Minnis, Alastair.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 27 (2005): 25-58.
Traces late medieval "vernacular secularity," particularly the influences of Aristotle's "Ethics," "Politics," and "Economics" and Boethius's "Consolation" as transmitted to England by Giles of Rome, Nicole Oresme, Nicholas Trevet, Jean de Meun,…
Minnis, Alastair.
Ursula Schaefer, ed. The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 43-60.
Minnis discusses the impact of Aristotelian social and political theory on the rise of a growing lay culture in France and England. Considers similarities among several "discourses of secular power" - including Chaucer's KnT and Gower's advice to…
Minnis, Alastair.
Nicola McDonald, ed. Medieval Obscenities (York: York Medieval Press, 2006), pp. 156-78.
Explores the "connection between dirty words and dirty things," focusing on the speech of "three outspoken female figures": Raison and La Vieille from the "Roman de la Rose" and Chaucer's Wife of Bath. While Raison attacks "linguistic equivocation"…
Minnis, Alastair.
Helen Cooney, ed. Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 99-114.
In the Wife of Bath, Chaucer radically remakes La Vieille from the Roman de la Rose, granting her true wisdom and authority. The Wife of Bath successfully uses Latin tradition and academic techniques in WBP, and WBT reflects the profound wisdom of…
Minnis, Alastair.
R. N. Swanson, ed. Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 169-95.
There is a paucity of writing on indulgences in medieval vernacular literatures. Minnis explores depictions of pardoners and indulgences in PardP, Langland's "Piers Plowman, "and John Heywood's "The Foure PP" and "The Pardoner and the Frere."…
Minnis, Alastair.
Lawrence Besserman, ed. Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: New Essays. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 63-82.
Minnis explores medieval attempts to "explain the difficult and dangerous relationship" between "material and spiritual economies" underlying pardons or indulgences, commenting on the explanations of Albert the Great, Aquinas, and Bonaventure and…
Minnis, Alastair.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Studies the Pardoner's and Wife of Bath's "deviancy" in light of late medieval theological and academic discourses, particularly the commentaries and summas of the scholastics, Lollard treatises ,and reactions to Lollard writings and trials. Neither…
Minnis, Alastair.
Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager, eds. Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 287-315.
Exploring the "cultural sources and significance of the humor which Chaucer brings into play" in PardT (288), Minnis examines medieval relics, shrines, and cures and suggests that if we understand more about these practices, "we may gain a better…
Minnis, Alastair.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Six studies by Minnis on the relationships among the vernacular, demotic attitudes, and Lollard concerns. One study pertains to Chaucer: chapter six, "Chaucer and the Relics of Vernacular Religion" (pp. 130-62), reads the Pardoner's involvement with…
Minnis, Alastair.
Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt, eds. Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Middle English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), pp. 34-47.
Analyzes Brewer's interpretations of the figure of the Knight in GP and KnT.
Minnis, Alastair.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Wide-ranging introduction to Chaucer's life and works for students and scholars. Includes philosophical, theoretical, and literary connections that celebrate the canonical importance of Chaucer's authority.
Minnis, Alastair.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015): 3–27.
Traces evidence of anatomical votive offerings, particularly genital renderings, in Roman practice, Reformation commentary, and modern accounts, presenting them as background to reading the Host's commentary on the Pardoner's cullions (PardT,…
Minnis, Alastair.
Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age 16 (2017): 357-76.
Maintains that, despite the critical tradition of Chaucer's self-effacing persona, there are significant assertions of his own poetic authority in ThP and HF, and perhaps even challenges to Dante. Explores details of diction and imagery ("popet,"…
Minnis, Alastair.
Rita Copeland, ed. The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Vol. 1, (800–1558) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 413-34.
Aligns Chaucer's depictions of classical culture and his attitudes toward pagan belief, arguing that his "remarkable degree of cultural relativism" and his "reluctance to resort to simplistic forms of Christian triumphalism" are "delimited" only by…
Minnis, Alastair.
New Medieval Literatures 22 (2022): 114-61.
Assesses the demonic presence in FrT (the Green Yeoman), placing "Chaucerian demonology within a wider intellectual and cultural context" from St. Augustine to the "Malleus maleficarum." Surveys views on demonic/angelic presence as apparition,…
Minta, Stephen.
Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1980.
An introduction to Petrarch, his works, and their reception in England and France to the seventeenth century. Observes connections between the end of Petrarch's "Canzoniere" and Chaucer's Ret, and comments on Chaucer's reference to Petrarch in ClP…
Miola, Robert S.
Oxford and New York : Oxford University Press. , 2000.
Describes the literature with which Shakespeare was familiar, as reflected in his works, their sources, their allusions, etc. Discusses the relationship of Two Noble Kinsmen to KnT and of Troilus and Cressida to TC.
Miralles Pérez, Antonio J.
Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre and M. Nila Vázquez González, eds. Medieval English Literary and Cultural Studies (Murcia: Universidad de Muscia, 2004), pp. 205-22.
Conan Doyle's portrayals of knights from the Hundred Years' War in "The White Company" (1891) and "Sir Nigel" (1906) embody the same contradictions and ambiguities found in Chaucer's depiction of a fourteenth-century knight in CT.
Misaki, Noguchi.
Kaetsu University Research Review 50.2 (2007): 89-11.
Explores the semantic range of "hende" and of "sely" in MilT and examines efforts to translate the words in various modernizations, particularly those of the eighteenth century.
Miskimin, Alice (S.)
Jean-Jacques Blanchot and Claude Graf, eds. Actes du 2e Colloque de langue et de litterature ecossaises (moyen age et renaissance) (Universite de Strasbourg, 1978), pp. 198-206.
Discussion of the literary background of Douglas's poem takes account of Chaucer's references to music, especially in HF and PF.
Miskimin, Alice (S.)
Modern Philology 77 (1979): 26-55.
Two sets of Chaucer illustrations altered the late eighteenth-century and early Romantic readers' perception of Chaucer: George Vertue's for Urry's edition (1721), and Thomas Stothard's for Bell (1782-83). Stothard's illustrations were later…
Miskimin, Alice S.
New York: Yale University Press, 1975.
The medieval Chaucer developed by a process of accretion and transformation into "England's Homer." Metamorphoses occur in the language, text, and image of the poet. The history of TC is the metamorphosis of a beautiful idea into an ugly one. …
Miskimin, Alice S.
Studies in Medieval Culture 10 (1977): 133-45.
The "Letter of Dido to Aeneas" in Pynson's "Chaucer" (1526), omitted by Thynne (1532), inspired Wyatt to write "Lyke as the swan..."; for him Chaucer was Pynson's edition. Thynne's omission of Ret was not remedied until Urry (1721). Modern editions…
