Jeffrey, David Lyle.
David Lyle Jeffrey. House of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (Waco, Tx,: Baylor University Press, 2003), pp. 87-110.
Considers the three-part structure of HF, the poem's references to Virgil's "Aeneid," and its allusions to Dante's "Divine Comedy" and to Ezekiel, arguing that, thematically, it abandons history as a source of truth, considers the potential of…
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
David Lyle Jeffrey. House of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (Waco, Tx,: Baylor University Press, 2003), pp. 111-16.
Explores ecclesiastical connotations of the word "rente" in the GP description of the Friar, in SumT, and elsewhere in medieval usage.
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 70 (1971): 600-06.
Explains Chaucer's use of "rente" to describe the Friar in GP 1.256, clarifying that it means service to God due to his vocation (not monetary rent) and contributes to Chaucer's satire of the Friar. Compares Chaucer's other uses of the term.
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
Robert C. Roberts, Scott H. Moore, and Donald D. Schmeltekopf, eds. Finding a Common Thread: Reading Great Texts from Homer to O'Connor (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 2013), pp. 167-85, 335-36.
Offers a historicized, "iconological," Great Texts approach to CT, reading the poem as a "staged retelling of many tales, old and new" that is thereby "particularly pertinent for the larger rationale of a Great Texts curriculum." Traces two thematic…
Praises the art and skill of Chaucer's adaptations of sources and literary conventions in creating TC, comparing and contrasting the plot and characterizations of the work with those of a full range of its "literary progenitors" and exploring…
Jember, Gregory K.
American Notes and Queries 15 (1977): 82-86.
The use of the ambiguous word "greyn" in 7.662 indicates that Chaucer had more than one meaning in mind. One of the intentional referents probably was a grain of salt, because of the religious significance of salt. "Greyn" also suggests the seed,…
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."
In BD and HF, Chaucer uses the "symplegades" or "clashing rocks" motif, which is related to the "Cliff of Death" theme in Germanic literature, as identified by Donald K. Fry.
An ornithological guide to the birds mentioned in Chaucer's works, with black-and-white sketches of each bird. Discusses the contexts in which Chaucer cites various birds, arguing that the poet was aware of their iconic values and that he was a keen…
Jenkins surveys scriptural, Latin patristic, Anglo-Saxon, and late-medieval English representations and appropriations of mysticism, arguing that "medieval indeterminacy" is in many ways epistemologically and theologically grounded in mysticism.…
Jenkins, Simon.
A Short History of London: The Creation of a World Capital ([London]: Viking, 2019), pp. 33-42.
Chapter 4 of a social history of London, with emphasis on the plague, the status of the Church, the vivid characterizations of CT as a "window on the world . . . in all its richness," and Richard Whittington's mayoralty. Also published in The City on…
A selection of Jennings' personal favorites among English poems, beginning with selections from GP (lines 1-78, 101-62, 219-330, 411-76, and 822-35), in Middle English.
Jennings, Margaret (C.S.J.)
Florilegium 43 (1994): 121-40
Thematic sermon structure, as delineated in English "artes praedicandi," influenced romances as well as other genres. This influence can be seen in "Sir Amadace," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," KnT (Theseus's speech on order), WBT (the…
Jennings, Margaret, C.S.J.
Julian N. Wasserman and Robert J. Blanch, eds. Chaucer in the Eighties (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 175-91.
The variations in scribal changes to Chaucer's text portray the various scribes' attitudes not only toward the subject matter of TC but toward the tale's central characters as well.
Absolon's twenty manners of dance after the school at Oxford may be traceable to the Morris dance troupes in the Oxford area, whose repertoire numbered approximately twenty dances. Absolon is ironically linked to dances which cast him in the role of…
Jensen, Charity.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 281-99.
Although hedged in by bookish tradition, Chaucer "continually stretches the boundaries as he sets himself up as a legitimate auctor." Jensen assesses several of Chaucer's "self-authorising" interventions in the proems of TC, in WBP, and in Ret,…
As a triad, MkT, Mk-NPL, and NPT present such a variety of motifs, themes, and nuances that one must be mindful of their multiplicity and not reduce their reading to a "hevy" tragedy or a performance of "sentence" alone, thus falling prey to the…
As the competition between men intensifies in fragment A of CT, competition becomes an end in itself, and the women become increasingly objectified as persons.
Jeske, Jeffrey M
Victorian Poetry 20 (1982): 21-32.
Clough arranges a group of tales, each representing a position in a debate between proponents of idealism and of naturalism. Like CT, these tales not only exist in a state of tension with each other but actually contradict the philosophical…
Jewell, Brianna Carolyn.
Ph.D. dissertation. University of Texas, 2016). Available at https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/68251. Accessed 13 December 2020.
Theorizes three medieval literary tropes ("the bodily cut; stained glass; and, the grafted tree") as means to connect "exclusive entities" (dead and living, past and present, and earthly and celestial), as well as the medieval/postmodern divide.…
Ji-yeon, Choi.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 23.2 (2015): 145-59.
Focuses on fabliau and the clothing of Chaucer's women in MilT, WBT, and RvT, and claims that "women's desire and independent will are materialized by means of [the] Wife of Bath's clothing."
Jimura, Akiyuki, and Hisayuki Sasamoto, trans.
Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2020.
Using the Riverside edition, translates LGW, ABC, Pity, Lady, Mars, Ven, Ros, Adam, Purse, Wom Unc, Compl d'Am, and MercB into Japanese, with introductory and supplementary notes. Includes brief timeline and description of Chaucer's life. In…
