Gellrich, Jesse M.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Examines the ways oral tradition continues to influence writing in late-medieval literature, considering works of Ockham and Wyclif, chronicles of the reigns of Edward III and Richard II, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and KnT.
Hodges, Laura F.
Chaucer Review 29 (1995): 274-302.
The multilayered details of the Knight's clothing represent both a realistic and a symbolic knight, whose profession of chivalry in the fourteenth century was far from ideal.
Irving, Edward B.,Jr.
Richard G. Newhauser and John A. Alford, eds. Literature and Religion in the Later Middle Ages: Philological Studies in Honor of Siegfried Wenzel (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995), pp. 43-59.
A comparison of "Beowulf" and KnT reveals that the latter has epic elements such as death, mortality, and the struggle with the chaos inherent in an epic universe.
Hartung, Albert E.
Richard G. Newhauser and John A. Alford, eds. Literature and Religion in the Later Middle Ages: Philological Studies in Honor of Siegfried Wenzel (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995), pp. 61-80
A psychoanalytic reading shows that ParsT and Ret belonged originally to a separate document that was later added to CT through ParsP.
Klitgard, Ebbe.
Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1995.
Emphasizes the stylistic and rhetorical innovation of Chaucer's narrative voice, arguing that it can be perceived behind his various narrators and implied authors.
Laird, Edgar (S.)
Richard J. Utz, ed. Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm (Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.; Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen, 1995), pp. 101-15.
KnT "participates in a tradition antagonistic to the new nominalism, "based on a "scientific ontology consonant with Boethianism" and understandable in light of the truth-theories of Albumasar, Robert Grosseteste, and John Wyclif.
Grossi, Joseph L.,Jr.
Richard J. Utz, ed. Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm (Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.; Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen, 1995), pp. 147-78.
Reads ClT as a realist's attack on nominalism, with Walter depicting an unfree diety, and Griselda, rampant fideism. Chaucer moderates the Clerk's realism at the end of the Tale and in the Envoy.
Furr, Grover C.
Richard J. Utz, ed. Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm (Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.; Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen, 1995) pp. 135-46.
Examines the theme of free will in NPT in light of the "nominalist-Augustinian debate of the fourteenth century," arguing that Chaucer's position reflects contemporary indeterminacy.
In MilT, the coulter was chosen by Chaucer for its etymological and judicial significance and because it parallels a scene from "Tristan and Iseult"--the trial by ordeal.
Campbell, Bruce.
Edwin Brezette De Windt, ed. The Salt of Common Life: Individuality and Choice in the Medieval Town, Countryside, and Church: Essays Presented to J. Ambrose Raftis. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 36 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1995), pp. 271-305.
Extant manorial accounts representing over two hundred different demesnes in Norfolk (from the period 1250-1449) suggest that Oswald the Reeve's dwelling and husbandry were based on a specific landscape and rural economy that would have been…
Justman, Stewart.
Studies in Short Fiction 32 (1995): 21-27.
Explores relations among cuckoldry, charivari, and notions of masculine honor in MilT and RvT to argue that the pretensions to honor in RvT are debunked and that traditional notions of honor are themselves questioned.
Smith, Charles R.
Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 101-06.
The Reeve's four burning coals ("Avauntyng, liying, anger, covetise" (CT 1.3884) are taken from the description of the spiritual old man in Ephesians 4:22-28.
Woods, William F.
Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 150-63.
RvT is a social allegory reflecting economic and social practices. Symkyn upsets the balance of trade by reducing supply, thus increasing demand. Balance is eventually restored.
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Yearbook 2 (1995): 1-15.
Compares MLP to its source in Innocent III's "De miseria condicionis humane" and to "Purse" to argue that MLP was originally written for Chaucer to read before a group of merchants to ask for payment.
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.
Farrell, Thomas J.
Thomas J. Farrell, ed. Bakhtin and Medieval Voices (Gainesville: University Press fo Florida, 1995), pp. 141-57.
Assesses the utility of applying Bakhtinian analysis to Chaucer's works and examines the monologia of ClT in light of the "Tale's" intersections of "Ecclesiastes time" and figural time.
Arfin considers WBT as a "demande," written toward the end of the composition of CT as Chaucer's comment on "the collection as a whole" or on the "nature of literature in general" in his work-in-progress.
