Collection of essays addressing various Chaucerian topics, including "textual authority, poetic design, political affiliations and sympathies, and religious convictions." For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Chaucer in Context: A…
Morgan, Gerald.
Modern Language Review 71 (1976): 241-55.
Modern psychological exploration of individual consciousness is not applicable to medieval literature which, as in "Cliges" and the "Romaunt of the Rose," assumes unity between action and intention. Hence the issue of the closing of PardT is not,…
Morgan, Gerald.
Eric Haywood and Barry Jones, eds. Dante Comparisons: Comparative Studies of Dante and Montale, Foscolo, Tasso, Chaucer, Petrarch, Propertius and Catullus (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1985), pp. 73-95.
"Courtly love" is a critics' term that was never used by medieval poets. To understand Chaucer's treatment of love, we must turn not to the principles of courtly love but to medieval philosophy and the treatment of love by poets such as Dante.
If we recall the Thomistic distinctions among vows, oaths, and promises and if we focus on action rather than on character, the long complaints in FranT can be seen as essential to the structure rather than as excrescences.
Morgan, Gerald.
John Scattergood, ed. Literature and Learning in Medieval and Renaissance England: Essays Presented to Fitzroy Pyle (Blackrock, Country Dublin, Ireland: Irish Academic Press, 1984), pp. 59-102.
Defines the freedom of the lovers in TC as a freedom involving the will--the sensitive soul being passive or dark and the rational soul being active or light. The misery of Troilus and Criseyde is not unjust but results form their wrong choices.
Morgan, Gerald.
Modern Language Review 77 (1982): 257-71
TC is vindicated as a finished work of art, as complete in terms of the clarity and proportion that constitute its beauty. Chaucer's poetic allusion to Dante's "Paradiso" 14.28-30 is cited as an apt ending, and Morgan stresses the appropriateness of…
Morgan, Gerald.
English Studies 62 (1981): 411-22.
The portraits of GP, which depict types, belong to the tradition of rhetorical description, not of satire. Epideictic rhetoric provides for representation of virtue and vice alike and aims at the unity of perspective that we find in the descriptions…
Morgan, Gerald.
Yearbook of English Studies 9 (1979): 221-35.
The ironic treatment of the lovers in Book III may be clarified by examining representations of "charitas" and "cupiditas." Chaucer juxtaposes them throughout the poem and with special effect in the proem and aubades of Book III. His use and…
Morgan, Gerald.
English Studies 59 (1978): 481-98.
GP is a coherent structure indicating a subtle spiritual reality coinciding to Christian doctrines. It is not seen simply as a social vision, but as encircling both moral and spiritual truths which match: generosity to "gentils," materialism to…
Morgan, Gerald.
English Studies 58 (1977): 481-93.
The portraits in GP cannot be at once individual and typical. The details cannot be taken as individual because they have been determined by the general conception. Recognition of the reality of the universal is necessary for an understanding of the…
Rather than an incoherent outpouring of emotions, Dorigen's Complaint (FranT, 5.1355-456) is a coherent, moral response to the random world Aurelius presents her. Chaucer manipulates "exempla" from Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum" to compose a…
Positioned midway between aristocracy and the lower orders of society, the Franklin appropriately tells a story that emphasizes the necessity and correctness of the social order as he (and Chaucer) would have understood it. Thus, the…
Morgan critiques modern claims for Chaucer's innovation in GP, arguing that Chaucer's methods resulted from the moral and artistic training of his time. We should read the pilgrim Chaucer both as earnest and as effective in displaying the sins of his…
Morgan, Gerald.
Review of English Studies 56 (2005): 1-36.
Following Aristotle, medieval poets consider poetry a branch of moral philosophy. Whether or not Chaucer knew Boccaccio's own glosses on the "Teseida," he adapts the Italian work to his own treatment of allegorical figures and so justifies Usk's…
Morgan contends that TC is coherent; it has no sudden reversals, palinodes, or "unresolved dialectics." He discourages attention to Andreas Capellanus's theory of courtly love and encourages viewing TC in light of Dante's "Commedia," demonstrating…
Ironic readings of the GP portrait of the Knight are undermined by an understanding of the medieval ideals of "honor," "prudence," and "moral goodness" and by recognition of their signs in the Knight's portrait. An understanding of the medieval…
Morgan, Gerald.
English Studies 91 (2010): 492-518.
Chaucer's intentional contrasting of the language of the Knight and that of the Miller challenges his readers' openmindedness. The Miller's obscene language is cleverly applied and should on no account be censored from prudishness.
Skilled in the law and both learned and adept in poetry, the Man of Law crafts a tale of sin, free will, and providence. Though Custance is steadfast, her will is free and consequential, the foundation of true judgment. MLT proposes a concept of…
Morgan, Gerald.
Modern Language Review 104 (2009): 1-25.
Reads ClT as a disquisition on the "moral virtue of obedience" and the "triumph of patience," commenting on Griselda as a personification, Walter as a figure of fortune, and the sergeant as an example of false obedience. Examines each scene and…
Morgan, Gerald.
Gerald Morgan, ed. Chaucer in Context: A Golden Age of English Poetry (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), pp. 153-88.
Examines the characterization of Theseus in KnT, comparing it with that of Boccaccio's Teseo and arguing that Chaucer depicts an ideal of moral worth, aristocratic justice, knightly virtue, and nobility of conquest.
Morgan, Gerald.
In Nicolas Jacobs and Gerald Morgan, eds. "Truth is the beste": A Festschrift in Honour of A. V. C. Schmidt (New York: Lang, 2014), pp. 137-68.
Reviews the "extreme implausibility" of attributing the art of individual tales in CT to the pilgrim-narrators, and argues that the "ideas and arguments" of the tales belong to Chaucer. Also reviews the sequential order of the tales as found in the…
Morgan, Gerald.
Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher, eds. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World (New York: Peter Lang, 2022), pp. 121-53.
Explicates the rhetorical, conventional, and philosophical aspects of the combination of physical beauty and moral virtue in Chaucer's portrait of Blanche in BD, "a triumph of the poet's art." Clarifies similarities and differences between Chaucer's…
The shift from the first person of Anelida's complaint to the third person of the narrator's commentary is not an artistic flaw. Attributing the commentary to the Chaucerian narrator is consistent with that character's pose as inexperienced and…
Morgan, Gwendolyn.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales". (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 170-79.
The inclusion of the Weaver among the Guildsmen of GP "is an anomaly" insofar as the typical weaver of the age was "an exploited, usually propertyless laborer." Morgan surveys the history of weavers and their role in the English wool trade.
