Lyman, Stanford M.
Dix Hills, N. Y.: General Hall, Inc., 1989.
Studies the "sociology of evil," organizing the discussion by the traditional Seven Deadly Sins and exploring social, psychological, historical, legal, and political concepts of evil. The section on pride includes "A Medieval Excursus: Chaucer's…
Lynch, Andrew.
Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson, eds. Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 167-78.
Muscatine's "Gothic form" applies to BD with its "linear series of discrete episodes" and foci, as well as its shifts in viewpoint, style, and voice. Interpretations move in a hermeneutical circle without resolution: from parts to whole, from whole…
Lynch, Andrew.
Hilary Fraser and R. S. White, eds. Constructing Gender: Feminism in Literary Studies (Nedlands, West Australia: University of Western Australia Press, 1994), pp. 19-38.
When linked to issues of genre, the manner of constructing a female audience in FranT, LGW and Henryson's "Testament" may destabilize narrative closures and thereby offer moral intruction to women.
Lynch, Andrew.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 113-33.
Lynch explains the centrality of the legend of Troy to European narratives as a symbol of human instability and as a mirror of the present, especially in late medieval London. In comparison to its sources, TC keeps war on the periphery of the love…
Lynch, Andrew.
Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry, and Melissa Raine, eds. Contemporary Chaucer across the Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), pp. 172-87.
Focuses on nineteenth-century critical attention to Chaucer as childlike, simple, or fresh for the ways that it contributed to later inattention to Chaucer as a religious poet, particularly inattention to Chaucer as an English Catholic poet. Examines…
Lynch, Andrew.
Joanna Bellis and Laura Slater eds. Joanna Bellis and Laura Slater eds. Representing War and Violence 1250-1600 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016), pp. 79-94.
Assesses John Lydgate as "the premier learned war poet of the later English Middle Ages," exploring his "Troy Book" and "Seige of Thebes" for the ways they depict the violence of war. Includes recurrent attention to Lydgate's sources, Chaucer's TC,…
Asks "[w]hat kind of stories could let . . . refugees be admitted to the category 'Australian,' in a more inclusive version of [the] actual and potential inhabitants" of the nation? Explores how and to what extent CT might be a useful model for…
Lynch, James J.
Modern Language Notes 72.4 (1957): 242-49.
Reviews arguments that identify and explicate "Seinte Loy" in the GP description of the Prioress (GP 1.120) as a reference to St. Eligius, and suggests an alternative possibility: St. Eulalia. Explores resonances of the reference--thematic and…
Chaucer uses East and West to signify differences in storytelling in MLT: chivalric vs. travel romance; hagiography vs. history; linear narrative vs. apostrophe and prayer. Chaucer leads his readers to see the Tale as "trapped in Western chauvinism,"…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Chaucer Review 25 (1990): 1-16; 85-95.
Although PF clearly treats love and courtship, its most central or motivating problems is the relationship between choice and will or understanding. Chaucer demonstrates a more thoroughly informed engagement with contemporary philosophy than critics…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988.
Examines the "marriage of matter and form in high medieval philosophy and poetics," the "grammar of dream and vision," and vision and dreams in Alain de Lille's "De planctu naturae, Jean de Meun, Dante, and Gower. Lynch presents a model that may be…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 10 (1988): 41-70.
Reexamines ClT "from Walter's point of view"--that is, focusing on Walter as the center of the tale--suggesting that Chaucer, like Petrarch, his source, was concerned as much with epistemology or the quest for knowledge as with Griselda's fidelity.
BD is considerably more complex than some critics have believed: it is a "philosophical vision," not a "dream of folly" (Zimbardo); an "autobiography by dream" (Shoaf); a "literary sampler," or a "Boethian apocalypse" (Cherniss). It is not…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Robert R. Edwards, ed. Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 107-25.
From the dream visions through CT, Chaucer never abandoned his fascination with walls and "enclosed fictions." On the one hand, walls function metaphorically, representing such forces as the rise and fall of civilization. On the other, they create…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Richard J. Utz, ed. Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm (Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.; Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen, 1995), pp. 179-203.
Through the Eagle's arguments and Fame's arbitrary inferences and syllogisms, HF satirizes the logical analysis of language. This discrediting of late-medieval dialectic is a new use of the dream-vision genre, which traditionally celebrates reason…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marin Leslie, eds. Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses), 1999, pp. 83-96.
PF represents an "oedipal moment"--a psychological suspension between the "male-dominated civilization of Africanus ('culture,' in a word)" and the "female-dominated love-garden of Nature and Venus ('nature')." The narrator stands "on the brink of…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Peter Brown, ed. Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 99-124
Examines Renaissance views of Chaucer and argues that Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" was influenced by LGW. Discusses Chaucer's and Shakespeare's complex treatment of dreams and the treatment of Theseus in KnT, HF, and LGW.
Chaucer's dream visions confront contemporary philosophical debates, which also shape his poetics. BD is concerned with the status of universals, the relationship of universals to singulars, and the certainty of human knowledge. HF mocks "the logical…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 393-409.
The Pardoner's "misunderstanding" of gluttony as a sin "becomes emblematic of his inability to appreciate significance in general." Lynch discusses digestive imagery from medieval commentaries on memory and meditation to clarify the nature of the…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Richard F. Gyug, ed. Medieval Cultures in Contact. Fordham Series in Medieval Studies, no. 1 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), pp. 213-22.
Lynch describes how a team-taught, cross-cultural course in European and Islamic literatures discovers dimensions in the literatures, including SqT, FranT, and MLT.
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Yvonne Bruce, ed. Images of Matter: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Proceedings of the Eighth Citadel Conference on Literature, Charleston, South Carolina, 2002. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005, pp. 72-91
Lynch posits that Shakespeare had an "anxious" relationship with Chaucer as a model, a source, and a father figure. She reads "Two Noble Kinsman" against KnT for evidence of this "nervous" relationship and similarly assesses Fletcher's "revisionary…
Objective evaluation reveals the "elusive" and contradictory "evidence" on which chronologies of Chaucer's works--and, most notably, constructions of his artistic maturation--are based. These constructions are essentially interpretive activities;…
Examines food imagery in MilT, RvT, CkT, and GP. These portions of CT threaten, but do not quite achieve, the collapse of Lévi-Strauss's "culinary triangle."
