Megna, Paul.
In Russell Sbriglia, ed. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Žižek (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2017), pp. 267-89.
Uses Slavoj Žižek's analysis of privilege and courtly love to assess the major characters of TC: the "servile aggression" of the narrator; Pandarus's "patriarchal privilege"; Crisyede's "ethically heroic" decisions about loving her husband,…
Considers CT--primarily SNT, Mel, ManT, and Sted--to argue that Chaucer's frequent depictions of characters employing "parrhesia," which Michel Foucault associates with speaking truth to power, suggest that Chaucer admired those who spoke truth to…
Mehl, Dieter.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 213-26.
The Chaucerian narrator "directs our responses and controls the narrative situation" but does not give definite answers. The narrators of BD, HF, PF, and LGW are not necessarily representative of Chaucer himself. The ever-present narrator of TC…
Mehl, Dieter.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
A revised, expanded translation of "Geoffrey Chaucer: Eine Einfuhrung in seine erzahlenden Dichtungen" (1973), with studies on BD, PF, HF, and CT; an updated bibliography; and an added chapter on LGW.
Mehl, Dieter.
Dieter Mehl. Geoffrey Chaucer: An Introduction to His Narrative Poetry (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 98-119
The reader shares Chaucer's struggle with the difficulties of retelling the classical myths. Traces the adaptation of the persona to "Heroides," and Chaucer's renderings of stories to indeterminate readings and judgments. The use of sources entails…
Mehl, Dieter.
Leeds Studies in English 10 (1978): 58-74.
Chaucer obviosly expects his audience to be familiar with his person, his previous writings, and his reputation as an author. He also expects his audience to reflect about the moral function of poetry. He draws his audience into his poetry by using…
Mehl, Dieter.
Bernardo Santano Moreno, Adrian R. Birtwhistle, and Luis Gustavo Girón Echevarria, eds. Papers from the VIIth International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (Caceres: Universidad de Extremadura, 1995), pp. 187-205.
Comments on changes in the "canon" of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English literature, including the rise in importance of LGW.
Mehl, Dieter.
Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 237: 133-38, 2000.
Establishes the authenticity of Shakespeare's "A Lover's Complaint" and suggests that the female falcon's complaint in SqT is a possible analogue. Both laments belong to the complaint tradition.
Surveys fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English and Middle Scots literature (excluding drama), with individual chapters dedicated to Chaucer, Gower, Langland, the Gawain poet, Lydgate and Hoccleve, the lyric, Middle Scots (James I, Robert Holland,…
Mehl, Dieter.
Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft West Jahrbuch 120 : 111-27, 1984.
TC inspired both Albert Brooke's The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare's play is a "more serious and comprehensive reading" of TC, particularly its fusion of comedy and tragedy, than is…
Mehl, Dieter.
Boika Sokolova and Evgenia Pancheva, eds. Renaissance Refractions: Essays in Honour of Alexander Shurbanov (Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2001), pp. 47-54.
Compares how Chaucer's Criseyde and Shakespeare's Cressida reflect each respective author's concerns with literary and historical authority.
Mehl, Dieter.
Christa Jansohn, ed. Old Age and Ageing in British and American Culture and Literature. Studien zur englischen Literatur, no 16 (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004), pp. 29-38.
Explores the representation of old age in WBPT, MerT, PardT, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Confessio Amantis, and the Book of Margery Kempe, arguing that the motif of old age falls into three distinct categories: "the comical figure…
Mehl, Dieter.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in honour of Rossell Hope Robbins (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp. 173-89.
Explains how TC "creates its own audience" through the narrator's addresses to readers/listeners that help to involve them as putative lovers, as judges of the characters, and, most importantly, as participants in the making of historical fiction and…
A critical description of Chaucer's major works (except LGW) that focuses on narrative techniques, genres, treatments of source materials, stylistic registers, varieties of audience, and the engagement of audiences through experimentation and the…
Mehl, Dieter.
Arno Esch, ed. Chaucer und Seine Zeit: Symposion für Walter F. Schirmer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), pp. 189-206.
Illustrates the riches of Chaucer's narratorial techniques by considering the presence of the narrator in GP (focusing on the descriptions of the Prioress, Monk, and Friar), the assignment to him of Tho, the ironies of PardP and WBP, and the ways…
Mehtonen, Päivi.
Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2003.
A "premodern conceptual history" of obscurity in literature, with emphasis on rhetorical traditions, philosophy, and exegesis. Includes comments on Mel and Th as literary examples of the "vices of narration" described in rhetorical handbooks.
Meier, Hans H.
Michael Benskin and M. L. Samuels, eds. So Meny People, Longages and Tonges: Philological Essays in Scots and Mediaeval English Presented to Angus McIntosh (Edinburgh: Authors, 1981), pp. 367-76.
Deals with Charles d'Orleans and Chaucer's use of Dante.
Meier, Hans H.
Caroline Macafee and Iseabail Macleod, eds. The Nuttis Schell: Essays on Scots Language Presented to A. J. Aitken (Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press, 1987), pp. 116-23.
Describes several literary representations of Older Scots language; includes RvT because Older Scots and Northern English "are not generally considered as distinct" in the late medieval period. Commends Chaucer for his comprehensive "imitation of…
Reads KnT as an expression of the narrator's pessimistic yet stoic view of human "travails and uncertainties," evident in the prevailing "sense of the insignificance of the major actions" of the plot, and reinforced by grim humor and by the tension…
In her essay Gittes overemphasizes generalizations about Arabic mathematics, architecture, and literature, especially its "atomization" into component units.
