Green, Donald C.
Modern Philology 84 (1986): 18-23.
Distinguishes among "maistrie," "soveraynetee," "servage," "servyse," "governance," and "assente" in CT. These words thematically link WBT and ClT: individually defined relationships are signaled by "maistrie" and "servyse"; role-defined…
Heffernan, Carol Falvo.
Modern Philology 84 (1986): 185-90.
Functioning in the tradition of "melancholia canina" treatises, Chaucer's dog in BD acts as a catalyst for the melancholy dreamer and enables him to relieve his sorrow.
Bolton, W. F.
Modern Philology 84 (1987): 401-407.
Yearbook law reports and plea-roll law records contain information about members of Chaucer's "legal 'circle'" (p. 402) and Thomas Pynchbeck, Chaucer's prototype for the Man of Law. Legal terminology from these sources informs the portrait in both…
Read, Dennis M.
Modern Philology 86 (1988): 171-90.
The idea for the artistic representation of the Canterbury pilgrims was that of Robert Hartley Cromek, Blake's enemy. Few preferred Blake's paintings over Cromek's engravings.
Greetham, D. C.
Modern Philology 86.3 (1989): 242-51.
Analyzes Thomas Hoccleve's narrative persona in his "Regement of Princes" and his "Series" poems, treating it as a development out of "the inherited Chaucerian narrator" toward a psychological portrait marked by the deleterious effects of "thought"…
PF, an exercise in "rhetorical outdoing" and discovery, shows Chaucer generating "newe science" from the formal "topoi" of "auctores." The episodes of PF conform to Macrobian categories of fabulous narrative, but these are transformed to provide a…
Eckhardt, Caroline D.
Modern Philology 87 (1990): 239-48.
Chaucer's descripiton of the Franklin as a "vavasour" (GP 360) reflects his acquaintance with the Vavasour family. Like Chaucer, Sir William Vavasour testified in the Scrope-Grosvenor controversy; other Vavasours held offices similar to the…
Reames, Sherry L.
Modern Philology 87 (1990): 337-61.
A "Franciscan abridgment" of the Saint Cecilia legend, extant in two complete copies and numerous fragments, explains verbal details of SNT as well as omissions of episodes found in the "Legenda aurea" and Bosio's edition of "Passion S. Caeciliae."
Laird, Edgar S., and Donald W. Olson.
Modern Philology 88 (1990): 147-49.
The interpretation in Bo of how the constellation Bootes rises and sets indicates Chaucer's reliances on commentaries; he did not have the expertise in observational astronomy he would have needed for a more accurate translation.
Despres, Denise, L.
Modern Philology 91 (1994): 413-27.
England's implementation of the Fourth Lateran Council's legislation of 1215, two anti-Judaism sermon exempla from medieval manuscripts, and the "child-as-Host" motif suggest how the "ideology of bodily and social purity could become salient for the…
Edwards, Robert R.
Modern Philology 94 (1996): 141-62.
Although the influence of Boccaccio's "Filocolo" on TC is uncertain, examination of various manuscripts of "Filocolo" suggests that Chaucer uses the love questions of "Filocolo" 4 as a source of FranT. Moreover, translating the culture of Book 4…
Bloomfield, Josephine.
Modern Philology 94 (1997): 291-304.
Although Chaucer's narrator is sympathetic to the hero of TC, Troilus's "stellification" contradicts our expectations because he values his own desires over the welfare of the polis. Chaucer's "political and moral judgment against Troilus's…
Dugas, Don-John.
Modern Philology 95 (1997): 27-43.
Additions to MLT suggest Chaucer's concern with aristocratic power, particularly with "translatio imperii." Considered in the "context of the second decade of Richard II's reign," MLT "subtly legitimizes kingly authority."
Watson, Robert A.
Modern Philology 98: 543-76, 2001.
Watson coins the phrase "Ciceronian Platonism," defined as the "emphasis on the poetics of 'sermo'," suggesting that the earliest evidence of Chaucer's interest in the notion appears in BD, a poem offering "a Socratic therapy as filtered through both…
Harrington, David V.
Moderna Språch 61 (1967): 353-62.
Resists impulses to denigrate the artistry of MLT and argues that the rhetorical passages--including several of the narrator's apostrophes--achieve "genuinely intense emotion" rather than mere sentimentality.
Robbins, Rossell Hope.
Moderna Språch 64.3 (1970): 231-44.
Comments on the limitations of Lydgate's "Siege of Thebes" and the Prologue to the "Tale of Beryn" as imitations of Chaucer, and discusses at greater length how his fabliaux are superior to "Dame Sirith" and to later English comic tales such as "The…
Simpson, John Mack.
Mohammad Ali Jazayery and Werner Winter, eds. Languages and Cultures: Studies in Honour of Edgar C. Polome (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1988), pp. 621-29.
Pandarus exhibits absolute loyalty to his lord--one of the values of Indo-European heroic philosophy--while at the same time betraying his own sister.
Nohara, Yasuhiro.
Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku Kirisutokyo Ronshu (St. Andrew's University Journal of Christian Studies) 40 (2004): 61-108.
Considers the impulses to go on pilgrimage in late medieval England and assesses the GP descriptions of the pilgrims in light of contemporary motivations for pilgrimage.
Evitt, Regula Meyer.
Monica Brzezinski Potkay and Regula Meyer Evitt. Minding the Body: Woman and Literature in the Middle Ages, 800-1500 (London: Twayne, 1997), (Chapter 8) pp. 139-65.
Himself accused of rape, Chaucer could inhabit the "role of masculine agent" of the crime and that of the "feminized victim of accusation," reworking the traditional "metaphoric equation of deceptive language and female infidelity."
Sadlek, Gregory M.
Monika Fludernik and Miriam Nandi, eds. Idleness, Indolence and Leisure in English Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 17-39.
Offers background to late-medieval English literary notion of "otium" (idleness) and explores tensions between leisure and productivity in works by Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the "Gawain" poet, particularly their representations of the morality of…
Ross, Trevor Thornton.
Montreal and Buffalo : McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998.
Describes development of the English literary canon in light of two parallel developments or "epistemological shifts": the development from a "rhetorical" to a "modern 'objectivist' culture" and the shift from an idea of "canonicity based on…
Myles, Robert., and David Williams, eds.
Montreal and Kingston : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001.
Ten essays that pertain to Chaucer, plus a commemorative preface (by M. I. Cameron), an introduction (by David Williams) that summarizes the essays, a bibliography of Wurtele's publications, and a subject index. For individual essays that pertain to…
Hieatt, A. Kent.
Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975.
Spenser drew upon Chaucerian and Milton upon Spenserian narrative for mythopoeic embodiments of moral ideas, which they in turn adapted and transformed. From PF, KnT, Marriage Group, and SqT Spenser assimilated ideas of continuity, harmony and free…
