Kirk, Elizabeth D.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 111-27.
Chaucer shares literary conventions with the writers of his age. Both he and Gower use framed stories, Chaucer exploiting to the fullest both frame and story. Langland and Chaucer share the use of symbols, but Chaucer's are more expansive. Chaucer…
Kirk, Elizabeth D.
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 111-20.
Although it is common to separate the religious message of ClT from the tale's portrayal of women and marriage, the two are "linked," with the juxtaposition of Griselda and Alison of Bath representing "opposite solutions to the problem of women's…
Kirk, Elizabeth D.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 2 (1988): 1-21.
Against the sociopolitical background of the fourteenth century, Kirk examines the Plowman as worker and religious symbol in "Piers Plowman" and Chaucer's GP.
Kirk, Elizabeth D.
Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, eds. Acts of Interpretation (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1982), pp. 257-77.
The double ending of TC reconciles issues about love raised in the story. Chaucer has made Troilus a lover in the tradition of courtly love but has also used Dante's "Paradiso" for his version of heaven. The pagan setting illuminates Christian…
Considers the role of the nonsense word as "material supposition"; as prayer; and, in HF, as "tydynges" (rumors), which allows the previously mute poet to speak.
Kirk, Jordan.
Dissertation Abstracts International A75.03 (2014): n.p.
Introduces medieval theory of human voice and nonsense tracing its roots in Aristotle and Boethius, its tradition in medieval logic, and its impact on "The Cloud of Unknowing" and HF. In HF "Chaucer revises academic theories of 'vox' into a theory of…
Kirk, Jordan.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2021.
Examines works by Priscian, Boethius, Augustine, Walter Burley, and Chaucer,
to explore how fourteenth-century writers understood "possibilities in language" and "transformed these accounts into new forms, and practices of non-signification."…
Item not seen; WorldCat records indicate that this four-part score includes the text of "Now Welcome Summer" (a translation of PF 680-92), set to music, along with other scored seasonal texts by Keats (autumn), Shakespeare (winter), and Thomas Nashe…
Kirkham, David, and Valerie Allen, eds.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999.
School-text edition of GP, accompanied, on facing pages, by extensive glossing and pedagogical commentary and discussion questions. Also includes synoptic descriptions of Chaucer's pilgrims and brief essays on pertinent topics, including pilgrimage…
Kirkham, David, and Valerie Allen, eds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Study guide to the PardPT and the GP description of the Pardoner that includes the Middle English text, with facing-page glosses and commentary that encourages careful reading. The volume includes a summary of CT and an introduction to Chaucer's…
Kirkpatrick, Robin.
Chaucer and the Italian Trecento (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 201-29.
Focuses on qualities that distinguish CT from the "Decameron:" the self-deprecating Chaucer persona, Chaucer's concern with human individuality, his willingness to admit the limitations of language and art, and his use of irony.
Surveys the sustained influence of Italian culture in England from Chaucer through Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Gascoigne, Marston, Fletcher, and Shakespeare. Summarizes the development of Italian city-states and explores topics such as Italian influence…
Kirkpatrick, Robin.
Religion & Literature 47.3 (2015): 1-24.
Focusing on TC, argues that Chaucer relied heavily on previous works, primarily Dante's "Divina commedia," for theological and linguistic direction. Contends that Chaucer, like Dante, does not merely regurgitate biblical narratives, but expands on…
Kirschenbaum, Valerie.
New York: Global Renaissance Society, 2005.
Recounts Kirchenbaum's career and thoughts as an innovative teacher who uses creative design to inspire her students, arranged as a series of examples from international history and personal experience. Includes "Measuring the Immeasurable: Chaucer"…
Kiser, Lisa (J.)
Modern Language Quarterly 49 (1990, for 1988): 99-119.
Analyzes HF as an antivision, a highly comic parody of "solemn medieval attempts to describe the otherworld." Rather than writing about human lives earthly or otherworldly, Chaucer restricts his theme to "the nature and destiny of human narratives,"…
Kiser, Lisa J.
Hanover, N. H., and London: University Press of New England, 1991
Chaucer's epistemology is skeptical: he subverts written authority, obscures traditional distinctions between history and fiction, and questions the validity and representability of experience. Formalist analysis of narratorial voices discloses (1)…
Despite totally different tone and purpose, Chaucer's LGWP parallels Dante's "Purgatorio" significantly: both poets present their narrators as undergoing penance; both Alceste and Beatrice, allegorically garbed and attended, serve as spiritual…
Kiser, Lisa J.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Universisty Press, 1983.
Argues that LGW is important for source study: it is a defense of Chaucer's own narrative poetry in the medieval perceptions of metaphor, allegory, and rhetoric.
Kiser, Lisa J.
Papers on Language and Literature 19 (1983): 3-12.
Although early, BD shows the development of the Chaucerian persona as narrator--"the shy, self-concious man who seems to know so little about the truths he records so well."
Kiser, Lisa J.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 1-14.
Assesses the depiction of female-gendered Nature in Brunetto Latini's "Il Tesoretto," Alain de Lille's "De planctu naturae," Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose," and Chaucer's PF. A modern ecofeminst approach to these depictions helps disclose the…
Kiser, Lisa J.
Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R. Wallace, eds. Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2001), pp. 41-56.
Through the tree catalog and the "unassimilated voices of the lower birds" in PF, Chaucer records his awareness that distinctions between nature and culture and between human and nonhuman are "species-ist"--an awareness similar to modern…
