Daniels, Richard.
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. 111-23.
In MilT, Chaucer transformed a bawdy joke into pleasing narrative art, producing in the sexual scenes moments when a reader might feel jouissance. Includes some notes toward a materialist reading of the Tale as a representation of the poetic and…
Dove, Debra Magai.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1175A.
Violence, induced by the impermissible crossing of borders, involves clashing social codes and evokes varying attitudes: Beowulf authorizes it; Juliana opposes it; "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and MilT develop its ambiguities. Sir Gawain poses a…
Mack, Peter, and Chris Walton, eds.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Textbook edition of the Miller's sketch from GP, MilPT, and RvP, including glosses and discursive notes, and a discussion of "approaches" to the works--sources and analogues, character analysis, assessment of theme and topic, and analysis of poetic…
The blacksmith is an ambiguous figure. Medieval blacksmiths often worked at night because the temperature was cooler, but ordinances forbade them to do so. Furthermore, although the medieval blacksmith was a symbol of the devil, he was also a symbol…
Taylor, Paul Beekman.
Paul Beekman Taylor. Chaucer Translator (Lanham, Md., New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998), pp. 39-50.
Reads MilT as a dim, worldly "eschatological drama" in which providential order is turned to disorder and "spiritual grace to secular disgrace." Analyzes various words and details ("ba," "stone," the ring, etc.), the concern with Noah's Flood, and…
Finlayson, John.
Studia Neophilologica 70 (1998): 35-39.
RvP is a psychological study of the bitterness and frustrations of old age, as well as a quiting of the Miller. Chaucer borrowed the leek-old age simile from Boccaccio's Decameron and adapted it to his own purpose. The simile is not proverbial.
Pigg, Daniel F.
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. 53-61.
Connects the violence implicit in the performance of the Tale with physical violence and argues that RvT portrays the perversion of masculine power.
The "Britoun book, written with Evaungiles," on which Constance's false accuser swears before being struck dead, is likely to have been a Latin gospel book illuminated in Celtic. Such a book (like the Gospel of Gildas) was said to have the power…
Bullon-Fernandez, Maria.
R. F. Yeager, ed. Re-Visioning Gower (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 1998), pp. 129-46.
In Gower's version of the Constance story, incest is a metaphor for the relationship between the Church and the crown, a means to critique the two. In contrast, MLT "tries to avoid suggesting any tension between lay and clerical power."
Goldstein, R. James.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 31-42.
Places the anti-Scottish legendary history of MLT into English historiographic tradition, especially Trevet's Chronicle. Argues that Chaucer implicitly supports England's claim to the overlordship of Scotland, a claim renewed by Henry IV and…
Landman, James [H.]
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 20 (1998): 1-39.
In MLT, the torment of Constance is explicitly linked with the judicial torture of Alla's messenger. A notion of a "single, certain truth" underlies the concern with torture in the Tale, also reflected in the attitude toward fiction expressed in MLP…
Biebel, Elizabeth M.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1564A.
Feminist criticism has changed perceptions of the Wife of Bath. Feminist critics perceive her not as a superficial and "garish caricature" of womanhood but as a serious person attempting to establish her identity, rejecting antifeminist tradition,…
Biebel, Elizabeth M.
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. 63-75.
WBT reveals the Wife's idealized vision of society. The Tale answers her society's gender inequities, which victimize both men and women, by depicting a world wherein ultimately women and men are recognized as individuals.
Awareness of narratological levels helps us understand differences in intent in Gower and Chaucer. Comparison of Gower's "Tale of Florent" and Chaucer's WBT illustrates these differences. Overall, Gower has a purpose and achieves closure; Chaucer…
Seaman, Myra.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1156A.
Medieval romance generally assumes that action is inherently a masculine activity and speech feminine, with both supporting patriarchy. Various English romances examine these assumptions (sometimes ambiguously). WBT employs them to subvert not only…
Tinkle, Theresa.
George Bornstein and Theresa Tinkle, eds. The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 55-88.
Despite Chaucer's efforts to create a stable "poetic self-fashioning," WBPT takes different forms in its different redactions in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts and in Thynne's 1532 edition.
Psychoanalytic argument that the old woman's curses are pivotal to the workings of hostility, manipulation, and eroticism in FrT. The summoner, the devil, and the woman reenact a patriarchal version of the Oedipal scenario, disrupted by the woman's…
Jost, Jean E.
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. 77-90.
Analyzes the fraternal and potentially sexual attraction between the Friar and the Summoner by focusing on Chaucer's conception of brotherhood and the male relationships in FrPT and SumPT.
Kline, Daniel T.
Philological Quarterly 77 (1998): 271-93.
Assesses the scenes of swearing and oath making in FrT, arguing that the Tale is not only a theological exemplum but also a reflection of "cultural anxiety concerning the nature of changing social and economic relations as mediated by new forms of…
Lim, Hye-Soon.
Medieval English Studies 06 (1998):199-223
Deriving from the Greek word for "tongue" and from Scandinavian "superficial luster," "glosing" is the central notion of SumT. Chaucer uses it to disclose fraternal hypocrisy and distortion of Scripture. In Korean, with English abstract.
The reference to "Symoun" alludes not to Simon Magus (as previously suggested) but to Simon the Apostle, whose connections with sin and confession advance some of the larger themes of SumT.
Aers, David.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998): 341-69.
Argues that Griselda of ClT is not a type of Christ, because not all depictions of human suffering imitate Christ's passion. Texts by authors from Aquinas to Wycliffe, Arundel,and William Thorpe indicate that passive suffering is one of many…
Griselda's response to Walter at crucial points in the narrative--when he has "killed" her children and when he has banished her from the palace so he can take another "wife"--underscores his appalling behavior and demonstrates the ways outward…
Ginsberg, Warren.
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. 125-41.
Assesses how the Host's address to the Clerk reflects effort to shape the identity of the Clerk as a tale-teller, so that even before the Clerk speaks, literary, philosophical, and spiritual discourses compete to define his subjectivity.
Examines ClT 911-17 and concludes that, because of textual ambiguities, it is difficult to know whether Griselda has physically changed upon returning to her former home or, as Harding seems to believe, her "olde coote" is no longer fit to be worn.
