Jonassen, Frederick B.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 16 (1994): 99-117.
Documents the medieval traditions of the Land of Cockaigne and the Battle of Carnival and Lent, suggesting that they underlie the reference to the seasonal cycle of meat and fish in the Franklin's GP sketch. Such traditions adumbrate the Renaissance…
Riddy, Felicity.
Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 54-71.
Examines the sexual politics of FranT, arguing that its fundamental ideas of "gentilesse" and "pitee" reflect an aristocratic, masculinist hierarchy. The courtly setting entails this hierarchy, which dominates the tale, but Dorigen's complaint and…
Although PhyT and PardT may seem to bear little relationship to each other, a thematic unity rooted in the "Roman de la Rose" links the two tales. Raison's exemplum contains ideas and images of sexual violence and natural generation that Chaucer…
Crafton, John Micheal.
Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 163-86.
Chaucer's comedy is a "function of the inherent paradoxes of language, particularly as articulated by Freud," and the humor of CT depends on the audience's awareness of the slippage between truth and language. The paired opposition of PhyT and PardT…
Woods, William F.
Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 207-28.
The conversion of all to "mercantile exchange" underlies a comic displacement of roles in ShT. The merchant and the monk switch roles, and the wife paradoxically gains a sense of self-worth, a comic transformation of her economic and sexual…
Frantzen, Allen J.
Britton J. Harwood and Gillian R. Overing, eds. Class and Gender in Early English Literature: Intersections (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 131-48.
Through his sexual ambiguity and his exposure of the illusory nature of social hierarchy, the Pardoner is a "double threat." Through him, Chaucer "provisionally negates" the model of the three estates and also "demonstrates, through the fates of the…
Hoerner, Fred.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 16 (1994): 69-98.
Reads PardPT psychoanalytically and in light of Max Weber's theory of charisma, commenting on how words and details of the Pardoner's performance reflect his attraction to salvation and his fearful distortion of it. Institutionalized and…
Ireland, Richard W.
Chaucer Review 29 (1994): 74-92.
Chaucer's use of poison in PardT and ParsT indicates more than a cursory knowledge of the law and lore associated with it. In PardT, poison--affiliated with Envy and Jealousy and with the devil--serves to darken both the characters and the plot line.…
Through a historically situated investigation of the Pardoner's possible homeosexuality and its relation to language in PardPT, modern readers can resist Chaucer's (possibly) homophobic intentions, reclaiming and even celebrating the Pardoner's…
Despres, Denise, L.
Modern Philology 91 (1994): 413-27.
England's implementation of the Fourth Lateran Council's legislation of 1215, two anti-Judaism sermon exempla from medieval manuscripts, and the "child-as-Host" motif suggest how the "ideology of bodily and social purity could become salient for the…
PrT expresses the notion of spiritual or "white" martyrdom popular in the Middle Ages. Unlike physical martyrdom, white martyrdom was a mental act, often involving the preservation of virginity. Through the character of the little boy, the Prioress…
Chaucer satirizes the anti-Semitism and sexual restrictiveness of the medieval church by presenting the serpent-Satan as a representation of Judaic reproduction denied the celibate Prioress. Rudat suggests the Prioress terminated an earlier unwanted…
Lerer, Seth.
Mark C. Amodio, ed. Oral Poetics in Middle English Poetry (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 181-205.
Th and Mel pose an oral-literate opposition. Th is a parody of rambling orality, more concerned with its narrator than with its protagonist; constant interruptions and stereotypical devices direct the audience's attention away from the story. In…
Parks, Ward.
Mark C. Amodio, ed. Oral Poetics in Middle English Poetry (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 149-79.
The tension between literacy and orality--evident throughout CT--can be seen in GP, where a literate and learned Chaucer positions himself as the mere recorder of oral performance. Th satirizes the English metrical romance, a genre deeply rooted in…
Daileader, Celia R.
Chaucer Review 29 (1994): 26-39.
WBT and Mel contain comparable female characters who use discourse to challenge the antifeminist patristic tradition. The plot in both tales--the transformation of a misguided male by a knowledgeable woman--points to a more "peaceful" world where…
Suggests that the source for Nero's fishing nets of golden thread and for the cutting of both Seneca's arms as he lies in the bathtub come from the unedited "Alphabetum narrationum," ca. 1308.
To show that love for hunting does not preclude piety, the worldly Monk of GP invokes Edward the Confessor, who was often portrayed as a celibate Christian as well as a passionate hunter. Because of Edward's dual interests, the Monk's pursuit of…
Fehrenbacher, Richard W.
Chaucer Review 29 (1994): 134-48.
With the introduction of "Jakke Straw" into NPT, Chaucer returns to the English setting of the early Canterbury stories. By alternating styles in the peasant passages and the chicken passages, he both addresses the historical turmoil of the day and,…
Goldstein, R. James.
Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 145-62.
Offers a Freudian analysis of the antifeminist and political jokes in NPT. The opening frame concerning the widow and the allusion to the rebellion of 1381 suggest that the "repression of the class interests of the exploited" is "a symptom of the…
McAlpine, Monica E.
Robert R. Edwards, ed. Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 79-92.
Critical studies of NPT fall primarily into two groups: allegorical, or interpretive readings, versus mock-epic, or "noninterpretive" readings, based on the premise that the poem has "no meaning except its escape from meaning."
MilT constructs cuckoldry as a transaction between men that governs our reading of both the tale and the interactions between Miller and Reeve. The homosocial exchange of female sexuality is a secret concealed in cuckoldry but revealed in the…
The Man of Law erases distinctions among spiritual, linguistic, and monetary exchange by trying to turn Custance and Christ into signs that can be circulated and traded for profit, raising the question of whether his tale is "true coining."
MkT makes a political statement reflecting Richard II's tyrannous activities during the altter years of his reign. The stories of misgovernment suggest a late date of composition for the work. The character of the Monk is based on Nimrod, himself…
Oizumi, Akio,and Hiroshi Yonekura; programmed by Kunihiro Miki.
Hildesheim,
A computer-generated alphabetical concordance of rhymes in Chaucer's poetry, based on "The Riverside Chaucer," arranged by rhyme elements (e.g., "-aas," "-aat," "-abbe") within individual works. Includes for each work, in addition to the basic…
