Pedagogical website dedicated to CT, with separate pages for selected tales that include introductions and ancillary information. Considers KnT, MilT, RvT, MLT, WBPT, FrT, ClT, FranT, PardPT, PrT, MkT, Mel, and NPT. Also includes links to related…
Delasanta, Rodney.
Essays in Criticism 22 (1972): 221-25.
Critiques James Smith's essay "Chaucer, Boethius, and Recent Trends in Criticism," while admiring his sensitivity to nuance in Chaucer's quotations of and allusions to Boethius in KnT and TC; argues that Smith mistakenly attributes the attitudes of…
Reviews Furnivall-Halliwell correspondence, which is concerned mainly wiht the affairs of the New Shakespeare Society, but also includes accounts of Furnivall's work on Chaucer manuscripts.
Weber, Lindsay.
Jon Alexander, ed. American POW Memoirs from the Revolutionary War Through the Vietnam War: The Autobiography Seminar, Providence College, Spring Semester 2006. (Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf & Stock, 2007), pp. 71-78.
Describes the context and content of Hall's 1930 publication, "Flying with Chaucer," focusing on his quotations from CT and their role in his memoir.
The restaurant scene in "The Sun Also Rises" echoes the conclusion of Chaucer's PardT. Like the Pardoner, Jake Barnes is "sexually disabled" and spiritually remiss. Both characters see money as power; both substitute food and drink for sex; both…
Cooper, Helen.
Theresa M. Krier, ed. Refiguring Chaucer in the Renaissance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 189-209.
Renaissance dramatic adaptations of Chaucer's works often resolve tensions left reverberating in his narratives (e.g.,John Fletcher's "Women Pleased" and WBT; Fletcher's "Four Plays" and FranT). But Fletcher and Shakespeare's "Two Noble Kinsmen"…
Heyworth, P. L., ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968.
Edits "Jack Upland" (wrongly attributed to Chaucer from the 16th century to the 18th), along with "Friar Daw's Reply" and "Upland's Rejoinder," with full critical apparatus.
Dates the macaronic lyric "On the Times" ("Syng y wold, butt, alas!") at 1380, reading it as a commentary on events and attitudes leading to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
Martin, Priscilla.
R. F. Yeager and Toshiyuki Takamiya, eds. The Medieval Python: The Purposive and Provocative Work of Terry Jones (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 207-13.
This is a short story, told from the first-person point of view of Chaucer's Plowman, who describes his early life, his distaste for his brother the Parson, and their pilgrimage to Canterbury.
Salu, Mary, and Robert T. Farrell, eds.
Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1979.
Includes Tolkien's obituary from the London "Times" (3 Sept. 1973), his "Valedictory Address" at Oxford (3 June 1959), a handlist of his writings, and fourteen essays by various authors about Tolkien, Old and Middle English literature, and Tolkien's…
Horobin, S. C. P.
English Studies 82: 97-105, 2001.
Challenges Tolkien's view that Chaucer aimed at a consistent representation of Northern dialect in RvT. Probably closest to Chaucer's autograph, the Hengwrt manuscript is neither complete nor consistent, while later scribes added Northern features…
Gulley, Alison.
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession 3 (2022): 31-39.
Discusses the Pardoner's "queerness and fitness to tell a moral tale" in light of ethical concerns about J. K. Rowling's "public comments about trans women," suggesting pedagogical uses.
Carruthers, Mary J.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987), pp. 179-88.
Concerns the influence upon Chaucer exerted by the "rhetorica ad herennium," specifically in the art of memory training, which was largely ignored in medieval commentary until it was revived in Italy. Both Dante and Chaucer make use of the…
Edwards, Robert R.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 3-24.
Reconsiders Chaucer's use of Italian sources and his references to Italy and Italian regions (including Rome), focusing on ways that Italy was a geographical and cultural place of strangeness. Authors such as Chaucer and Gower negotiated tensions…
Commenting on how Baba Brinkman's rap version of MilT "recast and reset" Chaucer's original, Beidler raises questions about the pedagogical and cultural value of the live performance, the audio recording, and the printed version. Includes (pp.…
McCormick uses game theory and the debate genre to investigate the structure of LGW and of Pizan's "Le livre de la cité des dames." The former is "a ludic puzzle"; the latter, "an architectural mnemonic."
A book "about the different aspects of words" (etymology, morphology, language acquisition, language and cognition, etc.), designed for a popular audience and arranged as a series of 121 topical pieces of varying lengths. Item 54 ("Chaucer's Words,"…
McMullen, Carol.
[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. 73-83.
Argues that the "moral lesson" of MerT is "self-deception and spiritual blindness" which result from January's efforts to "create a paradise on earth."
Cable, Thomas.
Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell, eds. Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 125-51.
Surveys twentieth-century developments in describing and analyzing the prosody of early English poetry, summarizing and assessing the views of Wimsatt and Beardsley, Halle and Keyser, Kiparsky, and others on meter, stress, ictus and their relations.…
Treats various characters of CT as figures in or of isolation: Arcite (KnT), John (MilT), Constance (MLT), Friar John (SumT), Thomas (SumT), and the Pardoner. As such, they share characteristics with figures in Old English poetry.
Wright, Michael J.
Studia Neophilologica 70 (1998): 181-86.
FranT is set in a pre-Christian age, but Dorigen prays to God and thus achieves the status of a good pagan. She is portrayed as an individual rather than a socially rule-bound wife. Chaucer celebrates individuality through her, but he also recognizes…
Using the medieval concepts of "intromissive optics" and the passive viewer, Martin suggests that Chaucer in TC, KnT, and MerT employs conventions from outside the romance genre at the moment of sight. She contrasts this technique with that of…
