Windeatt, Barry
Medievalia et Humanistica 9 (1979): 143-61.
Chaucer frequently gives his characters gestures which are not in his sources in order more fully to reflect the inner lives of the actors. His most frequent gestures center on eyes and faces.
Clogan, Paul (M.)
Medievalia et Humanistica 9 (1979): 163-74.
Like most of the early nineteenth-century critics, Leigh Hunt strove to bring about a popular revival of Chaucer. But more important, he was among the first to attempt a technical analysis of Chaucer's poetry and to link his poetry with the idea of…
Kennedy, Thomas C.
Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s., 22 (1995): 95-110.
Chaucer's translative and appropriative practice in SNP is characterized by "a limited personal perspective transcended by an authoritative source," plus a movement from abstraction (particularly in Dante) to concreteness.
Pugh, Tison.
Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s., 32 (2007): 83-101.
Alison constructs Jankyn as a liminal figure combining both courtly and clerical ideals so that she can celebrate "her triumph over a representative figure of both arenas" (95).
Bayilmus Ogutcu, Oya.
Mediterranean Journal of Humanities 7.2 (2017): 337-46.
Argues that the shift from exaggerated romance to philosophical discourse between Th and Mel, the voicing of these tales by Chaucer as narrator, and the responses of the pilgrims to the two tales, indicate a general shift of "literary aesthetics"…
Brereton, Georgine E.
Medium Aevum 27 (1958): 173-74.
Proposes that an error of transmission in Chaucer's source (Frère Renaud de Louens' "Livre de Mellibee et Prudence") accounts for the inaccurate claim in Mel: that Ovid says a weasel can slay a bull. The proposed error confuses Ovid's "viper"…
Suggests that Chaucer's self-characterization in Pr-ThL 7.695-97 derives from Dante's "Purgatorio" 19.52 and that the one follows the other in using the "dual first-person singular" and in separating Poet and Pilgrim as a narrative technique.
Explores parallels between several medieval analogues to Chaucer's use of the phrase "Latyn corrupt" in his description of Constance's language in MLT 2.519--the alliterative "Morte Arthure," the "Etymologiae" of Isidore of Seville (possibly, the…
Commends the force and clarity of the passage on old age in RvP (1.3887-98), particularly the images of the wine cask and the tongue, the first familiar to Chaucer as a member of a family in the wine business
Assesses the "aesthetic status" of RvT, gauging its "crude vulgarity" in relation to its "moral coherence" where social/sexual pretentions are punished commensurately. Argues that Malyne is "notably pathetic," that the parson is the "evil genius of…
Interprets Form Age as a topical, even occasional, poem, rather than as a translation from Boethius, investigating its manuscript contexts, identifying echoes from Tibellius, Ovid, Jean de Meun, Eustace Deschamps, and Sted, and arguing that the poem…
Offers evidence from medieval naturalists and bestiaries to clarify that the she-ape simile in ParsT 10.424 means that the "proud dandy . . . is ridiculously like a wretched ape sticking up its bare bottom when the moon is full."
Close comparison of passages in TC and their sources in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" discloses how Chaucer "sets in motion" early in his poem "a train of events whose implications go far beyond the immediate moment, perhaps beyond the love story itself,"…
Contrasts Troilus's ascent through the spheres at the end of TC and the narrator's comments on it with the analogous materials in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and "Teseida" (with nods to Dante and Christian liturgy), explaining Troilus's placement among…
Steadman, John M.
Medium Aevum 33.2 (1964): 121-30.
Argues that the old man of PardT is neither a Messenger of Death nor Old Age personified, but a figure of the exemplary wisdom and virtue of the aged, set in contrast the youthful rioters and their foolish avarice. Compares Chaucer's "aged stranger"…
Manzalaoui, Mahmoud.
Medium Aevum 34 (1965): 21-35.
Summarizes the transmission of the "Liber Scalae" (ultimately Arabic), and identifies similarities between its eschatological and cosmological details and those found in late-medieval English works, including "Pearl," "The Land of Cockayne," and HF,…
Compares ShT with Boccaccio's "Decameron" 8.1 and 8.2 in order to "see the two writers more minutely for what they are," arguing for Chaucer's "clear, almost measurable superiority" in matters of atmosphere, vitality, characterization, and moral…
Attributes the aesthetic success of the three-rioters account in PardT to Chaucer's suggestive "economy" of characterization and narrative and to the double perspective ("drunken fantasy" and "sober calculation") that irrevocably leads to death,…
Greenfield, Stanley B.
Medium Aevum 36.2 (1967): 141-51.
Compares and contrasts the characterizations of Calkas in the Troy stories of Guido, Benoit, Boccaccio, and Chaucer, arguing that in TC he is depicted so as to ridicule "astrology-prophetism" even while contributing to the poem's "atmosphere of…
Describes the associations of coral with apotropaic power in medieval lapidaries, and suggests that the Prioress's rosary of coral in GP (1.158) ambiguously may signal religious intent as well as courtly luxury.
Brooks, Douglas, and Alastair Fowler.
Medium Aevum 39 (1970): 123-46.
Identifies parallels between the "planetary deities" and the human characters in KnT; describes the "iconology" of Lygurge and Emetreus, particularly the psychological implications of their astrological affiliations; and explores the physiognomic,…
Identifies three aspects of Robert Henryson's uses of proverbial wisdom in his "Fables," locating precedent for each of them in a work by Chaucer: use of proverbs by fable characters (NPT), comic misapplication of proverbial wisdom (MilT), and…
