Ret, an "authorial form of self-elimination," is formally like irony; it is also a penance, which, also like irony, protects the author from adverse judgment. Thus CT irony can be neatly exchanged for Ret penance. Penance, however, a sacrament and…
Popular understanding of their works is a central issue in both Boccaccio and Chaucer. Boccaccio's urbanity and sophistication reflect the qualities of his cultured, mercantile audience. Chaucer (e.g., PardT) is only apparently more naive, working…
The Wife of Bath's performance constitutes a bourgeois, female countercommentary by a literate property owner to the dominant male aristocratic and ecclesiastical conceptions of marriage, sex, learning, and economic power in the later Middle Ages.
WBP, belonging to the genre of the French sermon joyeux, "a parodic homily by a woman that uses biblical exegesis to endorse worldly pleasure," had a "topical resonance" for Lollards, who, "championing female literacy and lay biblical exegesis,…
Chaucer used English as a revolutionary gesture: "the vernacular destroyed the intellectual and political control of the aristocrats of church and state." Potter addresses several 14th-century English concerns: aristocratic control exercised…
NPT is a "mock-summa" that skeptically examines how authority is conveyed and parodies "didactic mechanisms." Mocking various kinds of rhetoric and discourse, the Nun's Priest also evokes a laughter of merriment that "laughs without laughing at…
Yvernault, Martine.
Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur 85 (Paris: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2014), pp. 133-56.
Explores the connection among name, birth, and personal achievements. The study is based on "Lybeaus Desconus," but also draws on other medieval sources such as HF.
Parallels between Criseyde and the women of WBPT "interrogate the following issues: equality between the sexes, possessions (ownership), possession (jealousy), and appearance." Rosenfeld reads the loathly lady as a "synthesis" of the Wife of Bath…
Haydock, Nickolas.
Atenea (University of Puerto Rico) 26 (2006): 107-29.
Haydock reads Caxton's spurious ending and epilogue to HF in the 1483 Book of Fame as a "canny as well as sympathetic reaction to the poem's ubiquitous concern with the transmission of literature."
Azinfar, Fatemeh Chehregosha.
Atheism in the Medieval Islamic and European World: The Influence of Persian and Arabic Ideas of Doubt and Skepticism on Medieval European Literary Thought (Bethesda, Md.: Ibex Publishers, 2008), pp. 233-65.
Azinfar reads the comic treatment of Dante in HF as a skeptical rejection of religious authority and discusses depictions of theological contradiction in Mars, Venus, and WBP. Chaucer's rationalism aligns him with other skeptics and atheists,…
Machan, Tim William, ed., with the assistance of A. J. Minnis.
Athens : University of Georgia Press, 2005.
The book presents hypothetical source texts for Bo, seeking to reconstruct as closely as possible what was accessible to Chaucer when he translated Boethius into Middle English. Provides an edition of Boethius's Latin original and, on facing pages,…
Erler, Mary, and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds.
Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1988.
A collection of essays by various hands. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Women and Power in the Middle Ages under Alternative Title.
Hanna, Ralph III, and Traugott Lawler, eds., using materials collected by Karl Young and Robert A. Pratt.
Athens, Ga. and London: University of Georgia Press, 2014.
Critical edition of seven commentaries (one excerpted) on Walter Map's Latin antifeminist treatise, with analyses of contents and impact, manuscript information, variants and emendations, extensive notes, and facing-page translations. The…
Kaminsky, Alice R.
Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1980.
Evaluates some 500 items of TC criticism considered under the headings Historical, Philosophical, Formalistic, and Psychological. In addition to illuminating the poem, the book provides a trenchant critique of modern critical theory and practice.
Burkman, Katherine H.
Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978.
Presents two scripts for "teaching through performance": 1) an adaptation of scenes from several of Shakespeare's plays, presented as a single playscript ("Shakespeare's Mirror"); and 2) a fusion of reduced, modernized versions of MilT, PrT, WBPT,…
Mitchell, Jerome, and William Provost, eds.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1973.
Includes an Introduction, four essays, a Panel Discussion, and an Afterword, with a subject index. For individual entries, search for Chaucer the Love Poet under Alternative Title.
Lewis, Robert E.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1973.
Describes the history, procedures, and practices of editing volumes for the Chaucer Library which was created in 1945. Comments on how to select texts, editorial responsibilities, and preparation of typescripts. An appendix provides four pages of…
Lewis, Robert E., ed.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1978.
Facing-page (English/Latin) edition of Innocent's treatise, "De Miseria Condicionis Humane," unemended from British Library Manuscript Lansdowne 358, with extensive critical and textual information. including descriptions of the manuscripts and…
Eisner, Sigmund, ed. Trans. Gary MacEoin and Sigmund Eisner.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980.
Facing-page edition and translation of Nicholas of Lynn's "Kalendarium," a source for Astr (as Chaucer tells us) and for the astronomical observations in three passages of CT (MLP, NPT, and ParsP). Based on Bodleian Library MS Laud Miscellaneous 662,…
Wilson, Katharina M., ed.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984.
An anthology of women writers from the ninth through the fifteenth centuries, edited and translated by various hands,with biographical and critical studies; includes writings of Dhouda, Hrotsvita, Marie de France, Heloise, Hildegard of Bingen,…
Wenzel, Siegfried, ed.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984.
The anonymous "Summa," dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, is the ultimate source of the "remedia" sections of Chaucer's ParsT. This critical edition, based on one of the nine surviving manuscripts, is accompanied by a translation…
Wimsatt, James I.,and William W. Kibler, eds.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988.
Texts and translations facing, preceded by a full introduction and followed by appendices of musical works and miniatures, as well as notes to the text that explicate textual questions and "specify relationships between Machaut's and Chaucer's…
