Violence and all excess reveal the uncontrollable nature of the world Theseus tries to order. Chaucer makes his story less chivalric than Boccaccio's to emphasize that humans, completely at the whim of Fortune, are incapable of maintaining any…
Mitchell-Smith, Ilan.
In Jennifer N. Brown and Maria Segol, eds. Sexuality, Sociality, and Cosmology in Medieval Literary Texts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 101-21.
Includes discussion of KnT in a group of late-medieval English romances that differ from Continental romances in that they "outline a male heterosexual model informed by a Boethian contemptus mundi theme in which sobriety and reservedness replaces…
Mitchell, Charles.
College English 27 (1966): 437-44.
Asks why the Pardoner "always preaches against his own sin" and why he admits to doing so to the Canterbury pilgrims, using the questions to argue that he is a con-man rather than a hypocrite, and one who considers himself morally superior to his…
Mitchell, Charles.
Modern Language Quarterly 25 (1964): 66-75.
Focuses on the characterization of the Knight in GP, cast into relief by the Squire and Prioress, especially in the application of words such as "curteys" and "worthy." Distinguishes between moral virtue and professional efficiency throughout the GP,…
Mitchell, Edward R.
Modern Language Notes 71.8 (1956): 560-64.
Considers the two "observances" of May ritual in KnT (Emelye's at 1.1041-45 and Arcite's at 1491-1512), neither found in Boccaccio's "Teseide," identifying various French analogues that may have inspired Chaucer, while noting that he may also have…
Mitchell, J. Allan
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Mitchell explores the relationships among fortune, ethics, and validity in TC and other late medieval writings: Usk's "Testament of Love," "The Chaunce of the Dyse," Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Lydgate's "Fall of Princes," and Malory's "Morte…
Mitchell, J. Allan
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
Studies the ontogeny (rather than ontology) of medieval western humanness, focusing on gestation, birth, childhood, and the social and cultural coming-into-being of the child. Links various aspects of "posthumanist, ecological, and materialist…
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004.
Examines the ethics of exemplarity in "Confesso Amantis" and in CT, arguing that reading for the moral--deliberating ethically--is improvisatory and reflexive and aims at practice rather than theory. Exemplarity involves the reader in its moral…
Deeply engaged with literary tradition and the dynamics of translation, TC resists "the patriarchal biases of the founding myth the narrator transmits to us." It "denaturalizes the masculine literary corpus" by revealing the "radical contingency of…
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Studies in Philology 102.1 (2005): 1-26
Mitchell examines the polyvalent meanings of ClT and reflects on the processes of moral deliberation and the polarities that possible meanings represent. The Tale invites us to think hard about the nature of moral thinking.
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Comparative Literature 57.2 (2005): 101-16.
Emmanuel Lévinas's "Time and the Other" indicates how Fortune or contingency is constitutive of ethics in Chaucer's TC. In contrast to Boethian readings of TC, a Lévinasian reading shows how Troilus's subjection to love and his passivity before…
Argues that Maximian's Third Elegy inspired the figure of Pandarus in TC. In Maximian, Boethius is a character who is "astonishingly iconoclastic" and "richly ironic," anticipating Pandarus in several ways.
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Ann W. Astell and J. A. Jackson, eds. Levinas and Medieval Literature: The "Difficult Reading" of English and Rabbinic Texts (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009), pp. 185-206.
Reads courtly love in TC through a Levinasian lens: courtly desire is ethical because it is never satisfied. Yet, Criseyde's case disallows a direct application of Levinasian ethical theory. Mitchell comments on the role of fortune in TC, the…
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Myra Seaman, Eileen A. Joy, and Nicola Masciandaro, eds. Dark Chaucer: An Assortment (Brooklyn, N. Y.: Punctum Books, 2012), pp. 91-102.
Demonstrates how the resolution of FranT turns on so much semantic play with "fre" that the ending itself remains unresolved or "fre."
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 40 (2018): 1-41.
Considers the astrolabe as an instrument and Chaucer's Astr as a translation, correlating their "transmedial" features, which provoke "alternate angles of view on instrumentality" and interrogate relations between human and nonhuman epistemologies.…
Mitchell, Jerome, and William Provost, eds.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1973.
Includes an Introduction, four essays, a Panel Discussion, and an Afterword, with a subject index. For individual entries, search for Chaucer the Love Poet under Alternative Title.
Mitchell, Jerome.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987.
Catalogues romance and Chaucerian sources (BD, HF, TC, and especially CT) for Scott's work, showing analogues, parallels, and likenesses. Extensively indexed.
Mitchell, Jerome.
Arno Esch, ed. Chaucer und Seine Zeit: Symposion für Walter F. Schirmer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), pp. 275-83.
Contends that "there is no clear, indisputable evidence" of a personal relationship between Chaucer and Thomas Hoccleve in the latter's "Regement of Princes." His praise of Chaucer in that poem is evocative but generally conventional, and there is…
Mitchell, Jerome.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1968.
Defends the artistic qualities of Thomas Hoccleve as a poet, acknowledging his medieval conventionality, but emphasizing his originality in adapting conventions and source material, the competence of his meter, and the autobiographical elements of…
Considers moral casuistry in Gower and CT, arguing that Chaucer and Gower pose for the reader's discovery "practical precepts" that rely on the "rhetoric of exemplarity and the deliberation of readers," rather than relying on hard-and-fast religious…
Mitchell, John D., in collaboration with Donald Berwick and George Drew.
John D. Mitchell and others. Men Stand on Shoulders (Key West, Fla.: Published by Institute for Advanced Studies in the Theatre Arts Press in association with Florida Keys Community College, 1996), pp. 1-71.
A film script which combines "key lines and phrases" from Boccaccio's "Filostrato," TC, and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," interspersed with appearances of the three writers in moments of fictional biography. Re-tells the broad outlines of the…
Mitchell, Ken, Thomas Chase, and Michael Trussler, eds.
Regina, Saskatchewan: University of Regina, 1999.
An anthology of forty works of short fiction designed for "first-year university students," with an Introduction that discusses the genre, and an appendix of related literary terms. Each narrative is accompanied by a brief assessment and a…
Mitchell, Robert.
Ph. D. Dissertation. University of Manchester, 2012. Fully accessible via https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/guilt-and-creativity-in-the-works-of-geoffrey-chaucer/ (accessed February 23, 2026).
Explores the "sense of guilt and uncertainty about the value of creative literature" in Chaucer's works, particularly as it generates "expansive, questioning poetics" in HF and "problematises the principle of allegory" in the final fragments of CT,…
Mitchell, Susan.
Proceedings of the PMR Conference 1 (1976): 67-72.
Contrasts Dorigen of FranT with the biblical Eve: where Eve falls because of her desire for knowledge, Dorigen nearly falls for lack of knowledge, particularly her lack of self-knowledge as is evident in her complaint against the rocks and her…
