Horvath, Richard P.
Chaucer Review 37 : 173-89, 2002.
Rather than personal comments to private friends, Buk and Scog may be seen as Chaucer's experiments with "[t]urning the relationship between writer and reader into a poetic subject of its own." The characteristic sense of play and seemingly…
Wittig, Joseph [S.]
Yoko Iyeiri and Margaret Connolly, eds. And Gladly Wolde He Lerne and Gladly Teche: Essays on Medieval English Presented to Professor Matsuji Tajima on His Sixtieth Birthday (Tokyo: Kaibunsha, 2002), pp. 181-94.
Examines TC 4.958-1078, comparing the context of these lines with that of their source in Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. The Christian import of the poem's closing lines is implicit in TC 4.
Differences between eschatological and historical time in TC pose parallel differences between Troilus's personal Boethian tragedy and the epic tragedy of the fall of Troy. Similarities between Criseyde and analogous women in other siege stories (in…
The medieval chivalric practice of ransom illuminates the preoccupation with double sense, surrogacy, and substitutions in TC. Working with the poem's depiction of character, its narrative structure, and its insistently metaphoric language, the…
Sancéry, Arlette
André Crépin, ed. Angleterre et Orient au Moyen Age (Paris: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2002.), pp. 51-64.
Ottomans and Saracens, people, whom Chaucer knew mainly through trade and crusade narratives, embody for him alterity in general and absolute determinism in contrast to Chrsitian free will. MLT suggests that these groups live in error, and while KnT…
Nolan, Maura.
Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington, eds. The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England (New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 136.53
MLP "stages a confrontation" between the legal and the poetic that reveals the "degree of Chaucer's investment in the latter as well as his need for the former." The textual uncertainties of MLE and the Host's appropriation of legal language reflect…
Encourages more thorough integration of Chaucer studies and Middle English studies, exemplifying the potential by examining the "pragmatic dimension" of "curteisly" in RvT (1.3997) and suggesting that John and Aleyn's use of low-prestige dialect may…
Bertolet, Craig E.
Studes in Philology 99 : 229-46, 2002.
CkT illustrates what can happen to the urban household that opens its "pryvetee" to strangers who could damage the family and ruin its reputatiion in the community.
Lee, Dongchoon.
Journal of English Language and Literature (Korea) 48 (2002): 263-87.
Contrasts WBT with its English analogues and assesses the role of rhetorical dilation, which Chaucer derived from Roman and French traditions. The digressions compel readers to engage WBT dialogically.
A nationalistic fantasy of legal sovereignty underlies MLT and its depiction of England in relation to Rome through the figure of Constance. Anxiously embracing the geographic and forensic marginality of England, "Chaucer's lawyer exhibits a version…
Niebrzydowski, Sue.
Elizabeth Herbert McAvoy and Teresa Walters, eds. Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002), pp. 196-207.
Reads the Sultaness of MLT as the antithesis of Western medieval ideals of motherhood, the opposite of Constance, and a reification of distorted notions of women of color.
Evans, Ruth.
Elizabeth Herbert McAvoy and Teresa Walters, eds. Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002), pp. 182-95.
Surveys originary myths in which human females have sex with supernatural beings, focusing on versions of the story of Albina and her sisters, who have sex with demons-incubi and give birth to the giants of Albion. Evans reads the Wife of Bath's…
Choi, Yejung.
Feminist Studies in English Literature 10 (2002): 223-44
Choi explores the relationship between body and text in medieval hermeneutics. arguing that MLT represents the uncontrollable signification of the text and reveals how textual transmission becomes a process of textual transgression.
MLT is animated by ambivalence toward and ignorance of Islam. Chaucer's adaptation of Trevet's "Cronicles" shifts emphasis and perspective. Whereas the source never mentions Mohammed or the Koran and considers Muslims to be idol-worshippers, MLT…
Blamires, Alcuin.
Thelma S. Fenster and Clare A. Lees. eds. Gender in Debate: From the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance (New York and Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 57-78.
Connects Alison's sexual liberality in WBP with the loathly lady's liberality of counsel in WBT, arguing that Chaucer "redoctrinates" his audience by converting notions of feminine excess into the positive virtue of generosity. Also considers…
Ingham, Patricia Clare.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 44: 34-46, 2002.
Readers are skeptical of idealized pastoral space, yet it influences their view of the real. WBT begins with an allusion to a past, utopian dream world, a vision in tension with the Wife's mercantile concerns. Such utopian dreams are a resistence…
Ackroyd discusses Chaucer within the larger context of describing and defining the distinctive qualities of English imagination, focusing on Chaucer's themes of remembrance, science, and truth as part of the process of becoming English. Considers HF,…
Baughn, Gary.
English Journal 93 (Sept): 60-65, 2002.
Pedagogical approach to CT for an eleventh-grade honors survey of British literature, combining popular twentieth-century music with activities related to CT: analysis of GP descriptions, story-telling, and writing assignments.
Baldwin, Elizabeth.
Wim Hüsken and Konrad Schoell, eds. Farce and Farcical Elements (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 85-105.
Argues that a seventeenth-century play, "The Wisest Have Their Fools About Them," may reflect the influence of Chaucerian fabliau and some late-medieval stage traditions. Baldwin's analysis focuses on stereotypical characters.
Ashton, Gail.
Literature and Theology 16: 235-47, 2002.
Uses Luce Irigaray's notion of the "ethics of alterity" to explore the fusion of masculine and feminine in the depiction of angels in several medieval narratives, including Marian accounts and Chaucer's and Bokenham's stories of St. Cecilia. In SNT…
Chance, Jane.
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 38 : 75-92, 2002.
The Knight, in representing the gods, omits any reference to the castration of Saturn in order to justify the ascendancy of Jupiter, the authority of Theseus, and the political situation of the later fourteenth century, "a dark time in which…
