Thompson, John J.
Helen Cooney, ed. Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry (Dublin and Portland, Ore.: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 81-94.
Examines Hoccleve's relations with the London book trade and the Lancastrian court to explain how his verse "managed to leak so successfully" into the Chaucer tradition. Hoccleve's manuscripts reflect his autobiographical self-fashioning and his…
Straker, Scott-Morgan.
Review of English Studies 52: 1-21, 2001.
Lydgate appropriates Chaucer not so much to pay tribute as to distance himself from anticlericalism, to redeem the narrative and monastic voice, and to assert its freedom from authority, as represented by Harry Bailly. Lydgate's apparent compliance…
Simpson, James.
New Medieval Literatures 4: 213-42, 2001.
Surveys the reception of Lydgate, especially his "Dance Machabré", and argues that the poet has been victimized by "'ageist' conceptions of cultural change" that seek to reify "the medieval." Lydgate's stature as the most public of English poets…
In his account of Katherine in the "Legendys of Hooly Wummen," fifteenth-century poet Osbern Bokenham "rebels" against his poetic fathers, namely Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate. Bokenham allows Katherine to persuade her audience with the Nicene Creed…
Pearsall, Derek.
Helen Cooney, ed. Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry (Dublin and Portland, Ore.: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 15-27.
There was no growing sense of an English nation until the time of Henry VIII, although there were momentary surges in 1290-1340 and 1410-1420, the latter focused on Chaucer. Language is crucial to nation building, and the process of "accrediting…
Cooney, Helen, ed.
Dublin and Portland, Ore. : Four Courts Press, 2001.
Ten essays by various authors on the role of language and literature in fifteenth-century England, Chaucer's influence at the time, and the relations of fifteenth-century literature to earlier and later tradition. Mention of Chaucer recurs…
Collette, Carolyn P., and Vincent J. DiMarco.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23: 317-58, 2001.
Summarizes the political history of the fall of Armenia in 1375, surveying its impact on the court of Richard II and its status as a "haunting symbol" of catastrophe in Middle English literature. Discusses SqT, Anel, the description of the Knight in…
Carruthers, Mary [J.]
Chris Humphrey and W. M. Ormrod, eds. Time in the Medieval World (Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 137-55.
Like tense-switching and first-person point of view, the use of the "historical present" by Chaucer and the Gawain poet illustrates how medieval authors could convincingly remember and authenticate the stories they told. The past is the time of…
Burger, Glenn, and Steven Kruger, eds.
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Ten essays on queer issues, with responses by Kruger. Includes readings on a selection of medieval texts, including Christine de Pizan and Dante. For an essay and a response that pertain to Chaucer, search for Queering the Middle Ages under…
Burger, Glenn.
Glenn Burger and Steven Kruger, eds. Queering the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 213-35.
Argues that Chaucer set the standard for discourse on heterosexuality and modernity, even though modern study has written over his "queer touch." Exemplifies the gendered instability of Chaucer's text by contrasting the normativizing power of…
Bremmer, Rolf H., Jr.
Studies in Medievalism 11: 37-72, 2001.
Bremmer reviews the study of Chaucer undertaken late in life by the pioneering Dutch Anglo-Saxonist Franciscus Junius, as reflected mainly in copious marginalia in Junius's copy of Speght's 1598 edition of Chaucer's Works.
In addition to overt allusions to law and its practitioners and his depictions of legal proceedings, Chaucer weaves legal terminology into his texts and uses "embedded" references to real court cases in developing his plots and characters. Advocates…
"Pearl" reflects the political and social turmoil of Richard's reign and is a product of the rich visual and verbal culture of his Cheshire coterie. Political and social allusions in the poem engage Lollardy, labor laws, court magnificence,…
Bourgne, Florence.
Leo Carruthers and Adrian Papahagi, eds. Prologues et épilogues dans la littérature anglaise du Moyen Âge (Paris: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2001), pp. 73-91.
Distinguishes three major types of prologues in late-medieval English literature: organic; a dilation; and a displaced prologue, i.e., a prologue that does not correspond to the document. Examines CT, LGW, TC, and Astr.
Battles, Dominique.
Dissertation Abstracts International 62 (2001): 162A, 2001.
Traces the Theban legend from Statius through a twelfth-century Old French version, school texts, florilegia, commentary, Boccaccio, Chaucer (Anel, KnT), and Lydgate. Also assesses relationships with ancient and medieval history. Lydgate's version…
Barr, Helen.
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2001.
Seven interrelated studies and an afterword that explore "socioliterary practice," considering literature as a material form of social behavior in "internal and dialectical relationship" with the institutions and conventions that shape it and that it…
Explores incest motifs in a wide range of medieval texts, exploring origins and analogues. Discusses MLT as an example of the motif of the flight from the incestuous father and comments on incest in LGW (Philomena and Semiramis).
Yager, Susan.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100: 211-33, 2001.
"Peple" and "folk" are marked terms in Chaucer's usage. In particular, "peple" is nearly always negative; "folk" is either neutral or positive. In Chaucer's translations (e.g., Bo), "folk" normally translates as "gens" or its cognates, while "peple"…
In Chaucer's England, the legal term "homicide" ("deliberate infliction of death," justified or not) was distinct from "murder," which carried negative moral connotations but had no legal definition. In CT, Chaucer uses the terms precisely and…
Rothwell, W[illiam].
English Studies 82: 539-59, 2001.
Anglo-Norman should be considered "a coherent, if constantly changing, entity from 1066 to the middle of the fifteenth century" (559), with widely different forms that influenced English in the fifteenth-century, when scribes were working both in…
Markus, Manfred.
Dieter Kastovsky and Arthur Mettinger, eds. Language Contact in the History of English (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2001), pp. 217-31.
Markus examines several features of Chaucer's spelling--digraphs, vowel doubling, "ee" versus "e"--drawing data from ParsT and arguing that inconsistencies in vowel-doubling are related to vowel length's "having lost its former phonemic identity."…
Kumamoto, Sadahiro.
Kumamoto Journal of Culture and Humanities (Kumamoto University) 71: 109-29, 2001.
Focuses on the following: (1) the kind of governing verbs; (2) the ratio of bare infinitives and (for) to-infinitives; and (3) the structure of the infinitive clause, supplementing Kenyon (1909) in many respects.I
Horobin, Simon C. P.
Anglia: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie 119: 249-58, 2001.
Analyzes spelling in the four printed editions of CT issued before 1500. Caxton (1476 and 1482) and Wynken de Worde (1498) responded individually to the perceived authority of the work, while Richard Pynson (1492) attempted to replace the nonstandard…
Horobin, S. C. P.
English Studies 82: 97-105, 2001.
Challenges Tolkien's view that Chaucer aimed at a consistent representation of Northern dialect in RvT. Probably closest to Chaucer's autograph, the Hengwrt manuscript is neither complete nor consistent, while later scribes added Northern features…
