Lindahl, Carl.
John Miles Foley, ed. Teaching Oral Traditions. (New York: Modern Language Association, 1998), pp. 359-64.
Despite his bookishness, Chaucer is an oral poet, trained in medieval rhetorical tradition, which is rooted in oratory, and successful in his efforts to render oral narratives in literature.
Lindley, Arthur.
Robert J. C. Young, Ban Kah Choon, and Robbie B. H. Goh, eds. The Silent Word: Textual Meaning and the Unwritten. (Singapore: University of Singapore and Word Scientific, 1998), pp. 103-18.
Argues that gaps and "narratorial subversions" make Chaucer's works (and much of medieval aesthetic theory) "postmodern," comparing them with the definition of postmodernism by Ihab Hassan.
Traces the development of the doctrine of purgatory in medieval art and literature, focusing on Middle English homiletic and didactic writings on death and the necessity of intercession for souls in purgatory.
McGerr, Rosemarie P.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.
Argues that all of Chaucer's major works "play with medieval concepts of closure" and that the inconclusiveness of these works self-consciously indicates that readers generate their own meanings.
Paxson, James J.,and Cynthia A. Gravlee, eds.
Selinsgrove, Penn.:
An anthology of essays by various authors on aspects of medieval love literature. The introduction, by Paxson, discusses literary depictions of love in light of postmodern theories of the "psychological, phenomenological, and gendered bases" of…
Paxson, James J., Lawrence M. Clopper, and Sylvia Tomasch, eds.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998.
Eleven essays by various authors on medieval theatricality as a cultural process, including discussion of dramatic images and ludic energy in Chaucer and the social and ideological "performativities" of the mystery and morality plays. For six essays…
Pearsall, Derek.
Nigel Saul, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 245-76.
Surveys English language and literature from the Anglo-Saxon invasions to Thomas Malory, briefly discussing Chaucer as a court poet and as the one who brought "England fully into the stream of contemporary French and Italian poetry," making English…
Roberts, Anna, ed.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.
Ten essays by various authors, including discussions of AElfric's female saints, "Emare," English translations of Christine de Pizan, and other topics. Includes a slightly revised reprint of Carolyn Dinshaw's "Rivalry, Rape, and Manhood: Gower and…
Robertson, Kellie Paige.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4645A.
Explores conflicts between theories and practice of translation from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Thomas Hoccleve, focusing on how Lollard debates about translation provoked orthodox claims that the vernacular was "pestilential."
Sinnreich-Levi, Deborah M.,ed.
New York: AMS Press, 1998.
Thirteen essays reexamining Deschamps's work and life. While critics in the first half of the century saw Deschamps as a possible source for Chaucer and as an admirer of Chaucer's work, these essays investigate a wider context for his work, including…
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen.
Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1998.
An alphabetical dictionary of the "world fable," i.e., the beast fable and related narratives in various international traditions, both as stand-alone narratives and as exempla in larger works.
Spearman, Robert Alan.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4672A.
Constructs an Augustinian "rhetoric of youth" to assess the depictions of infancy, childhood, and youth in Boethius's "De consolatione philosophiae," Innocent III's "De miseria condicionis humane," and the "Roman de la rose." Then considers how…
Eleven essays by various authors. In his introduction, Stillinger characterizes Chaucer studies up to the 1980s as a great debate between New Criticism and exegetical criticism; he says that he selected the essays in the volume for the ways they go…
Strohm, Paul.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998.
Combines New Historicism and cultural psychoanalysis to explore how the Lancastrian dynasty and its supporters responded to and helped to construct a response to Henry Lancaster's usurpation of Richard II's throne.
Thomas, Susanne Sara.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 2645A.
Examines how Chaucer and the Gawain poet explore the legal power of written and spoken words. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" challenges the potency of oral oaths, WBT parodies courtroom rhetoric, the GP sketch of the Sergeant of Law exposes legal…
Truscott, Yvonne J.
Children's Literature Association Quarterly 23 (1998): 29-34.
Refutes claims that children were ignored during the Middle Ages. Chaucer wrote Astr to his son. In Th, he adopts a "childish identity," complemented by the pedagogy of Mel. The narrators of HF, PF, and BD are childlike.
Utz, Richard [J.]
Richard Utz and Tom Shippey, eds. Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honour of Leslie J. Workman (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1998), pp. 359-78.
Curtius sought to "cleanse" the study of medieval texts from emerging aesthetic and sociological readings by demonstrating the superiority of philological scholarship in his extensive review of Hans H. Glunz's study, "Die LiterarĐsthetik des…
Yeager, R. F., ed.
Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 1998.
Fifteen essays by various authors, each essay originally presented at the annual meeting of the John Gower Society between 1992 and 1997. Revised for publication, the essays explore issues of Gower's poetics and methods, his political concerns, and…
Zieman, Katherine Grace.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 818A.
Late-medieval liturgical activities--especially benefactions and the education that lay behind them--resulted from a variety of conditions and motives and produced a volatile environment that influenced the rise of vernacular literacy.
Allen, Mark.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D.S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 9-21.
In the transformation from Deduit in the "Roman de la Rose" to the Host of CT, and in the actions of the Host during the pilgrimage, we can see intersections of gender and class as Chaucer constructs the Host's distinctively "bourgeois masculinity."
An introduction to CT, designed to enable students to approach the poem on their own. Includes sections on style and narrative technique; voice, narration, and form; and themes,tensions, and ambiguities--each with explanatory discussion,summary of…
