Biebel, Elizabeth M.
Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal, eds. Food and Eating in Medieval Europe (London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1998), pp. 15-26.
Surveys references to food in CT, arguing that they capitalize on traditional associations of the "feminized Christ" and butchered animals.
Bishop, Kathleen A.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4643A.
Explores how classical comedy (especially Plautus and Ovid) and medieval elegiac comedies influenced Chaucer's fabliaux and the fabliau elements of ManT, WBP, TC, and the Prologue to the apocryphal Tale of Beryn.
Brosamer, Matthew James.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4643A.
Assesses gluttony in CT and Piers Plowman, arguing that each presents consumption as both an occasion of the sin and part of its symbolic apparatus. In these works and in scriptural and patristic traditions, gluttony signifies human potential for all…
Carruthers, Leo.
Jacqueline Hamesse et al., eds. Medieval Sermons and Society: Cloister, City, University: Proceedings of International Symposia at Kalamazoo and New York. Textes et etudes du Moyen Age, no. 9 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fłdłration Internationale des Instituts d'₁tudes Młdiłvales, 1998), pp. 219-40.
Shows how the Middle English sermon series :Jacob's Well" reflects many aspects of contemporary society. Carruthers likens its audience to that of CT.
Cote, Mary Kathleen Hendrickson.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 2665A.
WBT, PrT, and SNT all confront the masculine authority of books, the nature of love and marriage, and the nature of feminine authority--issues of female identity and agency. They assert a feminine response to masculine discourse in CT, culminating in…
Cullen, Dolores L.
Santa Barbara, Calif.: Fithian Press, 1998.
Allegorical reading of the CT Host as an image of Christ, a figure of the Eucharist associated with joy, heroism, and omnipotence. The Host is a guide of others and the only pilgrim not in need of penance. His name, his language, and his leadership…
DeVries, David N.
Chaucer Review 32 (1998): 391-99.
Despite David Wallace's assertion that London is "absent" in Chaucer, and D. W. Robertson's contention that medieval Londoners were content within "an hierarchical classless society," CT depicts London as an "underworld," where unscrupulous…
Ellis, Steve, ed.
London and New York: Longman, 1998.
An anthology of twelve previously published essays and excerpts from longer works that apply modern critical theory to CT. Ellis's introduction assesses the contributions of the essays to a postmodern understanding of CT.
Claiming "there is no clear textual evidence for the assertion that [the Ellesmere order] reflects Chaucer's intention," Forni questions the authority of the Ellesmere order and examines how that order was canonized as Chaucerian. She contends that…
Holloway, Julia Bolton.
Julia Bolton Holloway. Jerusalem: Essays on Pilgrimage and Literature (New York: AMS Press, 1998), pp. 173-94.
Assesses the Wife of Bath (in contrast to the Clerk) and the Pardoner (in contrast to the Parson) as "Chaucer's Diptych of Eve and Adam," commenting on their depictions in the Ellesmere manuscript and reading them as inversions of the ideals of…
Kensak, Michael Alan.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 817A.
Entry into heaven and the approach to God properly conclude a pilgrimage, as represented by Dante and Alain de Lille. In ManPT, Chaucer inverts the topos to show logic and language vitiated (not transcended) as the Cook becomes literally drunk (not…
Lerer, Seth.
James J. Paxson, Lawrence M. Clopper, and Sylvia Tomasch, eds. The Performance of Middle English Culture: Essays on Chaucer and the Drama in Honor of Martin Stevens (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 59-76.
In the beginning of CT, Chaucer's references and allusions to late-fourteenth-century theater indicate the potentially disruptive nature of dramatic public expression. CT defines the cycle plays as radically other-provincial, civic, and communally…
Russell, J. Stephen.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.
Argues that medieval language theory and the arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric inform CT. They provided Chaucer with his fundamental awareness of the slipperiness of language-its inability to represent truth and reality and its ability to distort…
Silar, Theodore Irvin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4283A.
Legal terminology pertaining to land law is dense in fragments 1 and 2 of CT and in TC. Chaucer used the terms in informed ways and expected his audience to be familiar with their implications.
Weisl, Angela Jane.
Anna Roberts, ed. Violence Against Women in Medieval Texts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 115-36.
Though Chaucer grants women agency in CT, they act against a background of violence that is often ignored or mitigated. The fabliaux, the romances, and the religious narratives all present violence against women as a normal part of society. WBT comes…
Wodzak, Victoria Lee.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 500A.
Assesses the status of CT and three eighteenth-century novels as "transitional texts" between orality and literacy, examining such features as voicing, framing devices, and insecurity about the social and moral roles of the texts.
Gastle, Brian W.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 99 (1998): 211-16.
The portrait of the five guildsmen in CT is a critique of "petty bourgeois pretensions to political power." Though each was "shaply for to been an alderman," the guildsmen were not members of the professions from which aldermen were elected. Their…
If the Parson represents the Church, the Ploughman represents lay piety in brotherhood with the Church. This is how Chaucer perceives the poet's role: as a "'trewe swynkere,' working 'for Cristes sake, for every povre wight' in accordance with the…
Fowler, Elizabeth.
Thomas C. Stillinger, ed. Critical Essays on Geoffrey Chaucer (New York: G. K. Hall; London: Prentice Hall International, 1998), pp. 59-81.
In KnT, Chaucer questions force as a basis for government. Conquest "dissolves voluntary social bonds" and fails to produce the consent necessary to a good society. An agent of force, Theseus uses rhetoric to control others, and his final speech is…
A close reading of passages in KnT reveals Chaucer's close familiarity with the medieval construction industry. Although Chaucer supervised building rather than creating buildings, as a poet, he is supreme master over his own creative process.
Ingham, Patricia Clare.
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. 23-35.
Examines masculine suffering and Theseus's stoic masculinity, particularly how it demands the suffering of the ruler's soldiers and the sorrowing of women. Concludes that the Tale depicts Theseus's creative power as specifically masculine.
O'Brien, Timothy D.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 157-67.
In KnT, Chaucer's use of the word "queynte," the dying and quickening fires in the temple, and the spurting and spewing of the flames to "suggest parturition, life's uncertainty and tenuousness and even menstruation." Emelye's tears at the sight of…
Park, Youngwon.
Medieval English Studies 06 (1998): 163-95.
KnT reveals a providential pattern that is both Boethian and Pauline--"all things work together for the good." The gods of the Tale are pagan, but the outcome of the story shows Christian Providence.
Stein, Robert M.
James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravlee, eds. Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid Through Chaucer (Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1998), pp. 188-205.
As the Miller refuses to allow easy closure to KnT, so the Tale's opening is rooted in the uneasy conquest of Femenye. Throughout the Tale, patterns that suggest resolution fail to reach their hoped-for conclusion, indicating the ongoing nature of…
Blum, Martin.
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. 37-52.
John, Nicholas, and Absolon are, each in his own way, feminized in MilT, while Alison is masculinized and thereby escapes punishment.
