Baumgardner, Rachel Ann.
Medieval Forum 5 (2006): n.p.
Read against Foucault's "What Is an Author?" the Wife of Bath of WBP fits the criteria for representation of a "third ego." Thereby, she can be seen as a character who "establishes her own personality." Chaucer serves as a "medium for her determined…
Explores the "kinship" between hypertext theory and the mode of analysis in Donald Howard's The Idea of the "Canterbury Tales" (1976), commenting on memory and associative thinking, nonlinearity and closure, and the technology of the book. Also…
Tuma, George W., and Dinah Hazell, eds.
Medieval Forum, Special Issue (2008): n.p.
Second half of a two-part special edition of this electronic journal: an online collection of translations of Middle English texts. The first part translates ten Middle English romances, with introductions, notes, and commentary; this second part is…
Blackbourne, Matthew.
Medieval History Magazine 6 (2004): 30-33.
Brief summary of Ricardian literature and contemporary social and political events. Mentions Gower's works, "Piers Plowman," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Chaucer's works, especially GP and WBPT.
Comments on the GP sketch of the Knight, Gower's "To King Henry the Fourth," and the Wilton Diptych as evidence of English support for Philippe de Mezieres's promotion of the 1396 crusade against the Turks, perhaps evidence of English participation…
The levels of style of the first three Canterbury tales correspond to John of Garland's columnar figure, which is itself a memory locus derived from classical rhetoric.
Jost, Jean E.
Medieval Perspectives 1 (1986): 75-88.
Chaucer uses a medieval commonplace--vowing--as a function of genre: tragedy, comedy, or fabliau. In PardT, fashioning an illegitimate triple vow to eradicate Death, and bound by sworn brotherhood, three hoodlums effect upon themselves a grim,…
Fisher, John H.
Medieval Perspectives 1 (1988, for 1986): 1-15.
Medieval comedy is class-based: ridicule of the stupidity of country folk. Modern comedy is psychological: ridicule of the eccentricity of city dwellers. Evolution from class-based to psychological comedy can be traced in the fabliaux and in…
Russell, J. Stephen.
Medieval Perspectives 1 (1988, for 1986): 65-74.
Chaucer's Dido, Emelye, and Custance differ from their respective literary ancestors. In each case, Chaucer gives to his heroine a significant speech or set of speeches that subverts the narrative in which she appears, counterpointing the dominant…
Kaylor, Noel Harold. Jr.
Medieval Perspectives 10 (1995-96): 133-47.
Chaucer's allusions to the Orient or to the East (e.g., to Turkey, Syria, and India) refer, on the one hand, to a practical knowledge of geography and, on the other--with ecclesiastical use of the "mappae mundi" in mind--to a symbolic spiritual goal,…
Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of carnival and a comparison with fifteenth-century drama suggest that pilgrims' laughter is ambivalent and arises from engagement with paradox. The Pardoner's "quete" invites simultaneous complicity and disdain.
Summarizes the scholastic idea of the book and applies the concept of the written word (book) as "essential epistemological instrument" to Wolfram's "Titurel" fragments (ca. 1220) and to TC. Chaucer presents Troilus as a misreader of texts who only…
Thebes's foundational perversion (Jove's rape of Europa) establishes a recursive pattern of love and violence. Creon's dynastic expectation for Anelida and Arcite results in Anelida's self-deception and leads as well to Arcite's servitude to his new…
Compares Chaucer's and Boccaccio's treatments of Troilus's looking at Criseyde in the temple. Governed by the laws of medieval optics, Troilus's gaze imprints Criseyde's image in his heart. In the image of the mirror, Chaucer portrays Troilus's…
Reconsiders Manly's distinction between the "Abhorrent Doctrine" (that Chaucer, in GP, "merely photographed his friends and acquaintances") and the "More Abhorrent Doctrine" (that Chaucer built his characters by piecing together "scraps from old…
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.
Following the medieval rhetorical analysis that sees irony as a form of allegory, Beall finds that both CYT and PardT deal with the "supreme alchemy" (material alchemy in CYT, rhetorical alchemy in PardT) by which the profane is transformed into the…
Farrell, Thomas (J.)
Medieval Perspectives 15.2: 34-48, 2000.
Defines the assumptions underlying J. Burke Severs's analysis of the relation of ClT to Petrarch's version of the material and clarifies how Farrell's own assumptions differ from those in his analysis for Sources and Analogues II. Severs was more…
Farrell, Thomas J.
Medieval Perspectives 18 (2011 for 2003): 113-31.
Analyzes varying treatments of the "sergeant" character in Chaucer, the Anonymous French, Petrarch, and Boccaccio by considering the character's rhetorical effect in each. Rather than imitating a character either cruel (as in the French) or not-cruel…
Jost, Jean E.
Medieval Perspectives 2 (1987): 73-80.
Reads MLT and CYT as opposed tales. Custance of MLT is a "worthy victim" of the broken promises of others and someone who "steadfastly" keeps her own. CYPT, on the other hand, is "marked by changeability, mutability, and vacillation"; its characters…
Argues that Chaucer seeks to persuade the audience of ShT to "use money wisely" by exposing the fallacy of equating wisdom and wealth and by following St. Augustine's arguments about wealth (that are also echoed in Mel and ParsT). This helps to…
Russell, J. Stephen.
Medieval Perspectives 23 (2008 [2011]): 85-96.
Gauges what "old age" may have meant to Chaucer and his contemporaries, especially as it relates to memory and the humours. Then comments on several old men in Chaucer's works: January in MerT, the Old Man of PardT, old men in Mel, and Egeus of TC.
Farrell, Thomas J.
Medieval Perspectives 23 (2011 for 2008): 31-42.
Unlike "free-indirect discourse," Bakhtin's "hybrid discourse" readily allows analysis of written and spoken language in narrative, especially in texts before 1900. The portrait of the Squire, hybridizing both estates satire and "Le Roman de la…
