Genius's discourse on Orpheus in Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose" provides a vocabulary with which to address the sexuality of Chaucer's Pardoner. Genius's views on language, law, homosexuality, and art illuminate similar issues in PardT, linking…
Green, Richard Firth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 (1993): 131-45.
The breeches-kissing episode in PardT is analogous to fabliau narratives of the "Friar's Pants" in which a cuckolded husband is duped into believing that the cuckolder's pants are relics. Green adduces several versions of the account and suggests…
Maxfield, David K.
Chaucer Review 28 (1993): 148-63.
Viewed in historical context, the pardons of Chaucer's Pardoner likely were based on forged papal bulls associated with St. Mary's, a hospital with a questionable reputation. The Pardoner's lack of character provides an ironic contrast to the ideal…
When Chaucer notes in GP that the Pardoner could "wel affile his tongue," he is referring to the tongue as a weapon, a source of "slander and destruction," as noted in Psalms 56 and 63. Critics who have translated "affile" as "polish" have misread…
Thormann, Janet.
Literature and Psychology 39: 1-15, 1993.
A Lacanian analysis of ShT questions "the position of the speaking subject within the network of symbolic exchange. The narrative imbrecates three symbolic systems: speech, money, and sexual division . . . synonymously, as metaphors of each other,…
Hamaguchi, Keiko.
Hiroe Futamura, Kenichi Akishino, and Hisato Ebi, eds. A Pilgrimage Through Medieval Literature (Tokyo: Nan' Un-Do Press, 1993), pp. 123-44.
The verbal play on "debt" is elaborate and systematic in ShT, clarifying the social role and response of the wife.
Shibata, Takeo.
Hiroe Futamura, Kenichi Akishino, and Hisato Ebi, eds. A Pilgrimage Through Medieval Literature (Tokyo: Nan' Un-Do Press, 1993), pp. 145-63.
Examines double-entendre in ShT, especially with words that relate to characters' action.
Both the Proem to TC 3 and PrP praise celestial ladies, celebrate their influence on the world, and relate closely to the story that is to follow. Moreover, the works discuss the same topics in similar ways. Chaucer praises both physical and…
Harris, A. Leslie.
English Studies 74 (1993): 124-32.
Late-medieval instructional poetry presents children as adults saw them and with adults' worries about them. In late-medieval narrative poetry, children are almost entirely absent, apart from a few exceptions such as the Pearl-maiden, the clergeon…
Riddy, Felicity.
Carol M. Meale, ed. Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 104-27.
Contrasts Julian of Norwich's "Revelation of Love" as an "insider's" representation of feminine literary subculture with Chaucer's depictions in PrT and SNT and with materials in the Vernon manuscript. Even Chaucer could not achieve the "inwardness"…
Saito, Isamu.
Takashi Suzuki and Tsuyoshi Mukai, eds. Arthurian and Other Studies Presented to Sunichi Noguchi. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 31-38.
Compares the grain beneath the clergeon's tongue in PrT to parallel objects in analogous tales, arguing that the grain signifies martyrdom and that PrT combines aspects of tales of the Virgin with the theology of martyrdom.
The Monk (who, alone among the pilgrims, discusses both meter and genre at length) with his hundred tragedies can be viewed as a "rival poet" whose "imaginative narrowness," "verbal repetition," "tiresome" syntax, and encapsulated world view stand in…
Astell, Ann W.
Allen J. Frantzen, ed. Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell in the Middle Ages (N.p.: Illinois Medieval Association, 1993), pp. 53-64
Both NPT and Gower's "Vox clamantis" merge the figure of the crowing cock with the figures of the preacher and the poet, a response by each poet to the social challenges of the so-called Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Chaucer's ironic identification of…
Jankowski, Eileen S.
Dissertation Abstracts International 54 (1993): 1354-55A.
In light of Hans Jauss's reception theory, most scribes' and readers' glosses characterize SNT as either a study of Cecilia's personality or a reflection of Chaucer's religious nature. The narrative structure, however, places it at the juncture of…
Calabrese, Michael A.
Chaucer Review 27 (1993): 277-92.
The fourteenth-century "Antiovidianus," a satire on Ovidian art, provides a convenient way to view Chaucer's CYPT. The works share chemical, theological, and scatological imagery,illuminating Chaucer's constant exploration of the "tension between…
Patterson, Lee.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 (1993): 25-57.
Assesses alchemy as a verbal and social practice in Chaucer's day, arguing that alchemical discourse raised with particular intensity the problem of the verbal representation of truth; alchemical study helped undermine the clerical monopoly on…
Jember, Gregory K.
Takashi Suzuki and Tsuyoshi Mukai, eds. Arthurian and Other Studies Presented to Sunichi Noguchi. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 131-42.
Explores CYT and sections of Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" as works that foreshadow the Renaissance, attempting "to contain and understand the irrational and the numinous."
Four essays and two appendices place Bo in the "tradition of the academic study and translation of the 'Consolatio,'" clarifying the relative importance of such predecessors as William of Conches, Jean de Meun, anonymous commentators, and especially…
Stallcup, Stephen.
Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Feminea Medievalia I: Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Academia Press, 1993), pp. 43-68.
Examines Anelida's complaint in relation to the genre of amatory complaint, considering the role of gender in the genre. Anelida reclaims lyric space for herself by reworking the courtly, traditionally masculine form, balancing the illogic of…
Minnis, A. J.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Chaucer's "Boece" and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 83-166.
Surveys scholarly discussion of Chaucer's sources for his extrapolatory glosses in Bo, arguing that he was indebted to "some version of the Remigian glosses," to Jean de Meun's "livres de confort," and to a complete version of Nicholas Trevet's…
Minnis, A. J., and Tim William Machan.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Chaucer's "Boece" and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 167-88.
Assesses Bo and its fifteenth-century reception in light of the "well-defined and distinctive" tradition of "academic translation," i.e., as a reflection of the late-medieval interest in semiotics and textual explication. Although Chaucer never…
