
Norman, Okla. : Pilgrim Books, 1990.
Investigates "topics relevant to the central question: Did Chaucer use the 'Roman de Troyle' of Beauvau, Seneschal of Anjou," in the composition of TC? Hanly reviews a number of candidates for authorship of the "Roman" and concludes that Chaucer…
Fleming, John V.
Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Engages major critics of TC on the matter of interpretation, accepting the Robertsonian definition of TC as a tragedy and viewing Robertson's work as implicit in three decades of critical controversy. Examines textual dilemmas basic to the…
Delahoyde, Michael.
Dissertation Abstracts International 50 (1990): 3223A.
Chaucer's prosody has been underrated. With its unity, completeness, and carefully developed stanzas, TC demonstrates Chaucer's mastery of sound and sense.
