Rejects "unsupported biographical inference" about the lives and personalities of Chaucer and William Langland, arguing that it is illogical to assume that the personae they project in their poetry are autobiographical. Conflation or confusion of the…
Klinefelter, Ralph A.
Explicator 24.1 (1965): item no. 5.
Argues that the "allegory of the Four Daughters of God" (also known as "The Reconciliation of the Heavenly Virtues" and "The Parliament of Heaven") influenced several details of ABC.
Knight, Stephen.
Balcony: The Sidney Review 2.2 (1965): 37-43.
Argues that Chaucer's sensory detail in his GP descriptions "rings a bell in our mind": we recognize these descriptions as modern for their emphasis on individuation rather than typicality. Attributes this technique to the rise of late-medieval…
Konagaya, Yataka.
Studies in English Literature 42 (1965): 13-18.
Distinguishes between Chaucer the poet and Chaucer the pilgrim, and considers the "singularities" of Mel as clues to the "author's intention," reading the Tale as a self-aware "travesty" of Chaucer's relation with his wife, Philippa.
Loomis, Roger Sherman.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965.
Reproduces b&w photographs of medieval manuscript pages and details, maps, sites, and objects, using them to illustrate Chaucer's life, works, and social contexts, and intended to enable readers to imagine what Chaucer's audience "saw with the mind's…
Explicates Chaucer's reference to John of Legnano ("Lynyan" at ClT 4.34), clarifying the international reputation of the canon lawyer and his role in justifying the papal schism, suggesting how Chaucer may have learned of him during his 1378 mission…
Midonick, Henrietta O., ed.
New York: Philosophical Library, 1965.
Anthologizes 54 selections and excerpts from the history of mathematics and related sciences from around the world, ranging widely in date from classics to the nineteenth century. Includes a selection (pp. 220-42) of a modernization of Astr, from R.…
Describes the "functional similarity" between medieval exempla of obedience and WBT and Gower's Tale of Florent, illustrating the similarity by discussing fair/foul transformation and inversion motifs in various exempla, and arguing that the…
Mogan, Joseph J., Jr.
Papers on Language and Literature 1 (1965): 72-77.
Identifies two examples of the "memento mori" motif and two of "ubi sunt" in TC, three of these added by Chaucer to his material, and all of them contributing to the poem's dominant theme of the transitory nature of human love and life.
Pace, George B.
Studies in Bibliography 18 (1965): 41-48.
Offers "a detailed textual analysis" of Prov, furnishing "a text based on four authorities," and, while not affirming or denying attribution to Chaucer, setting "the record straight, perhaps, on certain matters connected with authenticity."
Explores the characterization of the Canon in CYP and the first part of CYT, arguing that he is embarrassed at being a "simple puffer" and not an illuminati of the alchemical arts--"a pathetic if not a tragic figure, broken through following a…
Surveys the "editions and translations of Chaucer currently in print" (in 1965) and designed for college courses, commenting on their strengths and weaknesses.
Argues that "imagery and narrative detail" in ShT subtly undercut the Tale's "relish for quick-witted deception" and its "philosophy of money," typical of the fabliau genre. Several image clusters and their points of occurrence in the Tale evoke "the…
Ridley, Florence H.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965.
Surveys critical approaches to PrT, distinguishing between "hard critics" of the Tale who read it as an indictment of the teller's anti-Semitism, and "historical" approaches that consider it in light of late-medieval attitudes and practices. Argues…
Roache, Joel.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 64 (1965): 1-6.
Documents "legal aspects" of discovered treasure in late-medieval England, identifying similarities in lexicon and imagery between legal records concerning found hoards and the rioters' descriptions of their treasure in PardT. The similarities…
Robertson, D. W., Jr.
John Mahoney and John Esten Keller, eds. Mediaeval Studies in Honor of Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), pp. 165-95.
Assesses BD as a late-medieval "public funerary poem" rather than a portrait of psychological grief, interpreting the Black Knight as a generic, Boethian figure deprived by fortune, rather than as John of Gaunt, and discussing the character Blanche…
Contends that the WB's reference to grinding at a mill (WBP 3.389) capitalizes on traditional sexual associations of mills with women, anticipated at her reference to "barly-breed" (WBP 3.144).
Surveys Chaucer's references to dogs, showing that his depictions of the animal are generally "pejorative," following a tradition of denunciation by satirists, homilists, and the writers of romances. Argues that the whelp in BD 389ff. is not…
Ruggiers, Paul G.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965.
Describes the aesthetic and moral principles and practices, overt and covert, of the CT, acclaiming the vitality of the "framing structure" of the links and the complex ironies of the narrator (especially in Ret) for the ways that they enable and…
Rumble, Thomas C., ed.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965.
Presents eight Breton lays in Middle English, each with bottom-of-page glosses, a facsimile manuscript page, a bibliography, and a general Introduction (pp. xiii-xxx) that describes the nature of the genre, its history, and French sources of the…
Silvia, Daniel S., Jr.
Studies in Philology 62 (1965): 28-39.
Argues that Chaucer himself is the "most reasonable choice" for author of the glosses to CT manuscripts that derive from St. Jerome's "Epistola Adversus Jovinianum." Discusses how the glosses to WBP indicate "Chaucer as glossator" and how two…
