Horobin, Simon.
Estelle Stubbs, ed. The Hengwrt Chaucer Digital Facsimile (Leicester: Scholarly Digital Editions, 2000)
Focuses on spelling in the Hengwrt manuscript (Hg) in light of the development of London English (from Type II to III), especially in comparison with spelling in the Ellesmere manuscript (El). Though the two manuscripts are closely related, Hg shows…
Lenhart, Gary.
Ron Padgett, ed. World Poets. Vol. 1. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2000), pp. 227-36.
Addressed to high school students. Surveys Chaucer's life and works, with emphasis on CT, emphasizing Chaucer's counterpoint between romance and realism.
Whereas Robert Henryson rarely uses animals for imagery or metaphoric comparisons (outside the allegory of "Morall Fabillis"), Chaucer "exploits the rich and variegated symbolic dimension" of references to animals, even while he avoids "explicit…
Chan, Amado.
Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 21: 166-70, 2000.
Details of the Prioress's GP description, WBPT, and Emelye's desires in KnT indicate that "women by nature oppose man's endeavor to rule and establish order in the world."
White, Hugh.
New York and Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000.
Questions the notion that Nature was universally considered a positive force in the Middle Ages. Although depicted as God's vicar, Nature was also aligned with sexual impulses, complicating the image. White traces depictions of and attitudes toward…
Examines the philosophical content of Chaucer's dream visions--the interplay between the soul and its courtly context--arguing that in Chaucer's world, the ideal of courtesy rather than any explicitly spiritual principle holds together a fictive…
An anthology of reprinted critical discussions divided into four sections: Chaucer's reading and readership (3 essays or excerpts), dream poetry (7 essays or excerpts), TC (5 essays or excerpts), and CT (10 essays or excerpts). Saunders prefaces each…
Johnston, Andrew James.
Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 50: 21-43, 2000.
Using the wrestling scene in KnT 1.2959-64 as a point of departure, the author argues that the violent homoeroticism of the passage, elevated by Chaucer to a matter of state, "exposes Boccaccio's classicism as a veneer under which the traditional…
Webb, Diana.
London and New York : Hambledon, 2000.
Describes the activities, theology, sociology, and psychology of medieval English pilgrimage from its roots in Anglo-Saxon tradition to criticism of the institution in the late Middle Ages. Considers English and British sites primarily, discussing…
Lawler, Jennifer [L.]
John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg, eds., with Scott D. Westram and Gregory G. Guzman. Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, no. 1899 (New York and London: Garland, 2000), pp. 105-06.
Brief description of Chaucer's travels and of pilgrimage as a frame in CT. Like the pilgrimage report of Felix Fabri (1441/2-1502), CT is important as a historical record.
Explores the narrator's "royalist" politics in MLT, arguing that they are "more incomplete" than the narrator thinks. Alla is presented as a good king, and the Sultan follows the trajectory of a typical "martyr king," although the teller…
Frankis, John.
Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg, eds. Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, no. 29. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 74-92.
Frankis compares how Chaucer's MLT and Gower's "Tale of Constance" diminish Trevet's historiographical concern with Anglo-Saxon England. From the time of Bede, Aelle was associated with the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, a motif retained by…
Fowler, Elizabeth.
David Aers, ed. Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 55-67.
Reads MLT as a "thought experiment" in which the topos of the ship (familiar in both romance and political/legal philosophy) is used to confront the "conflict of laws" among the various cultures represented: Christian, Islamic, and pagan. With ClT,…
Sánchez Martí, Jordi.
Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 13: 161-73, 2000.
In KnT, Theseus is "devoted to chivalry" and yet ineffectual in his attempts to achieve order. Through him, the Knight indicates the need for chivalry to undergo reform.
Allen, Valerie, and David Kirkham, eds.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000.
School-text edition of the GP description of the Franklin and FranPT, accompanied, on facing pages, by extensive glossing and pedagogical commentary and discussion questions. Includes brief essays on pertinent topics, including gentilesse, astronomy…
Winstead, Karen A., ed. and trans.
Karen A. Winstead. Chaste Passions: Medieval English Virgin Martyr Legends (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 49-60.
A translation into Modern English of SNT, based on The Riverside Chaucer (3rd ed.). Includes a short introduction and select bibliography.
Aers, David.
David Aers, ed. Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 68-81.
Challenges the notion that Mel asserts orthodox Christian sensibility. By privileging prudence over the theological virtues and by omitting "Christ, the Church [. . .], the Trinity" and sacramental forgiveness, Mel suggests heterodox views.
HF advocates an "ethics of reading" as the narrator struggles to accommodate contradictions found in literary texts. Book 1 ponders the legend and textual transmission of the Dido and Aeneas story. Book 2 learns about the suspect nature of language…
Howes explains how walking through landscape ("pedestrian logic") helps to organize many medieval narratives, including "Sir Orfeo," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Chaucer's BD. She illuminates her explanations with comparisons to the layouts…
Explores Chaucer's play "with the very concepts of finished and unfinished" in CT, surveying the ends of several tales and Ret. Suggests that Chaucer's sense of an ending distinguishes him from modern sensibility.
Shippey, T. A.
Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert, eds. The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance. Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library. (New York: Longman, 2000), pp. 78-96.
Attributes the popularity of "Gamelyn," in part, to its association with CT, arguing that Chaucer intended to adapt "Gamelyn" for telling by the Knight's Yeoman, even though Chaucer "did not like yeomen very much." Also assesses the tension between…
Matthews, William.
Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick, and Michael D. Salda, eds. The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur. Arthurian Studies, no. 47. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000, pp. 1-34.
A revision (by Robert L. Kindrick) of Matthews's "Caxton and Malory: A Re-View" (SAC 24 [2002], no. 34), with a corrected title.
