Myers, Jeffrey Rayner.
Studia Neophilologica 72: 54-62, 2000.
The Pardoner is not a male homosexual but a cross-dressed female through whom Chaucer reveals the constricting gender roles available to women of his time. PardPT metaphorizes the social relations forced on a female trapped in the ambivalence of…
Piraprez, Delphine.
Le beau et le laid au Moyen Âge. Sénéfiance, no. 43 (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, Centre Universitaire d'Etudes et de Recherches Médiévales d'Aix, 2000), pp. 423-35.
Considers the relationships between moral virtue/vice and physical beauty/ugliness in PardPT, focusing on the Old Man and the Pardoner.
Reed, Shannon L.
Journal x: A Journal in Culture and Criticism 5:109-16, 2000-2001.
Assesses critical responses to the Host's verbal assault on the Pardoner at the end of PardT, identifying the common assumption that the Host fears the Pardoner's sexuality. Such readings are complicitous in the "abjection" of the Pardoner and…
Sturges, Robert S.
New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000.
Examines the Pardoner as an example of the "fixities and fluidities of fourteenth-century discourses about gender." Potentially subversive, the Pardoner is also a patriarchal figure and "anxious to assume the signs of a phallic and authoritative…
Beidler, Peter G.
Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 25-46.
Argues that Boccaccio's Decameron 8.1 was Chaucer's primary source for ShT, even though scholars have been reluctant to treat Decameron as a source for any of The Canterbury Tales. Posits definitions of source, hard analogue, and soft analogue.
Assesses the six oaths by saints--Martyn, Denys, Peter, Yves, Austyn, and Jame--in ShT, arguing that familiarity with details of the saints' lives provokes the audience to condemn the characters in the Tale.
Jost, Jean E.
Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 7: 108-25, 2000.
Characterizes the Prioress of GP and PrT as "psychologically androgynous," a combination of "feminine on the outside" and "masculine on the inside." This combination is evident in the Prioress's fusion of sentimentality and cruelty and her other…
Barefield, Laura (D.)
Medieval Perspectives 15.1: 27-34, 2000.
In a deliberate move to fit Constance of MLT to the genre of "hagiographic romance," Chaucer minimizes or eliminates the network of genealogical relations that gives the heroine significance and agency in Trevet's "Les cronicles," Chaucer's source.
Davis, Kathleen.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 105-22.
Contemporary orientalism is based on a paradoxical notion of the Middle Ages as both the precursor of modernity and an unchanging alterity. Davis identifies this paradox in Edward Said's "Orientalism" and Diane Sawyer's television documentary,…
Hanning, Robert W.
Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 177-211.
Both The Man of Law's Tale and Decameron 1.1 consider the problematics of mediation inherent in the use of language. MLT is an exercise for the teller to impress the other pilgrims with his authority and wisdom.
Rothwell, William.
D. A. Trotter, ed. Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 213-32.
Studies the "York Memorandum Book" for examples of the ways Latin, French, and English "intertwined" in medieval England. Rothwell opens with commentary on the vocabulary of a passage from MLP in which Chaucer "Englishes" several French words and…
Woods, William F.
Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 7: 84-107, 2000.
Reads MLT as an "allegory of will," a Christian response to the "Boethian stoicism" of KnT that transcends mundane mercantilism by dramatizing an "investment of self." As "God's merchant," Custance transforms herself and converts others through a…
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 34: 388-97, 2000.
In GP, the Wife's "foot-mantel" is not a "skirt," but a set of leggings or riding chaps, pulled up over the feet and legs from the bottom. "Large" refers not to the size of the Wife's hips, but to the loose drapery of the garment. The Wife may be…
Biddick, Kathleen.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30: 449-62, 2000.
Reading the loathly lady's discourse on gentilesse (WBT) against the Statutes of Kilkenny (imposed by the English crown on the Anglo-Irish in 1366) highlights the conflict of nobility as defined either by blood line or by behavior (sanguinity or…
Doniger, Wendy.
Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press, 2000.
A cross-cultural, transhistorical anatomy of one motif in the "mythology of sex" in literature and film--the "story of going to bed with someone whom you mistake for someone else." Discusses structuralist and psychoanalytic explanations of variations…
WBP contains two quotations from Ptolemy (3.180-81, 326-27), setting up a system for classifying knowledge according to practica (the Wife) and theorica (Ptolemy). The Wife recontextualizes and trivializes Ptolemy's efforts to achieve a vision of…
Longsworth, Robert (M.)
Chaucer Review 34: 372-87, 2000.
Through her use of the Samaritan woman, the Wife argues for the "exegetical reliability" of her own experience. Longsworth explores several biblical references in WBP and their exegetical backgrounds to show how the Wife, even while more…
Maggioni, M[aria]. Luisa.
Gabriella Di Martino and Maria Lima, eds. English Diachronic Pragmatics. Proceedings of the International Conference on English Diachronic Pragmatics. (Naples, Italy: CUEN, 2000), pp. 103-14.
Examines relationships between the roles of women in medieval society and the language used by women in Arthurian romances, especially interpersonal relationships as depicted in dialogue, forms of address, indicators of politeness, and the emerging…
Mouron Figuera, Cristina.
Ana María Hornero and María Pilar Navarro, eds. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of S.E.L.I.M. (Zaragoza: Institucion Fernando el Catolico (CSIC), 2000), pp. 147-57.
Compares views about married women reflected in The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale with late-fourteenth-century social reality.
Using ironic techniques deplored by Christine, Chaucer is often misunderstood by modern audiences. Rigby contrasts Christine's "comprehensive defence of women" with Chaucer's satire in WBP, where Alisoun is the target.
Takahashi, Isamu.
Eigo Seinen 146.8: 499-501, 2000.
Surveys the transformations of the Wife of Bath in "The Wanton Wife of Bath" (1600), Johnson's "A New Sonnet of a Knight and a Faire Virgin" (1612), Fletcher's "Women Pleased" (1620), "Pilgrim's Progress" (1678), "The New Wife of Bath" (1700), Gay's…
Viewed in both historical and literary contexts, the Friar's "typet" (probably a shoulder cape with a deep hood) and his "semycope" (a short cloak) show that he is breaking sumptuary laws for his fraternal order. That he also dresses in the finest…
Finlayson, John.
Studies in Philology 97: 255-75, 2000.
Argues that Chaucer used Boccaccio's version of the Griselda story in addition to Petrarch's. A number of Chaucer's alterations and additions to Petrarch have a "strong, often detailed relationship" to Boccaccio, Petrarch's own source.
Koff, Leonard Michael.
Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 278-316.
Examines what the relationship between The Clerk's Tale and Decameron 10.10 might be without the intervening sources: Petrarch's "De insigni obedientia et fide uxoris" and its French translation, "Le livre Griseldis." Chaucer does not reduce the…
