Political and social history of court life during the reign of Richard II, with emphasis on art and literature. Includes a chapter pertaining to Chaucer (pp. 62-73) and recurrently attends to his relations with contemporaneous poets Thomas Usk,…
Mathewson, Jeanne T.
Annuale Mediaevale 14 (1973): 35-42.
Argues that Chaucer's additions to his sources in PhyT (Virginia's speech and the reference to Jephthah's daughter) convey a sense of masculine blindness to feminine reality--seeing only the "transient conditions of beauty, youth, and virginity."
Mathur, Indira.
Jean-Paul Debax, ed. Actes de l'atelier "Moyen Age" du XLVe congrès de la SAES (Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur). Paris: Publications de l'Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2006, pp. 101-10.
Establishes a link between the "preamble" in WBP and the sermon genre.
Matlock, Wendy A.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 217-31.
Explores anthropomorphism and the "connaturality" of human and nonhuman animals in PF and Lydgate's "Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep," noting the comments of medieval and modern philosophers on the traditional animal-human binary. Lydgate's…
Matlock, Wendy A.
Chaucer Review 55, no. 4 (2020): 462-83.
Positions Mel and ManT as "vivid examples of Chaucer's polyphonic authority that highlight the rich network of gendered speech constituting his mature voice." Argues that Chaucer's ventriloquized women in Mel and ManT translate continental sources…
Matsuda, Suguru.
Hisao Tsuru, ed. Fiction and Truth: Essays on Fourteenth-Century English Literature (Tokyo: Kirihara Shoten, 2000), pp. 9-18.
Argues that Chaucer criticized the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, treating the medieval status of the Parson; Lollardy; and Chaucerian concern with people of the lower classes.
Compares nine versions of the Griselda narrative (including ClT), exploring what virtues in addition to patience are emphasized in each and arguing that shifts in emphasis account for the story's medieval and early modern popularity. ClT emphasizes…
Matsuda, Takami, Richard A. Linenthal, and John Scahill, eds.
Cambridge: Brewer; Tokyo : Yushodo, 2004.
Thirty-eight essays and two commemorations celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Takamiya, focusing on "medieval manuscripts and early printed books, Arthurian literature, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century medievalism." Many of the essays pertain to…
Matsuda, Takami.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 91 (1992): 313-24.
The Pardoner's pragmatic claims for salvation are part of a larger "question of Christian worldly prudence" in CT. His "response to his own tale . . . alerts us to the growth of a pragmatic attitude toward individual death and salvation."
Traces the development of the doctrine of purgatory in medieval art and literature, focusing on Middle English homiletic and didactic writings on death and the necessity of intercession for souls in purgatory.
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.
Considers SumP to be Chaucer's experiment in and assessment of the genre of the vision of the afterlife, with "possible echoes of the Visio Tnugdali" (Vision of Tundale).
Matsuda, Takami.
Studies in English Literature, English number, 59 (1983): 101-25.
Traces the "growing versatility" of the "ubi sunt" motif in Middle English literature--its emotional impact, its relations with the theme of mutability, and its potential for expressing nostalgia--concluding with a comparison of Chaucer's uses of the…
Matsuda, Takami.
Kiyoko Myojo and Noburu Notomi, eds. What Is a Text? An Introduction to Textual Scholarship (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2015), pp. 81–104.
Refers to Paul Zumthor's notion of "mouvance," and argues that CT should be understood not as a single text but as a group of different, co-existent texts. In Japanese.
Matsuda, Takami.
Yuichiro Azuma, Kotaro Kawasaki, and Koichi Kano, eds. Chaucer and English and American Literature: Essays Commemorating the Retirement of Professor Masatoshi Kawasaki (Tokyo: Kinseido, 2015), pp. 44–59.
Argues that the medieval notion of wonder helps to explain the Franklin's interruption of SqT.The Squire presents the marvels in his tale as explainable in scientific terms, in accord with the philosophical notion of wonder. The Franklin similarly…
Matsuda, Takami.
Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature 32 (2017): 1-15.
Points out that a reference to a palmer in GP recalls both the pilgrimage for one's own penance and the vicarious pilgrimage. Argues that the system of pardon and vicarious pilgrimage are burlesqued in PardPT and SumT. Suggests that the idea of…
Matsuda, Takami.
Spicilegium 1 (2017): n.p. Web publication.
Examines FrT and SumT in the "context of the late medieval vision of the afterlife," and argues that the "two tales tell how one is constantly in the dangerous liminal situation between damnation and salvation, between being physically ravished to…
Argues that both the structure and the content of ManT explore the relativity of truth and lie. Regarding the structure, the dependence on literature of practical wisdom raises a doubt as to the tale's authority as an exemplum. As for the content,…
