Describes the characteristic foods and methods of public and private food service in London during eight historical periods, deriving much of the information from literary sources and presenting the information in association with literary figures…
Argues for exposing students to a greater range of medieval perspectives than is afforded by traditional single-author courses on Chaucer, explaining the pedagogy of teaching Chaucer in conjunction with the TEAMS Middle English Texts anthology "The…
Compares and contrasts attitudes toward age and aging in WBT, Gower's tale of Florent, and "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle," considering these attitudes in light of late medieval social perspectives on age and marriage that were affected…
Considers the date and provenance of the Longleat 257 manuscript, describes its contents, and offers a full codicological analysis of collation and compilation, hands, and illustrations.
Ladd, C. A.
Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig, eds. Medieval Studies Presented to George Kane (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Wolfeboro, N.H.: D. S. Brewer, 1988), pp. 163-65.
Examines the meaning of "let see" in HF 1623, "nothing lyk" in BD 1085, and the "God toforn" in TC 5.963.
Thoms, John Clifton.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1981): 208A.
The narrator's eight-year sickness may refer to the last illness of Henry, Duke of Lancaster. The portrait of Lady White departs significantly from that of Machaut's lady in "Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne" to reconcile courtly with Christian love.
Trigg, Stephanie.
Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Literature and the Senses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 31-48.
Outlines various "cognitive and sensual contexts" that frame "face-gazing in literature" and analyzes the descriptions of male gaze at female faces in TC and BD, both "mediated by the complex ideology of courtly love," comparing them with discussion…
Kolve, V. A.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 31-71.
Kolve investigates the iconic importance of Criseyde's dream of the eagle and Troilus's dream of the boar and their embedded affiliations with the sun. In TC, these images illustrate the gap in the worth of two men and underscore the poor choice…
Minnis, A. J.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 142-78.
Belief in the salvation of virtuous pagans (the "'facere quod in est' principle") has been associated with nominalist thought. Minnis examines Chaucer's praise of Cambuyskan in SqT to argue that there is no real evidence of nominalist influence on…
Cole, Carol A.
Michigan Academician 29 (1997): 511-20.
Argues that Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" is fundamentally Boethian in its castigation of "inconstant Venereal love," and suggests that Henryson links his poem to TC in order to "underscore the Boethian view of love."
Flannery, Mary C.
New College Notes (Oxford) 12 (2019): 1-4; 3 illus.
Addresses "scribal playfulness," rather than error or accuracy, focusing on instances of copyists' engagement with Chaucer's "bawdy humour," particularly the diction, imagery, and details of a ribald expansion of the pear-tree episode of MerT (and…
Ciccone, Nancy Ferguson.
Dissertation Abstracts International 55 (1995): 2820A.
Since secular narratives treat behavior, twelfth-century scholars regarded them as practical philosophy. Thus, internal debate and decision-making in both French and English romance are often based on theology and philosophy.
Middleton, Anne.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 35 (2013): 29-46.
Documents William Langland's use, in "Piers Plowman," of sudden, irruptive, colloquial, and polysemous language, distinguishing it from so-called "real" speech and assessing its thematic, narratological, and ethical values. Gower found this device of…
Lerer, Seth.
Seth Lerer. Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 70-84.
Characterizes the language of Chaucer's day and emphasizes his range and synthesis of styles, exemplifying features of Middle English and Chaucer's dexterous uses of it in poetry and prose. Comments at length on the opening of GP, on Astr, on uses of…
Stewart, James Trevor.
Ph.D. dissertation. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2017. Available at https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/4427. Accessed February 5, 2021.
Argues that like "Guy of Warwick" and "Ywain and Gawain," KnT promotes "ideals of both prowess and lordship," with Chaucer emphasizing the ideals of "chivalric interdependence" and the bonds of "mutual loyalty."
Georgianna, Linda.
Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 149-72.
In SumT, exchanges between the friar and the lord of the manor illuminate the friar's bourgeois relationship with Thomas. When Thomas "pays" the friar with a fart, and the friar appeals to the social hierarchy represented by the feudal lord of the…
Studies the "lordship economics" of late fourteenth-century England, especially as represented in the literature of John Gower, but providing historical and political backgrounds, and commenting on similar concerns in Chaucer and other writers.…
Cramer, Patricia.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 89 (1990): 491-511
Walter and Griselda are an "Oedipal couple whose sadomasochistic rituals of dominance and submission enact gender roles prescribed by patriarchal social structures which Freud recognized and propogated through his Oedipal models for mental health."
Considers Harriet and Sophia Lee's "Canterbury Tales" as an eighteenth-century re-reading of CT. The moral and didactic character of the Lees' "Tales" made possible the inclusion of three of them in Spanish anthologies of 1800 and 1808, providing…
A Middle English text and Spanish translation on facing pages, with bibliograghy, notes, and an 80-page introduction contextualizing and discussing main aspects of the work.
A selection from CT in Spanish prose, including GP, KnT, MilPT, RvT, ShT, PrPT, ThPT (the tale of Thopas in stanzaic verse), MkP, NPPT, WBPT, ClPE (with Envoy in verse), MerPT, SqE, FranPT, PardPT, ParsT, and Ret. Published again in 2006, with a new…
Gómez Lara, Manuel José.
Cuadnernos del CEMYR (Centro de Medievales y Renacentistas) 16 (2008): 117-44.
Studies the relationship between sex and laughter in CT both as a way of conveying a didactic purpose and as a manner of representing society and social relations--mostly across gender lines.
Spanish prose adaptations of selections from CT (GP, WBT, ClT, PhyT, and Ret), designed for juvenile readers. Includes several study questions and background information. Illustrated by Román Varela.
