Harvey, Nancy Lenz.
David G. Allen and Robert A. White, eds. The Work of Dissimilitude: Essays from the Sixth Citadel Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992), pp. 48-56.
Chaucer plays on his audience's awareness that Boccaccio (not Lollius) is the true source of TC; he also engages in similar play between the pagan setting of the poem and its Christian message.
Dor, Juliette, with Guido Latre.
Christine Pagnoulle, ed. Les gens du passage (Liege: Universite de Liege, 1992), pp. 85-91.
Discusses problems of translating medieval texts, especially CT and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," treating problems of cultural distance and reception as well as linguistic aspects.
Edmonds, David, and Lou Burnard.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
SGML-encoded version of the texts of "The Riverside Chaucer" (SAC 11 (1989), no. 11), without notes or other apparatus, readable on a personal computer or Macintosh.
Wynne-Davies, Marion, ed.
London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
An edition of WBPT and ClPT, based on the Hengwrt manuscript. The introduction and critical commentary address the social context of the works, discusssing Griselda and the Wife as accurate reflections of the medieval status of women.
Patterson, Lee.
David Aers, ed. Culture and History, 1350-1600: Essays on English Communities, Identities, and Writing (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), pp. 7-41.
During the reign of Richard II, love poetry such as Clanvowe's "Book of Cupid" was a means whereby courtiers could interrogate the "power, patronage and lordship" of the fetishized court. Patterson considers Clanvowe's allusions to Chaucer in this…
Steele, Elizabeth.
Henry James Review 13 (1992): 126-42.
Tallies parallels between James's "The American" and Chaucer's TC, including aspects of characterization (James "splits" Chaucer's major characters), plot, and diction.
Argues that English became the official language of England in the fifteenth century as the result of "deliberate, official policy." Dissemination of Chaucer's works and those of his followers suggests that the poet was chosen as the "cynosure" of a…
Aers, David, ed.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992.
Six essays by various hands explore and critique the notion of a steady rise of individualism underlying the traditional historical periodiztion of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Human identities in all times are functions of humans interacting in…
Klassen, N.
Stanford Humanities Review 2:2-3 (1992): 129-46.
Surveys the late-medieval science of optics, focusing on Alhazen, Grosseteste, Bacon, Ockham, and their links between optics and epistemology. In Boccaccio's "Filostrato," sight is merely a convention of courtly literature, but Chaucer's optical…
Valdes Miyares, Ruben.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature 2 (1992): 142-53.
Explores Chaucer's understanding of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth to argue that Criseyde's reference to Eurydice (TC 4.791) is the poet's way of "lending voice" to a classical figure who, like Criseyde, was the object of barter.
Schoeck, R[ichard] J.
Florilegium 11(1992): 124-40.
In TC, ironic effects are achieved through a rich exploration of a variety of rhetorical devices that create a complicated interplay between speaker, subject, and audience.
Baswell, Christopher (C.)
Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, eds. The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 121-60.
Medieval habits of reading characteristically produce "a voicing and an inscription of that voicing" (123), allowing for a fluidity of margin and text, reader and author. Geffrey's position as author and glossed text in LGWP and the Wife's position…
Bland, Cynthia Renee.
Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, eds. The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 213-35.
John of Cornwall's "Speculum grammaticale" uses English as well as Latin sentences for examples, and such vernacular pedagogy seems to have been widely established by late fourteenth century. The unidiomatic phrase "conservatyf the soun" (HF 847)…
Irvine, Martin.
Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, eds. The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 81-119.
Various practices of writing and formatting texts clarify how authors imagined writing and how readers received vernacular texts. Using models from cultural studies, editorial theory, semiotics, and traditions of medieval commentary, Irvine argues…
Despite traditional misconceptions of their relative chronology and a lack of specific verbal echoes, the "structural and thematic parallels" of BD and Froissart's "Dit dou Bleu Chevalier" indicate Chaucer's dependence on Froissart. Their common…
North, J. D.
Graziella Federici Vescovini and Francesco Barocelli, eds. Filosofia, scienza e astrologia nel Trecento europeo: Biagio Pelucani Parmense. Percorsi della scienza storia testi problemi, no. 2 (Padua: Poligrafi, 1992), pp. 95-104.
Surveys Chaucer's works for evidence of his knowledge and acceptance of astronomy and astrology. Argues that he uses astrological allegory as a structural device in his poetry.
Fyler, John M.
Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, eds. The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 193-211.
Medieval commentaries on the confusion of language introduced through the Tower of Babel (Genesis 10-11) illuminate the motif of linguistic disintegration that runs through SNT, CYT, and ManT. The associations of Nimrod with pride, magic, fire, and…
Surveys feminist criticism of Chaucer from 1977 forward, focusing on representative works rather than aiming to be exhaustive. Briefly contrasts Emelye of KnT with Alisoun of MilT.
Woods, Marjorie Curry.
Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, eds. The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 19-39.
Medieval rhetorical textbooks and school commentaries illuminate Chaucer's attention to literal meaning. Discussions of such devices as amplification and abbreviation help explain interrelations and conflicts between poetical structures and…
CT "shows a surprising array" of ways in which Chaucer "ignores, skirts, transcends, or even anticipates structural closure," engaging his readers in the "dialogic processes of discourse itself." Surveys techniques of openendedness in CT, arguing…
