Explores the variety, subtleties, and complexities of Chaucer's "costume rhetoric" in GP, examining how details of the secular pilgrims' dress and accoutrement capitalize on late-medieval English clothing practice and extend literary tradition.…
Olivares Merino, Eugenio M.
Ana Mara Hornero and Mara Pilar Navarro, eds. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of S.E.L.I.M. (Zaragoza: Institucion Fernando el Catolico (CSIC), 2000), pp. 159-68.
Assesses the descriptions of the Knight and Squire in GP for how they reflect differing chivalric views of femininity and, more broadly, wisdom versus pleasure.
Sadlek, Gregory M.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 8.2: 77-97, 2000.
Describes the value of sociograms ("visual diagram[s] of a given social network") in teaching GP, summarizing underlying theory and presenting a practical application. College-level assignment and results included.
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…
Clopper, Lawrence M.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22: 115-39, 2000.
Surveys various kinds of spectacle in late-medieval English society, exploring backgrounds of and attitudes toward tournaments, royal processions and entries, civic celebration, and dramas. Assesses Langland's depiction in "Piers Plowman" of the…
Dressler, Rachel.
Studies in Iconography 21: 91-121, 2000.
High- and late-medieval tomb effigies show knights possessing muscular corporeality, a feature emphasized (through contrast with the Squire) in the GP portrait of the Knight.
López-Pelaez Casellas, Jesús.
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. 93-100.
Reads KnT as a satiric exposure of the historical contingency of various views of honor and the "chivalric ideal," examining the gap between what the Knight intends to tell and what he does tell.
McGregor, James H.
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. 212-25.
The representation of history in KnT is dependent on postplague historiographical views of the Decameron. The Teseida and Chaucer's version of it are tragedies, but with a hope of reconciliation represented in the final marriage.
Stretter, Robert Eugene.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 2316A, 2000.
Focusing especially on love and fortune, Chaucer introduces to English literature the theme of male friendship in conflict with heterosexual love. By Shakespeare's time, this theme was treated even more darkly, moving from "guardedly optimistic…
Boenig, Robert.
Robert Boenig and Kathleen Davis, eds. Manuscript, Narrative, Lexicon: Essays on Literary and Cultural Transmission in Honor of Whitney F. Bolton (Lewisburg, Penn: Bucknell University Press; and London: Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 96-110.
Surveys medieval representations and understandings of the psaltery, a musical instrument, as background to reading its meanings in MilT. The psaltery clashes ironically with Nicholas's amorous escapades, and his playing it to accompany his singing…
Questions the traditional gloss of "shot wyndowe," arguing that the words refer to a window that opens inward, that is unglazed, and that, in MilT, is a window to a privy.
Discusses what naturalism is and how it links a set of normative intuitions about gender and desire to a broader theory of what it means for humans to be a law to themselves. Central to MilT is Alisoun, the "single most compelling instance of a…
Valdes Miyares, Ruben.
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. 267-75.
The Miller's bagpipe in GP epitomizes MilT, setting the pace for the pilgrimage and offering the rough justice of popular music as a human alternative to God's arbitrary judgment in the combat of KnT. The Miller questions the hegemony of vested…
Williams, Jeni.
Robert Penhallurick, ed. Debating Dialect: Essays on the Philosophy of Dialect Study (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp. 46-65.
Assesses linguistic features of RvT, not as evidence of rustic regional gullibility, but as factors in the Tale's response to the depiction of space in MilT. The dialect of John and Aleyn is part of an "ideological attack" in which the clerks are set…
Morey, James H.
Urbana and Chicago : University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Bibliographical guide to Middle English biblical literature, including manuscript and publication information, descriptions of the works, and identification of the biblical sources, covering some 110 individual works or sets of related works.…
Morrison, Susan Signe.
London and New York : Routledge, 2000.
Studies "medieval perceptions of pilgrimage, gender, and space," discussing literary and historical female pilgrims, their motives, and the effects pilgrimages had on their families and social dynamics. Discusses the shrines at Walsingham and…
Pearsall, Derek.
Proceedings of the British Academy 101: 77-99, 2000.
Although Chaucer's writings reflect the disposition of his time to exclude, in one way or another, those who are strangers in various communities, the poet is uninterested in England as a nation. Nonetheless, in the nineteenth century Chaucer came to…
Powell, Susan, and Jeremy J. Smith, eds.
Cambridge : D. S. Brewer, 2000.
Thirteen essays by various authors: seven interpretations of alliterative poems and six textual analyses of Middle English works. Includes a memoir by Derek Pearsall. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for New Perspectives on Middle…
Pratt, John H.
Lanham, Md., New York, and Oxford : University Press of America, 2000.
Studies Chaucer's views of war and chivalry, examining biographical and historical data as background to assessments of TC, KnT, and the GP sketches of the Knight and Squire. Pratt summarizes medieval theories of warfare and "just war" and discusses…
Purdie, Rhiannon.
J. A. Burrow and Ian P. Wei, eds. Medieval Futures: Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2000), pp. 167-84.
Surveys the literary and historical context for medieval attitudes toward dicing, mentioning hazardry in PardT and the notion of divine intervention in the chances of trade in CYT.
Riddy, Felicity.
Roberta L. Krueger, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 235-52.
Sets Middle English romances "in the context of late medieval patterns of family and marriage, and presents them as part of a literate but unlearned lay culture centered on the home." Briefly discusses Thop and TC.
