Traces the medieval legend and cult of Saint Loy the horsesmith, especially from British sources; identifies references to the saint in GP and FrT. Two gazetteers assemble artistic and cultural evidence for the legend in Europe and the British…
Brown, Peter, and Andrew Butcher.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Examines CT within the social and political life of the later fourteenth century. Chaucer had an unusually assimilative, syncretic, and integrative imagination, but he lived at a time of disintegrating social and religious forms and values. He was…
Eberle, Patricia J.
M. L. Friedland, ed. Rough Justice: Essays on Crime in Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), pp. 19-51.
Medieval notions of crime were broader than modern ones. Chaucer's views on justice and crime, as reflected in FrT, MLT, and ClT, are elusive. It seems he was "seriously doubtful about the value and practical application of any systematic view of…
Felch, Susan M.
Medieval Perspectives 6 (1991): 144-53.
The realist-nominalist debate underlies Chaucer's language, which, through multiple discourses and by analogy, embodies social order. By withholding his authority, Chaucer delegates responsibility for moral decisions to his readers.
Frese, Dolores Warwick.
Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991.
The twofold purpose of this study is "first, to demonstrate the originality and complexity of Chaucer's intertextual practice . . .; second, to advance the claims of the Ellesmere manuscript as the poetic text best reflecting Chaucer's final…
Ganim, John, M.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 34 (1991):88-100.
Investigates the ways CT problematizes the medium of speech and, through its self-conscious narrators, comments on the changing value of spoken language. Though Chaucer preserves and allows resistance to the tyrannies of high literary form, his…
Goodwin, Amy Wright.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 533A.
Analyzes how GP and the dramatic links in CT affect reader interest and narrative. Suggests that the Clerk misreads allegory for mimesis and critiques Petrachan poetics and the narrowness of the moral, exemplary tales.
Jordan, Robert M.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 96-107.
Gothic aesthetic combines opposing propensities for regularity and embellishment. These features are manifest in Dante's Commedia, while CT is more irregular and improvisatory.
Tripp, Raymond P., Jr.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 141-58.
Argues that the difference between the mechanical powers of humans and the essential power of God is central to the literary discussion of craft. Concern with craft as natural religion and with faith as the canonical craft provides a strong thread…
Neuse, Richard.
Berkeley. Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1991.
CT responds to Dante's Commedia in a "conscious attempt " to continue its "poetic tradition" of pilgrimage narrative. Chaucer's pilgrims "comment or focus on one or more aspects of the Dantean pilgrimage," and both works define the human image and…
Taylor, Paul Beekman.
English Studies 72 (1991): 209-18.
Chaucer's knights reflect three errors in their service of love: (1) the subjection of women's bodies to male wills for the sake of public order and honor (KnT, FranT, PhyT); (2) the rapine pursuit of women's bodies for pride or lust (MLT, WBT,…
Discusses Chaucer's characterization of the Summoner in GP and asserts that, despite modern assumptions, it is based on the confluence of medical and astrological theories prevalent during Chaucer's time.
Cigman, Gloria.
Literature and Theology 5 (1991): 162-80.
Although elite cultural views, such as those of theologians, set the polarities of moral judgment as good and evil, vernacular writings in Middle English--including Lollard sermons, Piers Plowman, and CT--set up instead a dialectic of sin and evil. …
Cooney, Helen.
Studia Neophilologica 63 (1991): 147-59.
Argues that social identity is fundamental to description of each pilgrim and determines how each is presented; examines how Chaucer presents himself in rhetorical terms, with particular reference to the "diminutio" of GP 745-48.
David, Alfred.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, n.s., 2 (1991): 23-30.
Individual GP pilgrims represent distinct groups or organizations within medieval society, epitomizing social diversity--yet the community functions as a cohesive whole.
Hodges, Laura F.
Chaucer Review 26 (1991): 133-46.
Places the Monk in the mainstream of medieval monastic modes of dress; his "grys," his boots, and his gold pin are not excessive in comparison to clerical fashions and practices of the period.
Following the example set in V. A. Kolve's Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, Brown develops the mimetic and iconographic relations of the prison in KnT and the castle in Roman de la Rose.
Comparison of traditional rites to the feelings and actions of the characters shows that lack of structure does not mean disorder. Moore contends that there is no correlation between ritual and the outcome of KnT; in fact, a ritualistic beginning…
Woods, William F.
Studies in Philology 88 (1991): 276-306.
Discusses Emelye's role as Prime Mover in KnT, "structurally and thematically central to the tale" and parallel to Saturn's role as mediator among the gods. Central in each of the four parts of the tale, she develops from a chaste maid in the garden…
Discusses herb paris as a premedieval symbol of Christ's passion and divine love, traces its development from religious to romantic sign, and explores its dual meaning in MilT.
Deliberately drawn links between Alisoun of MilT and the Wife of Bath enable Chaucer to carry forward the moral and spiritual implications of the scriptural allusions in MilT, using them to inform and reinforce the audience's response to WBP.
