Straus, Barrie Ruth.
Straus, Barrie Ruth, ed. Skirting the Texts: Feminisms' Re-Readings of Medieval and Renaissance Texts. Special Issue of Exemplaria 4 (1992): 135-68.
Examines the interrelations of "truth," "freedom," and "woman" as these terms are constructed in FranT. The Franklin's masculinist discourse posits distinctions between truth and fiction, appearance and reality, plain speaking and rhetoric, although…
Harley, Marta Powell.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 91 (1992): 1-16.
Chaucer's four additions to the story of Virginia can be explained, and the whole poem understood, as clarifications of "her allegorical role as the human soul" in rejecting sin.
The rhetorical trope 'translatio' subsumes metaphor, allegory,and irony, providing a basis for understanding how the Pardoner translates himself into his characters and the Old Man into the rioters. The Pardoner represents his own Otherness while…
DiMarco, Vincent.
Leeds Studies in English 23 (1992): 105-26.
While Chaucer undoubtedly mined John of Wales's Communiloquium for details in PardT, he also consulted Jerome's Letter 22, to Eustochium, for details not found in John's florilegium. Comparison of PardT with Jerome's letter elucidates Chaucer's…
Finnegan, Robert Emmett.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 93 (1992): 303-12.
The verb "assoillen" and the noun "bulle," two terms that cluster in the prologue and epilogue to PardT, engage in wordplay with "soilen" and "boles" respectively. The Pardoner, who implicity claims to be God, attempts to "soilen" the pilgrims…
Homan, Delmar C.
Proceedings of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 1 (1991): 82-96.
Physically, and by his associations with hares and the Summoner, the Pardoner is a grotesque, analogous to a major feature of the English Decorated Style in the visual arts. Also, the Pardoner is homosexual.
Matsuda, Takami.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 91 (1992): 313-24.
The Pardoner's pragmatic claims for salvation are part of a larger "question of Christian worldly prudence" in CT. His "response to his own tale . . . alerts us to the growth of a pragmatic attitude toward individual death and salvation."
Purdon, L. O.
Studies in Philology 89 (1992): 334-49.
Summarizes the theological tradition of second or eternal death that results from mortal sin. The concept is reflected in the figure of the Old Man, who is paradoxically both in death and deathless.
Thum, D. Maureen.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 261-79.
Using the same folkloric motif as exemplum, Chaucer and Kipling conflate it with other motifs to form a new configuration; both embed the narrative in a series of fictive frames and modify it by commentary of multiple fictive voices. A comparative…
Alexander, Philip S.
Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 74 (1992): 109-20.
Reviews anti-Semitism in PrT from a historical point of view. Defines anti-Semitism and its typical features: the death of the clergeon mirrors that of Christ; the Jews are linked with the devil; and they engage in usury. PrT is definitely…
Godfrey, Mary Flavia.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1992): 492A.
Beheading appears frequently in Indo-European, Old Germanic, and Old and Middle English narratives, with varying connotations. The textual history of PrT shows this element as sometimes deleted and sometimes restored.
Examines PrT and the Prioress's sketch in GP as reflexes of gender performance and the historical conditions that shaped such performances. The anti-Semitism of her tale results from her suppression of her "bodiliness," represented in a fetishizing…
Since Chaucer uses the same passage in the Roman de la Rose as a source for the Prioress and the Wife of Bath, these two characters "are bonded in ironic literary sisterhood."
Mel suggests that interpretative perspective is crucial to meaning. Like the rest of fallen nature, language is indeterminate, so prudence is required to make sense of contingent existence. Apparent contradictions in Mel disappear if we understand…
Grace, Dominick M.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1992): 492A-93A.
Although critics have generally seen Mel as a simple allegory in fairly close translation, the Tale departs from Renaud in significant ways to question the nature of authority (good advice can be wrong; authorities can disagree; motivations can…
Dane, Joseph A.
Notes and Queries 237 (1992): 276-78.
Line 3164 of NPT includes a pun, for "confusio" is also a technical term referring to the meaning of words. The joke: an apparent mistranslation is not one.
"Glossa Ordinaria" and NPT demonstrate the medieval tendency to accompany a base text with another, more interpretive one, generating further discourse, discouraging closure, and resulting in compound, sometimes conflicting, interpretations or…
In CT, Chaucer "counters authority with the fracturing and multiple perspective of comedy," most clearly seen in NPT, which best represents the structure of the CT as a whole. Chaucer's multiplicity is ultimately, however, like Boethius's leap "to…
Johnson, Lynn Staley.
Studies in Philology 89 (1992): 314-33.
Reads SNT as paralleling Wycliffite dissent, arguing that Chaucer's alterations of his sources emphasize Cecilia's challenges to institutional values and power.
Longsworth, Robert M.
Chaucer Review 27 (1992): 87-96.
Considers transformation "both as a theme and as a methodological problem." In SNT, faith is more "real" than experience, while in CYT, the "real" is not accessible to the Canon. Chaucer experiments with the relationship between the material and…
Patton, Celeste A.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 399-417.
The Manciple evinces linguistic fraud through his digression on language, his shaping of the crow fable, and his impersonation of his mother's voice arguing against speech (a mispresentation of Jean de Meun's discourse of Reason and a foil to the…
ManT is central to understanding the CT. Its primary theme is a warning against the danger of intentional blindness to sin or vice. Through comparison with Machaut's "Voir dit," we see that the bird in ManT illustrates the folly of self-deception.
Sadlek, Gregory M.
Klaus Jankofsky, ed. The South English Legendary: A Critical Assessment (Tubingen: A. Francke, 1992), pp. 49-64.
In "St. Michael," the image of the Devil's five fingers is a homiletic, mnemonic device to convey a lesson on sin. Chaucer's version in ParsT has a clear literary quality.
Machan, Tim William.
A. N. Doane and others, eds. Old English and New: Essays in Language and Linguistics in Honor of Frederic G. Cassidy (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 111-24.
Explores Chaucer's lexical and stylistic experimentation in Bo, assessing how its 516 different words reflect the philosophical content of the original and a desire for lexical variety.
