Jordan, Robert M.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 95-116.
Emphasis has shifted from the study of Chaucer as a realist and proto-novelist to the examination of his mode of presentation and his esthetics: principles of rhetoric, uses of style, and poetic theory.
Jordan, Robert M.
English Studies in Canada 3 (1977): 373-85.
The organic model of unity does not fit discontinuous, dilated, expository, encyclopedic medieval works such as PF. A model more "multiple" deserves hegemony.
Jordan, Robert M.
Thomas J. Farrell, ed. Bakhtin and Medieval Voices (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), pp. 81-93.
Examines the "ideological markers" that indicate the various "languages" of MLT, arguing that they cannot be resolved into unity by recourse to a supposed personality of the teller.
Analyzes the gothic, inorganic structure of BD, commenting on the poem's status as a lament, an elegy, and a consolation; its clear articulation of various parts; and its consistency with the compositional advice given by rhetorician Geoffrey of…
Jordan, Robert M.
Yale French Studies 51 (1974): 223-34.
Assesses structural and stylistic features (rather than the subject matter) of medieval narratives classed as romance, analyzing the "compositional structure" of WBT, particularly its "inorganic" and "additive" incorporation of digressive materials.…
Jordan, Robert M.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.
Describes the "aesthetic implications" of the medieval world view, rooted in Plato's "Timaeus" and based on notions of quantity, ordered hierarchy, and analogy rather than "organic" unity. Developed by Boethius, Macrobius, and Augustine, this view…
Challenges "dramatic" criticism of CT, arguing that "realistic illusion" is not sustained but rather "undermined" in ways that call attention to aesthetic concerns, limiting the kinds of psychological projections that some critics have imposed upon…
Jordan, Robert M.
Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 2 (1960): 278-305.
Challenges the universal applicability of the "organic" ideal (form equating to content) of New Criticism, arguing that it is applicable to modern novels but not earlier narratives. Explores Chaucer's and his audience's "lively consciousness of his…
Jordan, Robert M., James I Wimsatt, and Mary Carruthers.
PMLA 94 (1979): 950-53.
An exchange of letters in the PMLA Forum section that comment on the characterization of the Wife of Bath and the role of sources (especially Jerome) and historical contexts in understanding the character.
Analyzes the narrator of TC as a "dramatic" character--one who is known "by what he says rather than what is said about him"--whose shifting perspectives in the poem inflect readers' opinions of the other characters and their actions. The shifts also…
Jordan, Tracey.
Studies in Short Fiction 21 (1984): 87-93.
Treats antifeminist reversal when Absolon must replace his romantic vision of Alisoun with his experience of her bestiality, but Chaucer ridicules antifeminist themes and celebrates Alisoun's desirable physicality.
Jordan, William Chester.
Sheila Delany, ed. Chaucer and the Jews: Sources, Contexts, Meanings (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 25-42.
Examines the framing narratives and the relics in PardT to demonstrate that Chaucer achieves dramatic closure at the end of the Tale with the pilgrims' rejection of the relics.
Reads MerT as a composite of "various comic attitudes toward lust and marriage," not as the bitter vituperation of an angry narrator, arguing that the latter, conventional view results from seeking to impose "organic unity" on four "strikingly…
Joselyn, M., O. S. B.
College English 25 (1964): 566-71.
Uses principles of Kenneth Burke's rhetoric of form to analyze NPT, commenting on aspects of its progressions (syllogistic, inverted, and repetitive), aspects of its genre conventions, and examples of its rhetorical ornamentation.
Joseph, Bertram.
Essays and Studies 7 (1954): 42-61.
Framed as justification for Sir Francis Kynaston's 1636 praise of TC as an epic poem, this essay analyzes themes, characterizations, and the ending of Chaucer's poem in light of Renaissance perspectives, especially on love.
The Host's reference to the "yiftes of Fortune and of Nature" is the thematic basis for Group C (Fragment 6). PhyT shows how Grace can sustain those injured by Nature's gifts; PardT shows the wretched fate of those who, blinded by Fortune's gifts,…
Chaucer's punning in ShT is complex, some puns depending upon the eye ("tale," "tallynge") and others upon the ear alone. The Shipman imports into English a foreign form (the fabliau) and foreign (especially French) financial words "that hadden…
Explores in CT the dynamic between with expansive spaces and narrow ones, especially as they correlate with views of the world that are variously serious or playful. Considers the intertextuality of KnT and the fabliaux of Part 1 of CT as a paradigm…
Reads the rocks of FranT as a representation of natural evil, only apparently avoided in the plot, and an opportunity for the operations of both "gentilesse" and unearned providential grace.
Josipovici, G. D.
Critical Quarterly 7 (1965): 185-97.
Explores the strategies and effects of Chaucer's self-aware affirmations in CT of the work's "status as fiction," commenting on the first-person narrator's functions (in contrast with those in Dante) and tracing the ironies generated by tensions…
Josipovici, Gabriel.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1971.
Studies modernism in English and French literature from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, focusing on narrative fiction and critical perception and misperceptions of what constitutes modernism. Includes a chapter (pp. 52-99) entitled…
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…
