Traces the medieval tradition of translating or adapting Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" into vernacular languages, especially French, and argues that Walton's verse translation of 1410 is an "improvement upon his model, Chaucer's prose" Bo,…
Chaucer's pilgrims reappear in the prologues of "The Tale of Beryn" (ca. 1410) and Lydgate's "Seige of Thebes" (1422) as "metafictions," or comments on Chaucer's GP; "Beryn" criticizes implicitly the lack of realism in Chaucer, and Lydgate portrays…
Boyd, Beverly.
Fifteenth-Century Studies, 1. Ed. Guy R. Mermier & Edelgard E. DuBruck. (Kalamazoo: Medieval Inst., Western Michigan University): pp. 15-21.
The influence of Italian poets on Chaucer is but one of many illustrations that the Italian Renaissance had reached fourteenth-century England. But a prevailing conservatism prevented the Renaissance from flourishing in fourteenth- and…
Flahiff, Frederick T.
Figures in a Ground: Canadian Essays in Modern Literature Collected in Honor of Sheila Watson. (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie, 1978), pp. 87-98.
The movement of "Gatsby" was compared to that of TC by Nancy Hoffman in 1971. However, the differences are as significant as the similarities. Fitzgerald's story reflects different preoccupations, a different age. Chaucer created something poised…
Wheatley, Edward.
Film & History Annual [n.v.] (2001-02): 1-9.
Similarities between Lee's "Get on the Bus" and CT include the following: a pilgrimage motif, shifting narrative levels, the figure of a Host, a similar cast of characters, and themes such as inconclusiveness and complicated Christian resolution.
Scala, Elizabeth.
Film History 29.1-2: 34-45, 1999.
Argues that the 1990 film Pretty Woman is understandable as an analogue to medieval Fair Unknown romances and that, like WBT, the film affirms and inverts the ideology of romance through self-conscious nostalgia.
Perez Martin, Ma. Jesus.
Filologia Moderna 6 (1966): 323-27.
Observes shifts in tone in NPT 7.2888-2907 (a conversation between Chanticleer and Pertelote), commenting on how these shifts contribute to characterization and drama.
Tabulates and analyzes analytic (more/most) and synthetic (-er/-est) forms of comparatives and superlatives in Chaucer's prose works (Bo, Astr, Mel, ParsT), correlating them with Old English and French derivations of the root words.
Scanlon, Larry.
Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds. The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 220-56.
Scanlon considers contemporary ideas of vernacular literature and its potential for "subversiveness" through incompleteness, focusing on the concept of "poet laureate" as introduced into English by Chaucer in ClT and on the interdependence of…
Hanawalt, Barbara A.
Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds. Truth and Tales: Cultural Mobility and Medieval Media (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015), pp. 168–86.
Discusses Chaucer's use of humor in describing the "thieving millers" in GP and RvT. Looks at class and social issues among food providers, including cooks, bakers, and taverners, and civic governing entities responsible for overseeing production of…
Van Dussen, Michael.
Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds. Truth and Tales: Cultural Mobility and Medieval Media (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015), pp. 238-56.
Discusses significance of tables and "narrative 'tabulae'" in late-medieval England. Addresses the tabular text in HF.
Hahn, Thomas.
Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds. Truth and Tales: Cultural Mobility and Medieval Media (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015), pp. 41-59.
Provides a "newly broadened context for Chaucer's obsession with Dido," and looks at Chaucer's narrators in HF and LGW.
Somerset, Fiona.
Fiona Somerset, Jill C. Havens, and Derrick G. Pitard, eds. Lollards and Their Influence in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 127-38.
Argues that details of SumT gain dimension in light of the contemporary debate concerning the Eucharist and transubstantiation as recorded in the "Upland Series." Division of the indivisible fart is a blasphemous joke on questions of divisibility in…
Brewer, Derek.
Flemming G. Andersen and Morten Nojgaard, eds. The Making of the Couple: The Social Function of Short-Form Medieval Narrative: A Symposium (Odense: Odense University Press, 1991), pp. 129-43.
Surveys views on sex and marriage in Chaucer's works and argues that his fabliaux reflect human desires to escape from and to re-create the couple. The brevity of the fabliau limits the possibilities of readers' identification with the characters…
Salter, Elizabeth,and Derek Pearsall.
Flemming G. Andersen, Esther Nyholm, Marianne Powell, and Flemming Talbo Stubkjaer, eds. Medieval Iconography and Narrative: A Symposium (Odense: Odense University Press, 1980), pp. 100-23.
The study of the relationship of text to picture in medieval manuscripts is worthwhile, but seldom performed for Middle English texts, especially Chaucer, except for the "Troilus" frontispiece in Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 61. It is…
Dor, Juliette.
Florence Alazard, ed. La plainte au Moyen-Âge (Paris: Champion, 2008), pp. 181-93.
Comments on Chaucer's ventriloquist complaints (in LGW and TC) and examines the length, structure, position, tone, and function of the genre in FranT. While they were initially types, major characters gain dimension. Dorigen's second soliloquy…
In KnT, Chaucer presents Arcite's love sickness in scientific terms. Boccaccio reveals Arcite to be changed into a savage-looking creature, whereas Chaucer's description recreates the ideal world of chivalry.
Pelen, Marc M.
Florilegium 10 (1991, for 1988): 107-25.
Can one reconcile in a "single poetic focus" the contradictory voices of MerT? Plato, Claudian, Boethius, and especially Ovid distinguish between true and false fictions on the basis of whether legend is used to recognize cosmological order or to…
Haines, Victor Yelverton.
Florilegium 10 (1991, for 1988): 127-49.
A close reading of Ret, with attention to medieval meanings of such words as "revoke" and "guilt," suggests that Chaucer takes responsibility not for writing works of vanity but for wrong readings of his poetry made possible by his habits of ironic…
Delany, Sheila.
Florilegium 10 (1991, for 1988): 83-92.
Deeply rooted in late-medieval social and religious ambivalence toward women, Chaucer's poetry both subverts and asserts traditional gender differences, as seen in LGWP, FranT, and WBP.
Haas, Renate.
Florilegium 10 (1991, for 1988): 93-98.
Richly rhetorical and allusive, Chaucer's "Go, litel bok" stanza, in its undercutting of the opposition between "makyng" and "poesye," reflects his ambivalence toward the new classicizing poetics of trecento Italy.
Boyd, Beverly.
Florilegium 10 (1991, for 1988): 99-105.
Chaucer is more attentive to the noises produced by people and their actions than to those of natural phenomena. He often suggests noises rather than describing them directly. His noisiest passages involve tournaments, chases, and music.
While we cannot be sure of Chaucer's pronunciation of "Berwyk" (CT 1.792), one manuscript version of Bradwardine's memory treatise may suggest the loss of medial (w).
