Dinshaw, Carolyn.
Essays in Medieval Studies 16: 79-98, 1999.
Plenary address to the Illinois Medieval Association; adapted from Dinshaw's Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (SAC 23 [2001], no. 184). Discusses late-medieval court records concerning cross-dressing and…
Cruz Cabanillas, Isabel de la.
María Dolores Fernández de la Torre Madueño, Antonia Mara Medina Guerra, and Lidia Taillefer de Haya, eds. El Sexismo en el lenguaje. 2 vols. (Málaga: Disputacíon Provincial de Málaga, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 261-70.
Describes female sexual stereotyping in Chaucer's depictions of the Wife of Bath, Griselda (ClT), Custance (MLT), Dorigen (FranT), and the Prioress (GP).
Sola Buil, Ricardo J.
SELIM 9 (1999): 111-27, 1999.
The liveliness of characterization in GP and elsewhere in CT derives from theatrical rather than narrative tradition. The interplay between typicality and individuality reflects the dual traditions of narration and drama.
Reader-response analysis of various dramatic monologues. Shaw focuses on the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning and other Victorians but clarifies the functions of deception, self-deception, casuistry, irony, double irony, and Sartre's concept of…
Reeves traces the evolution of old wives' tales (including WBT) and assesses how such tales represent fancy and superstition in early scientific theories of the Copernican system. However, the tales also promote the theory of extraterrestrial life,…
Fraga Fuentes, María Amelia.
SELIM 9 : 79-90, 1999.
Compares the figures of the Old Man in PardT and Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus," arguing that each represents the "Christian paradox of moral strength manifesting itself in physical weakness."
Léon Sendra, Antonio R., and Jesús L. Serrano Reyes.
SELIM 9 : 123-42, 1999.
The authors maintain that Chaucer's visit to Monserrat inspired aspects of HF and suggest that Chaucer's man of great authority (HF 2158) was Pedro IV.
Stokes compares the pledges of love-troth in the "Prose Lancelot" and TC, suggesting that they reflect a "specific kind of romantic relationship," neither marital nor illicit nor clandestine, but "solemn and binding" and based on the man's service to…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Yukio Oba et al., eds. Currents in Linguistic Research: A Festschrift for Professor Kazuyuki Yamamoto on the Occasion of His Retirement from Yamaguchi University. Tokyo: Kaitakusha, 1999, pp. 231-46.
Discusses external causals, one of the pragmatic features in the use of Chaucer's moot / moste. Clarifies the fusion of fate, divine intervention, and the speaker's subjective factors.
Dutton, Marsha L.
Benjamin Thompson, ed. Monasteries and Society in Medieval Britain: Proceedings of the 1994 Harlaxton Symposium. Harlaxton Medieval Studies, no. 6 (Stamford: Watkins, 1999), pp. 296-311.
Dutton reads the Prioress and the Second Nun as paired opposites: one childish, the other adult. In PrPT, the Creator is subordinated to his creatures, who seem "unaware of the effects of the Incarnation." SNPT reasserts the proper order, in which…
McCarthy, Conor.
Donald Mowbray, Rhiannon Purdie, and Ian P. Wei, eds. Authority & Community in the Middle Ages (Phoenix Mill, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1999), pp. 101-15.
Because they were not subject to fathers or husbands, widows posed a challenge to dominant views of women in late fourteenth-century England. Chaucer's Wife of Bath is portrayed as lecherous, yet she may also embody broader concerns about widowhood.
Traces the history of the metaphor of Satan as a "fowler" who seeks to trap souls as he would trap birds. Discusses examples from the time of the Church fathers to Shakespeare, including three instances in which Chaucer employs related metaphors: WBT…
Rasovic, Tiffany
Year's Work in Medievalism 14: 67-79, 1999.
Explores in BD Chaucer's attitudes toward language and its (in)ability to communicate successfully. The skepticism or nominalism of BD is modified by indications of the power of "extra-linguistic" symbols and signs, providing some "rescue from…
Chaucer and Henryson use the bestiaries in different ways. Chaucer only hints at the allegorical potential of his animals in CT and PF, although he does capitalize on familiar allegorizations in his similes and symbols. More directly, Henryson…
Thompson, Jefferson M.
Piotr Fast and Wacław Osadnok, eds. From Kievan Prayers to Avantgarde: Papers in Comparative Literature (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Energeia, 1999), pp. 83-98.
Thompson traces parallels among several dichotomies--eros and agape, cupiditas and caritas, love and reason--arguing that Chaucer was unsatisfied with the simple dichotomies he found in the "Roman de la Rose." In KnT, love is "reprimanded" as folly,…
Cordery, Leona.
Gudrun M. Grabher and Sonja Bahn-Coblans, eds. The Self at Risk in English Literatures and Other Landscapes: Honoring Brigitte Scheer-Schazler on the Occasion of Her 60th Birthday (Innsbruck: Institut fur Sprachwissenschaft, 1999), pp. 177-85.
Spiritual stalwartness makes heroines of the protagonists in MLT, 'Emaré,' and the 'King of Tars'; the active quality of their faith makes them agents in the conversion of others.
Bloom, Harold, ed.
Broomall, Pa. : Chelsea House, 1999.
Includes a brief biography, bibliography, and introduction to CT; summaries of GP, KnT, WBPT, and PardPT; and excerpts from critical studies of these sections of CT.
Cole, Carol A.
Michigan Academician 29 (1997): 511-20.
Argues that Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" is fundamentally Boethian in its castigation of "inconstant Venereal love," and suggests that Henryson links his poem to TC in order to "underscore the Boethian view of love."
Gastle, Brian W.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 3446A.
Describes the social and economic status of the "femme sole" in late medieval England, and discusses the role of the figure in select Paston letters, the Book of Margery Kempe, and CT, particularly the Guildsmen, the WBPT, MerT, ShT, and the…
Hieatt, Constance B.
R. Barton Palmer, ed. Chaucer's French Contemporaries: The Poetry/Poetics of Self and Tradition (New York: AMS Press, 1999), pp. 163-86
Assesses Machaut's knowledge of falconry and his depiction of the falconer/falcon relationship in "Dit de l'Alerion" as an extended metaphor of love. Also explores the influence of Machaut's metaphor, including its impact on Chaucer (TC, LGW, WBP,…
Mertz, J. B.
Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 32.3 (1998-1999): 73-74.
Records a copy (the second known) of William Blake's 1809 Chaucer "Prospectus," pasted into the flyleaf of Francis Douce's copy of Tyrwhitt's edition of CT, now in the Bodleian Library. Pasted opposite is a prospectus for Robert Hartley Cromek's…
Boon, James A.
James A. Boon. Verging on Extra-Vagance: Anthropology, History, Religion, Literature, Arts . . . Showbiz (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 191-97.
Tallies several similarities of topic and method between cultural anthropology, on the one hand, and Chaucer's works and Chaucer studies, on the other.
