Gardham, Julie, comp., and David Weston, introd.
Glasgow: Glasgow University Library, 2004.
Brief discussion of six Chaucerian books and twenty-five related works, with a highly selective bibliography. For an expanded version, see http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/chaucer/index.html (May 19, 2005).
McLeod, Glenda.
Glenda McLeod, Virtue and Venom: Catalogs of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Women and Culture Series. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), pp. 81-109.
Contrary to critical tradition, Chaucer did not necessarily abandon LGW in boredom. A reading with attention to the discrepancies between LGWP and the legends, and to their ordering and their figurative language, reveals a careful and purposeful…
Burger, Glenn.
Glenn Burger and Steven Kruger, eds. Queering the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 213-35.
Argues that Chaucer set the standard for discourse on heterosexuality and modernity, even though modern study has written over his "queer touch." Exemplifies the gendered instability of Chaucer's text by contrasting the normativizing power of…
Trigg, Stephanie.
Glenn D. Burger and Holly A. Crocker, eds. Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 25-46.
Highlights the connections between uses of the phrase "weeping like a beaten child" in both Chaucer and Malory, simultaneously exploring the semantic range of weeping elsewhere. These examinations offer further important lessons about the history of…
Bryant, Brantley L.
Glenn D. Burger and Holly A.Crocker, eds. Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 118-38.
Argues that RvT reworks its fabliau sources alongside then-contemporary texts about manorial control and operation such as "Walter of Henley," and traces this depiction of an "affective economy." Analysis helps to foreground how the Reeve's manorial…
Burger, Glenn D.
Glenn D. Burger and Holly A.Crocker, eds. Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 90-117.
Compares the Wife's presentation of her conduct in WBPT to the conduct book" Le ménagier de Paris," and shows how the Wife's record of her activities and the presentation of negative emotions function as essentially a reversal of the "Ménagier."…
Stanbury, Sarah.
Glenn D. Burger and Rory C. Critten, eds. Household Knowledges in Late-Medieval England and France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), pp. 129-53.
Focuses on "household music" and the "intermingled melodies of birdsong and . . . musical instruments" in ManT. Argues that ManT can be analyzed as a "poignant record of the vibrant household world filled with music and song" that is connected to…
Thirty-four essays--half in German, half in English--by various authors. Topics range from general discussions of the reception of the Middle Ages in traditional art and literature to medievalism in architecture and modern and postmodern film,…
Simpson, James.
Gordon McMullan and David Matthews, eds. Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 17-30.
Whereas fifteenth-century writers such as Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Skelton wrote texts that engaged in "a kind of conversation" with Chaucer, sixteenth-century writers treated Chaucer as a distant topic of philological study. Simpson argues that this…
Matthews, David.
Gordon McMullan and David Matthews, eds. Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 74-88.
Matthews focuses on Thomas Speght's 1598 and 1602 editions of Chaucer and their role in re-imagining Chaucer as an Early Modern rather than a medieval author. The prefatory poem, "The Reader to Geffrey Chaucer," suggests that early editions had…
Crawford, Hannah.
Gordon McMullan, Lena Cowen Orlin, and Virginia Mason Vaughan, eds. Women Making Shakespeare: Text, Reception and Performance (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 25-34.
Shows that the list of hard words included in Thomas Speght's 1602 edition of Chaucer's "Werkes" influenced the linguistic inventiveness of Shakespeare and Fletcher's "Two Noble Kinsmen."
Crawforth, Hannah.
Gordon McMullan, Lena Cowen Orlin, and Virginia Mason Vaughn, eds. Women Making Shakespeare: Text, Reception, Performance (New York: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2014), pp. 25-34.
Explores aspects of the diction of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," focusing on nuances derived from the glossaries in Thomas Speght's editions of Chaucer's Works, with particular attention to KnT, the source of "Kinsmen," and to issues of gender identity.
Pratt, Karen, Bart Besamusca, Matthias Meyer, and Ad Putter, eds.
Göttingen: V&R Academic, 2017.
Twenty-three essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors, all of which pertain to the study of medieval short narratives as they appear in multi-text manuscripts, addressing concerns such as "miscellaneity," paratexts, genres,…
Thompson, John J.
Graham Allen, Carrie Griffen, and Mary O'Connell, eds. Readings on Audience and Textual Materiality (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), pp. 9–21.
Considers the shifts from orality to literacy and from manuscripts to printed books in late medieval English book culture, examining the range of implications about audiences evident in various versions of the lyric "Erthe upon erthe." Opens with…
Aers, David.
Graham D. Caie and Michael D. C. Drout, eds. Transitional States: Change, Tradition, and Memory in Medieval Literature and Culture (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018), pp. 235-48.
Treats the concerns of "faith, miracle, and conversion" in SNT, separating the tale from its "putative and absent narrator" and emphasizing its orthodoxy in the relation between faith and understanding, sexuality and marriage, and female deference to…
Yiavis, Kostas.
Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 9: 13-29, 2001.
Chaucer's depreciation of the father figure (biological, theological, literary predecessor) enables him to conceive of poetry separate from the needs for stable interpretation and didactic meaning. Throughout his corpus, his "polyvocal…
Mack, Dana, and David Blankenhorn, eds.
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001.
The chapter entitled "Who's the Head of the Family?" includes the modern translation of WBPT by A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt, somewhat abridged.
Cavill, Paul, and Heather Ward.
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2007.
Summaries of literary works, plus study questions designed for self-teaching, ranging from works of Bede and Caedmon to those of Philip Larkin and Edna O'Brien, with a summary of biblical plots, Christian history, hymns, and a glossary of terms. Two…
Azevedo, Natanael Duarte.
Graphos: Revista da Pós-Graduaçao em Letras 15.2 (2013): 122-49.
Explores the uses of the Seven Deadly Sins in David Fincher's movie, "Seven" (1995), comparing his treatment of the sins with that of Thomas Aquinas; includes discussion of how, in the film, attrition rather than contrition is involved, exemplifying…
In The General Prologue, Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of Good Women Prologue, The Friar's Tale, and The Summoner's Tale, Chaucer probes the indeterminacy of language and his own precarious use of words as means to truth. Discusses Diomede's use…
