Studies aspects of style in understanding medieval literature, examining features of the "Roman de la Rose" as well as the "moral imbalance at work" in KnT, particularly as evident in the visual rhetoric and movement in the Temple of Diana and…
Levine, Gloria.
San Antonio, Tex.: Novel Units. 2000.
Pedagogical activities and assessment tools designed for the high school classroom, focusing on GP, KnT, MilT, WBPT, MerT, FranT, PardPT, PrT, and NPT. Targeted skills include vocabulary-building, critical thinking, reading comprehension, and…
The allusion to Thesiphone (TC 1.6) may resonate with passages in Statius and Boccaccio that connect the Fury with "discordant, perverse, sterile, potentially demonic sexuality" (p. 561). The allusion in TC links Criseyde's possible childlessness…
Levitan, Alan.
University of Toronto Quarterly 40 (1971): 236-46.
Shows that Friar John of SumT is an "exemplar" of "reversals of apostolic qualities," essential to the anti-fraternalism of the Tale, rooted in the "Roman de la Rose." The description of the division of the fart that concludes the Tale adds to this…
Levy, Bernard S.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 385-409.
At the literal level, Griselda is subservient, loving, obedient, and patient; at the spiritual level, she emulates Christ, while Walter is a servant of God.
Levy, Bernard S.
Chaucer Review 11 (1977): 306-18.
The Clerk responds to WBT by showing that "gentilesse" is found in humble virtue and obedience, as well as in noble birth. MerT, however, seeks to deny the underlying premise of these earlier tales by showing that "gentilesse" and happiness can…
Levy, Bernard S.
Chaucer Review 4.2 (1969): 106-22.
Argues that the discussion of gentility by the Loathly Lady in WBP effects a change in the knight's moral vision, with no physical change in the Lady. Imagery and allusions to Baptism reinforce the point and run parallel to similar concerns in WBP,…
Levy, Bernard S.
Studies in Short Fiction 4.2 (1967): 112-18.
Describes the "ironic reversal" of the roles of the husband and the monk in ShT, exploring the equation of sex and commerce in the Tale, and the wife's use of them both. The Tale presents commercialization of sex and a sexualization of commerce.
Levy, Bernard S.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 11 (1966): 45-60.
Contributes to discussions of the effectiveness of SumT by describing its "pattern of biblical parody" centered on Pentecost, arguing that the Summoner uses the pattern to attack the claim that friars, like the apostles, "have a special divine…
Argues that Dante's siren of "Purgatorio" XIX is analogous to the Wife of Bath and the transformation of the loathly lady of WBT, helping to undercut the Wife's views on female sovereignty and ironically "reasserting the medieval Christian idea of…
Levy, Bernard S., and George R. Adams.
Mediaeval Studies 29 (1967): 178-92.
Identifies patterns, details, images, and wording in NPT that direct the "reader's attention not only to basic biblical narrative of Adam and Eve, but also to the theological commentary on the Fall." The overall moral of the Tale is the universality…
Summarizes John Dryden's theory of translation in his "Fables Ancient and Modern," and explores the discrepancy between this theory and his practice in his translations of KnT, NPT, and WBT, all of which "violate the spirit of their originals."
Lewis, Bernard.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 20.1 (2013): 127-41.
Personal account of learning and teaching Chaucer in Middle English by a college student/instructor. Emphasizes oral performance, and includes summaries of student evaluations and descriptions of resources available for use by students and teachers.
Lewis, C. S.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964.
Intellectual backgrounds to the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, with particular attention to literature, classical, and late-classical influences; the concept of the universe and the earth; human physiology and psychology; and cultural…
Together, Chaucer's two references to the Alexandrian crusade in CT, along with his portrait of the Knight and depictions of Custance and the Sultaness in MLT, expose similarities between missionary work and crusading. The Knight's participation in…
Lewis, Celia Milton.
Dissertation Abstracts International 62: 2109A, 2001.
The "Seven Sages," the "Decameron," and CT share, in addition to frame structure and historical milieux, a concern with death and avoidance of it (plague), a changing sense of time, and a new concept of authorial identity (especially Chaucer). The…
Lewis, Celia.
Robert G. Benson and Susan J. Ridyard, eds. New Readings of Chaucer's Poetry (Rochester, N.Y., and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 139-64.
Late-medieval preoccupation with mortality defies the solace of fiction. PhyT and PardT offer no hope of physical or spiritual life, and ParsT kills storytelling.
Lewis, F. D.
A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, ed. Metaphor and Imagery in Persian Poetry (Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2012), pp. 137-203.
Describes and discusses two analogues to the pear tree episode in MerT (and in Boccaccio's "Decameron"), one in Persian by Rumi in his "Mathnavī," and one in Arabic by Ibn al-Jawzi in his "Kitāb al-adhkiyā'." Also describes and discusses two…
Lewis, Franklin D.
Wali Ahmadi, ed. Converging Zones: Persian Literary Tradition and the Writing of History; Studies in Honor of Amin Banini (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 2012), pp. 200-219.
Translates into modern English verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) the initial tale of Farid Al-Din Attar's story collection "Elahi-Nameh" (Persian, twelfth century), an analogue to MLT.
Lewis, Jack Stewart.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Alberta, 1970. DAI A62.13 (2002): n.p. Fully accessible via https://ualberta.scholaris.ca/items/80fe7150-26a5-4263-ac36-fa17b470f106 (accessed (April 12, 2026)
Examines Chaucer's uses of the terminology of dreams, his sources of this terminology, critical approaches to dreams in Chaucer, and Chaucer's "handling of dream incidents and narrative themselves," arguing that Chaucer is "reticent about providing…
Argues that fourteenth-century English allegories and dream-visions "open up utopic spaces" and enable proposals for social change. Considers a variety of texts, including HF, which "discusses the potential inherent in both art and language to shape…
Lewis, James R., and Evelyn Dorothy Oliver.
Detroit: Visible Ink, 2009.
A popular handbook to dream psychology, dream lore, the history of interpretations of dreams, and dreaming in various cultures, with an entry on Chaucer (pp. 38-40) that comments on his biography and his dream-vision poetry. First published in 1995.
Lewis, Katherine J.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 94-113.
Places the Prioress and the Second Nun in the context of late medieval female monasticism, contrasting the roles of female agency and the "representations of female holiness" of the Prioress and the Second Nun.
