McClellan, William.
John M. Hill and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. The Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages: Reconstructive Polyphony. Essays in Honor of Robert O. Payne (Madison, N.J., and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 149-63.
The Clerk's polemical stance in relation to Petrarch in ClP differentiates the Clerk's voice, rhetorical style, and ideology from Petrarch's, thus allowing for the introduction of dialogic discourse in the Tale itself.
Discusses the work of J. B. Severs, the manuscript tradition of Petrarch's Griselda narrative, and the form in which it would have been accessible to Chaucer.
Savage, Anne.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., eds. Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000), pp. 345-61.
Despite differences in genre, these narratives include a father who "constructs the circumstances in which he could marry his daughter." Pointedly excluded from consideration in MLP, paternal incest posed in ClT (between Walter and his daughter) is…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., eds. Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000), pp. 151-68.
Defines the French literary topos of the good wife, wherein "female virtue grounded in prudence and self-control benefits the immediate domestic and also the wider public spheres." Reflected in Philippe's "Le livre de la vertu du sacrement de…
Cullen, Dolores (L.)
Santa Barbara, Calif. : Fithian, 2000.
Cullen's third volume on CT claims the work is an allegory reflecting Chaucer's preoccupation with astronomy/astrology. The Pilgrims, who congregate at sunset, correspond to the constellations and planets-celestial "pilgrims" traveling across the…
Includes eight essays pertaining to CT, examining the similarities between the narrative structure of CT and the multi-layered system particular to Gothic aesthetics.
Georgianna, Linda.
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. 148-73.
Examines the complexity of anticlericalism. Clerical figures are prominent in the works of both Boccaccio and Chaucer, but CT redirects the potential disruption of anticlerical complaint away from dissent and toward self-evaluation. Georgianna gives…
Hanning, Robert W.
James H. McGregor, ed. Approaches to Teaching Boccaccio's Decameron (New York: Modern Language Association, 2000), pp. 103-18.
Assesses the "relevance and importance" of the Decameron to the study of CT, considering evidence of Chaucer's knowledge of Boccaccio's work and the ways the two works reflect similar and different "cultural agendas." Comparison of shared motifs and…
Higgs, Elton D.
Susan Powell and Jeremy J. Smith, eds. New Perspectives on Middle English Texts: A Festschrift for R. A. Waldron (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 151-67.
Explores the themes of debt and indebtedness in CT, showing how they are established in GP and how throughout the work attempts "to manipulate obligations to one's own advantage" result in "superficial or ambivalent success." Material advantage often…
Jost, Jean E.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 8.1: 61-69, 2000.
Recommends a learning-centered approach to teaching CT in which students collaborate to produce a creative imitation of Chaucer's work. Description of college-level assignment included.
Jucker, Andreas H.
Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta, and Matti Rissanen, eds. Placing Middle English in Context (Berlin and New York: Gruyter, 2000), pp. 369-89.
Classifies instances of verbal aggression within and across narrative layers in CT in several groups: direct, embedded, mediated, or indirect. Considers the speaker, the addressee, and the target of aggression, exploring twenty-two examples.
As a compilatio, CT is an experiment with a variety of popular narrative genres in which the limitations and possibilities of each genre are illuminated.
Phillips, Helen.
New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000.
Discusses all of the Tales in Ellesmere order, surveying past and current critical approaches. Emphasizes the diversity of CT, discusses the narrative voice, and places the work in historical, political, and economic contexts. Concludes that Chaucer…
Scala, Elizabeth.
Journal x: A Journal in Culture and Criticism 4: 171-90, 2000.
Critical attempts to find structural cohesion or unity in CTare misguided. Instead of reading over or past the interruptions, omissions, and inconsistencies of the poem, we ought to recognize that, in many ways, its absences are central to its…
Schildgen, Brenda Deen.
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. 102-27.
Through authorial intrusions into their texts, Boccaccio and Chaucer defend vernacular fiction as legitimate consolation and a necessary cultural medium. In doing so, both enter into a dialogue with Boethius. Schildgen discusses CT, in particular…
Stevens, Martin.
John M. Hill and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. The Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages: Reconstructive Polyphony. Essays in Honor of Robert O. Payne (Madison, N.J., and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 130-48.
Th, MkT, and SqT are "double-voiced"; they reveal CT's central concerns with "narratological competence" and Chaucer's self-awareness about his storytelling.
Tomasch, Sylvia.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 243-60.
Because Jews were expelled from England in 1290, their presence in English art and literature is "virtual." Tomasch surveys virtual Jews in the Holkham Bible Picture Book, the Luttrell Psalter, and Chaucer's CT (PrT, the Old Man of PardT, ParsT, and…
Eleven Japanese essays, three English essays, and one translation in Japanese. Focusing on literary and philological traditions, the essays contribute to study of Chaucer, Langland, and Gower. The Japanese translation is of De descriptione temporum,…
Yamaguchi, Eriko.
Eigo Seinen 146.8: 502-04, 2000.
Analyzes three types of pleats or folds in CT: graceful or classical drapings of the cloak of the Prioress; artificial folds "pynched" on her wimple, characteristic of Gothic art; and "wyndynge," which the Parson reproaches as a waste of cloth and…
Blamires, Alcuin.
Review of English Studies 51: 523-39, 2000.
Chaucer responds to the uprising of 1381 by shifting blame for the underlying oppression from the ruling and judiciary figures to the Reeve, a rigorous despot over the lower classes. Chaucer does not write from a classless position; rather, he…
Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning.
Classical and Modern Literature 20.2: 61-65, 2000.
Lucretius's "De rerum natura" may have influenced the reverdie, or spring song, that opens GP. Lucretius's reverdie predates and almost certainly influenced those in the "Georgics" and the "Pervigilius veneris," already linked to The General…
George, Jodi-Anne, ed.
New York : Columbia University Press, 2000.
Summary-survey of critical responses to GP. Six chapters focus on particular time periods and the critical emphases that dominated them: (1) 1368-1880, Chaucer's "greatness" and the early editorial tradition; (2) 1892-1949, later editors and…
