Ketterling, Bernadean,
[Jay Ruud, ed.] Papers on the "Canterbury Tales": From the 1989 NEH Chaucer Institute, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota ([Aberdeen, S.D.: Northern State University, 1989), pp. 253-62.
Impressionistic comments on WBT in light of various critical concerns--genre, theme, etc.
Keyburn, Karen.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1997): 861A.
"Second Nun and Her Tale" as prepared for the "Variorum Chaucer," based on the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts, with explanatory notes and critical commentary to 1994.
The poem's use of "rare variants" such as "peregal," which appears in Chaucer's TC (5.840) and in Lydgate's "Reson and Sensuallyte" (ll. 1738, 4384), exemplifies its "rather refined" language.
Khinoy, Stephan A.
Chaucer Review 6.4 (1972): 255-67.
Assesses the Pardoner as a "puzzle" posed by Chaucer to challenge his audience to consider the relationship between morality and story-telling. The Pardoner's dazzling rhetoric, his relics, and the tensions between his immoral prologue and moral tale…
Khoshbakht, Maryam, Moussa Ahmadian, and Shahrukh Hekmat.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 2.1 (2013): 90-97.
Compares CT with Farid al- Din Attar's "The Conference of the Birds," observing similarities in the shared motif of spiritual journey and techniques of narration and characterization. Differences between the religious backgrounds of the two poets,…
Khoury, Marcelle Muasher.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Virginia, 2014. Fully accessible via https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/sn009z07c (accessed March 11, 2026)
Argues that "fifteenth-century alchemical poets, George Ripley and Thomas Norton, perceived themselves to be 'Chaucerian' in far deeper ways than has been recognized," joining "author, reader and pilgrim on an essentially hermeneutical journey to…
Kia-Choong, Kevin Teo.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 314-33.
The "polyphonic assemblage of voices" in CT "displaces the teleological-topographical narrative" of movement toward the heavenly city of God. The Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, and the Miller, in particular, embody noise and represent the vox populi…
Kibler, William W.,and James I. Wimsatt.
Mediaeval Studies 45 (1983): 22-78.
These poems from the University of Pennsylvania MS French 15 show what was happening to the pastourelle and serventois in France from 1300 to the time when Froissart began writing similar lyrics in London, before 1364.
Includes commentary on depictions of Islam and Muhammad in MLT and GP: despite the pejorative naming of the Prophet in MLT, GP is "the inaugural English text which set in motion cross-cultural understanding between the West and the Muslim world."
Compares and contrasts John Dryden's description of Zimri in "Absalom and Achitophel" with Chaucer's description of the Pardoner in GP, emphasizing the "fine tension" between "precision and . . . universality" in the latter, and remarking on how…
Chaucer's catalogues of feminine delights seem totally original, but upon closer scrutiny they reveal techniques employed by many other poets both serious and humorous.
Kiernan, Kevin S.
Annuale Mediaevale 16 (1975): 52-62.
Chaucer has greatly expanded the role of Hector from his comparatively minor status in Boccaccio. As an honorable man of action and reason, Hector is a thematic contrast to Troilus, who is often prostrated by egocentric passions and loses Criseyde…
Describes the shifts in perspective and changes in the point of view of the narrator in TC, arguing that they guide the reader to the outlook that concludes the poem, particularly through allusions to the biblical book of Ecclesiastes.
Kiessling, Nicolas K.
Chaucer Review 7.2 (1972): 113-17.
Argues that the Wife of Bath's reference to an incubus (3.880) is not an aggressive critique of the Friar's "deficient virility" as editors assume but instead a gentle and teasing jibe.
Kiessling, Nicolas.
[Pulman]: Washington State University, 1977.
Includes passim references to Chaucer's works and reprints as "Monks and Incubi in Chaucer" (pp. 51-55) a slightly revised version of "The Wife of Bath's Tale, D 878-81," (Chaucer Review 7 (1972): 113-17).
Explores political implications of PF, commenting on the theme of common profit and on Chaucer's political situation. Examines the role of Nature as an advocate of hierarchy and a suppresser of rebellion.
Explores the narrator's "royalist" politics in MLT, arguing that they are "more incomplete" than the narrator thinks. Alla is presented as a good king, and the Sultan follows the trajectory of a typical "martyr king," although the teller…
Considers why the tale of the Mongol Empire is allocated to the young Squire. Points out the Squire's idealistic representation of the royal family of the Empire and discusses Chaucer's possible attitude toward SqT, taking fourteenth-century…
Part 1 includes several chapters on Middle English themes related to Chaucer. Chapter 1 appreciates the sound of the beginning of GP as associated with spring. Chapter 2 includes a brief discussion of the relationship between individualism and the…
Kikuchi, Shigeo.
Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature 32 (1987): 44-53.
Argues that a semiotic analysis of oppositions in the narrative structure of CT yields a better understanding of Chaucer's perception of the nature of reality.
Dividing TC into eighteen episodes highlights a series of analogous and oppositional relations centering on "ethical debt"; in addition, the poem's action can be charted through four cycles. Similar patterns, in some instances less symmetrical,…
Kiley, Frederick, and J. M. Shuttleworth, eds.
New York: Odyssey, 1971.
An anthology of examples, arranged chronologically, of literary, social, and political satires; includes a prose translation (by Robert Lumiansky) of PardPT, with a brief introduction.
