Machan, Tim William.
Chaucer Review 55, no. 3 (2022): 317-26.
Traces the definition and history of "knarre' in GP, cataloguing evidence for both a Dutch and Old Norse etymology. Offers some considerations for the role of the lexicographer and historian in general by addressing the particular history and meaning…
Explores why the Parson is neither a rector nor a parish priest, examining historical contexts and speculating about Chaucer's intentions, especially as they relate to backgrounds to the "Summa de poenitentia."
Holland, Norman N.
College English 28 (1967): 279-90.
Reads WBT psychoanalytically, exploring its "sexual taboos," its phallic and vaginal significations, and the sexual fantasy that is "at the heart of the story." The tension between authority and submission in the Tale conveys meaning equally well for…
McGerr, Rosemarie P.
R. A. Shoaf, ed. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde: "Subgit to alle Poesye": Essays in Criticism. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, no. 104. Pegasus Paperbacks, no. 10 (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992), pp. 179-98.
The unresolved ending of TC capitalizes on concern with means and ends throughout the poem, encouraging readers to resist the illusion of closure in any act of interpretation.
Harvey, Patricia A.
Notes and Queries 213 (1968): 243-44.
Adduces two instances in Middle English of the use of "point" with musical connotations, and suggests that the use of the term in TC 3.695 gains complexity from such connotations.
Crane, Susan.
New Medieval Literatures 2 (1998): 159-79.
Suggests that "maying" shapes participants' sexuality, thereby furthering the "ritual's enactment of social status." Uses LGW as an example of the mirroring of human qualities in the natural world.
Barbaccia, Holly, Bethany Packard, and Jane Wanniger.
Merry Wiesner, ed. Gendered Temporalities in the Early Modern World (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), pp. 213-34.
Explores how the "unfulfilled outcomes" of characters who are possibly mothers or possibly pregnant in TC, MerT, Shakespeare's "All's Well that Ends Well," and John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" "simultaneously enable author, character, and…
Jost, Jean (E.)
Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Feminea Medievalia I: Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Academia Press, 1993), pp. 117-38.
Not acknowledged or accounted for, feminine desire is a powerful force in the plot of MerT. Because January ignores May's sexual desires, he involuntarily provokes her to pursue a more appropriate mate. May takes what January proffers--his money…
Sheridan, Christian.
Studies in Philology 102.1 (2005): 27-44.
Discusses how readers of MerT are encouraged to view all texts in mercantile terms and how texts (medieval texts in particular) are formed in the interactions among reader, author, and language. Both a product (a text to be consumed) and a producer…
Comments on the concern with propagating robust and pure lineages in numerous areas of medieval culture--including Chaucer's ClT, KnT, and MerT in particular. The denouement of the latter may be read as May's inserting herself into January's family…
Calabrese, Michael A.
Studies in Philology 87 (1990): 261-84.
Reason's speeches in the "Roman de la Rose" connect lust and avarice with merchants and thus provide a gloss for MerT. Amant, January, and the Merchant are similar moral types; the Merchant and January are dramatically related in that both marry…
Round, Nicholas G.
Hispanic Research Journal 11.1 (2010): 82-93.
Argues that Perez Galdos's "El amigo Manso" (1882) echoes TC in its concern with philosophical consolation, the theme of kinds of knowledge, and the narrator protagonist's mocking of his mourners in the afterlife. Like Troilus, Manso is an idealistic…
Examines "ironic references" to frame tales in Guy de Maupassant's story, "Boule de Suif," tallying similarities and differences between these references and Boccaccio's "Decameron," Chaucer's CT, and Marguerite de Navarre's "Heptaméron." Also…
Barker, Justin.
Dissertation Abstracts International A78.12 (2017): n.p.
Argues that Aristotelian theories of matter, form, and substance interact with medieval poetics, particularly in such works as ManT, SqT, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and those of Hoccleve and Metham.
Yvernault, Martine.
Waël Rabadi and Isabelle Bernard, eds. Médiévales 51 (Amiens: Presses du Centre d'Etudes Médiévales, Université de Picardie--Jules Verne, 2012), pp. 368-86.
Focuses on the oriental influences on Chaucer's SqT and on his treatment of the marvelous in light of the medieval controversial approach to mechanisms.
Thundy, Zacharias P.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 24-56.
An important immediate source of Chaucer's work is in the Latin "Lamentations of Matheolus," a thirteenth-century French cleric, whose work Jean le Fevre translated into French and expanded in the fourteenth century. In excess of one hundred…
Da Rold, Orietta.
Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin, eds. The Production of Books in England, 1350-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 12-33.
Da Rold's study of Cambridge University Library MS Dd.4.24 (a manuscript of CT) suggests that variations in shades of ink helps to disclose scribal habits of copying and emendation as well as the continuity of the exemplars used. Argues for further…
Robertson, Kellie.
In Holly A. Crocker and D. Vance Smith, eds. Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debates (New York; Routledge, 2014), pp. 367-75.
Explores the "cultural connotation of physical matter" expressed in gendered hylomorphic metaphors (matter/form) in the Medea accounts of LGW and John Lydgate's "Troy Book," arguing that Chaucer's representation raises questions about "the human as a…
Jacobs, Kathryn.
Cindy L. Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. New Perspectives on Criseyde (Fairview, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004), pp. 59-74.
Chaucer resists the prevailing "lusty widow" stereotype in his depictions of the Wife of Bath and Criseyde, paving the way for more positive images of widows on the Renaissance stage.
Questions the concept of a "standard edition" in the postmodern world of textual editing and uses the controversy about Adam Pinkhurst (Was he Chaucer's scribe cited in Adam?) as evidence that "medievalists really seek editorial closure," despite…
Includes (vol. 2, pp. 1030-31) a summary of the plot and main characters of TC, categorizing it as a "Chivalric romance," and praising it as an "almost perfectly constructed narrative poem" with "effective depiction of character" that "forecast[s]…
Wheatley, Edward.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2000.
Surveys the use of Latin beast fables in medieval schools and the legacy of this material in the works of late-medieval authors who were educated in the tradition and who wrote in English. Focuses on fables associated with the legendary Roman emperor…
Crocker, Holly A., and Tison Pugh.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec,eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 82-96.
Troilus's suffering in TC is informed by a "Christian economy" of pain that valorizes a new kind of manhood, one that activates others through its passivity and converts weakness to strength "through a managed display." Troilus's identity "emerges…
Reader-response analysis of various dramatic monologues. Shaw focuses on the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning and other Victorians but clarifies the functions of deception, self-deception, casuistry, irony, double irony, and Sartre's concept of…
