Lassahn, Nicole.
Essays in Medieval Studies 17: 49-64, 2001.
Compares Chaucer's use of history in BD with that of Langland in "Piers Plowman," suggesting that focus on contemporary events is common to the poets and perhaps indicative of their common audience. Such commonalities and the habits of mind they…
Argues that Thop can be read as a didactic narrative that breaks off at the "point most effective for developing the theme of salvation" which is brought to conclusion in Mel. The tales share similar concerns with vice and with the world, the flesh,…
The Flemish proverbs in CkP and ManT "trigger a whole series of contradictions and reversals of meaning that mirror the complexity of Chaucer's comedy." They also contribute to a pattern in CT in which Flemings are associated with misused language.
Argues that Keats marked the British Library copy of TC, once owned by Charles Cowden Clarke. The markings indicate Keats's concerns with burgeoning love and with Criseyde's character as developed in books 1-3, but they "do not provide definitive…
Verse modernization of most of CT (except CkT, Mel, and ParsT), based on the 1963 edition of A. C. Baugh; meter and verse forms parallel Chaucer's. Additional material includes brief notes (pp. 484-502), a summary of Chaucer's life, and comments on…
Lavers, Norman.
College English 26 (1964): 180-87.
Argues that the main characters of ClT "have Oedipal fixations": Griselda, a masochistic form that correlates with "an incestuous quality in her relationship with her father," and Walter, a sadistic version that reverberates with the Cupid/Psyche…
Lavezzo, Kathryn Marie.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 603A., 1999.
The remoteness and insularity of England led to the belief that its people were different, both barbarian and angelic. Lavezzo discusses Aelfric, Higden, Chaucer (MLT), and the alliterative "Morte Arthure." Use of the English language contributed to…
Lavezzo, Kathy, ed.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
An introduction by the editor and ten essays by various authors consider the presence and nature of nationalism in medieval England. Medieval scholarly tradition and political structures anticipate the nation state and the nationalist discourses of…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23: 255-87, 2001.
Griselda reflects the "ordinary peasant woman" of Chaucer's age. Her anxieties about the burials of her children are similar to concerns found in guild records; both ClT and the guild records indicate late-medieval interconnections among poverty,…
A nationalistic fantasy of legal sovereignty underlies MLT and its depiction of England in relation to Rome through the figure of Constance. Anxiously embracing the geographic and forensic marginality of England, "Chaucer's lawyer exhibits a version…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Kathy Lavezzo. Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature, and English Community, 1000-1534 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 93-113.
Revised version of an essay of the same title in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 24 (2002): 149-80.
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 47-64.
Traces recent critical engagement with the "problem" of late medieval English national identity in Chaucer, especially as it reflects anxieties about political upheaval, linguistic variety, cultural "hybridity," and English geographical isolation.…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker, with the assistance of William Green, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 434-56.
Lavezzo considers the "complexities of medieval identity formation by surveying the depiction of Jews and Saracens in English" between Bede and the late fifteenth century. Includes comments on MLT and its presentation of Britain as a medieval "global…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016.
Addresses historical and social complexities of anti-Semitism and Jewish--Christian dynamics in medieval English texts. Chapter 3, "The Minster and the Privy: Jews, Lending, and the Making of Christian Space in Chaucer's England," focuses on…
Reads PrT and its concern with usury in light of medieval architectural construction and its dependence upon financing through lending, arguing that although the Tale demonizes Jewish lenders and exalts Christians through associations with,…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Eileen A. Joy, ed. Still Thriving: On the Importance of Aranye Fradenburg (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Punctum, 2013), pp. 25-31.
Considers the value of retaining the Chaucer Division of the Modern Language Association, maintaining its importance as long as "attention to [Chaucer's] corpus continues to unhinge, transform, and trouble received ideas about being in the world."…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Describes the concern with the "embodiment" of peasants in medieval estates theory, explores physicality in the GP description of the Miller, and examines rebelliousness and animal imagery in MilPT, aligning them with "peasant poetics" and the…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 166-77.
Catalogues the contours of criticism of the Pardoner in PardT, including critical praise of the tale's alleged "superiority as a tale." Argues that the pilgrims' revulsion toward the Pardoner is rooted in his homosexual identity, which is connected…
Argues for the effectiveness of the Pardoner's speech in light of his use of fables and exempla rather than "officium." PardT affirms the power of literature over that of the Pardoner's own duplicitous nature.
Lawler, Jennifer [L.]
John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg, eds., with Scott D. Westram and Gregory G. Guzman. Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, no. 1899 (New York and London: Garland, 2000), pp. 105-06.
Brief description of Chaucer's travels and of pilgrimage as a frame in CT. Like the pilgrimage report of Felix Fabri (1441/2-1502), CT is important as a historical record.
Lawler, Jennifer L.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1997): 3012A.
A cross-generic study (excluding drama) of the effects of exile on such diverse characters as the Christian or the secular hero, the lover, and the pilgrim. Discusses works by Chaucer, Gower, and Langland.
Lawler, Traugott, and Ralph Hanna III, eds., using materials collected by Karl Young and Robert A. Pratt.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014.
Edits the seven known commentaries on Walter Map's "Letter of Valerius to His Friend Ruffinus, Dissuading Him from Marrying," with Latin-English facing pages and scholarly apparatus. The Introduction (pp. 1–14) clarifies the importance of the…
Lawler, Traugott.
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. 83-91.
Though deconstruction is a useful tool for breaking down troublesome parts of CT, its "wholesale use" in the interpretation of Chaucer's poetry does great discredit to the author. Deconstructive criticism tends to place any author in a position…
Lawler, Traugott.
A. S. G. Edwards, ed. Middle English Prose: A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1984), pp. 291-313.
Summarizes the last twenty years' scholarship on Bo, Mel, ParsT, and Astr, with bibliography and desiderata.
