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…
Murrin, Michael.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.
Traces the development, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, of a "new trend in western European literature," a concern with trade between Europe and "Farther Asia": i.e., from Iran and the Caspian Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Focuses on…
Reads Theseus as a uniquely dynamic character in KnT and in CT more generally--able to "change over time in response to experience." In the course of the Tale, Theseus achieves some of the detachment and insight that characterize the Knight.
Murtaugh, Daniel M.
Chaucer Review 44 (2010): 461-70.
When used in direct discourse, "as" often functions as a "discourse particle" in a manner similar to "the multivalent 'like' that seasons the more youthful dialects of Modern English." Such words allow interlocutors to convey meanings while not…
Murtaugh, Daniel M.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 74 (1973): 107-12.
Shows that the thematic concerns of FrT are evident in its rhyme words, focusing on the occurrences of "entente" and its rhymes: "rente," "hente," and "repente."
Explores the complementary relations between two "fantasies" about women that underlie Chaucer's Marriage Group: clerkly abuse rooted in patristic tradition (particularly Jerome) and courtly idealization rooted in "fin amour" (especially Jean de…
Claims that in reworking TC, Shakespeare "turns it inside out": the work of creating Criseyde's double image shifts from the narrator to Troilus, who also embodies the narrator's "longing and dread of the erotic," and eye-witness testimony fills the…
Argues that Christian and pagan acts of prayer in Chaucer's works are fundamental to understanding his creative piety. Chaucer's literary representations of prayer are collaborative and participatory "scripts" that involve the reader in the sacred…
Murton, Megan.
Clíodhna Carney and Frances McCormack, eds. Chaucer's Poetry: Words, Authority and Ethics (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 48-60.
Argues for an "ethical" reading of Chaucer's view of poetry in CT distinct from didacticism, examining Chaucer's engagement with sententiae of Plato and St. Paul and suggesting that, for Chaucer, poetry's value is in the process of interpretation it…
Argues that Chaucer's interpretation of Boethius, as shown in two key passages in TC, his translation of Bo, and a significant Bo manuscript, "enables him to present Troilus as a genuinely Boethian hero who channels philosophical insight into…
Murton, Megan.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 38 (2016): 75-107.
Describes Chaucer's self-conscious exploration of time in Mars, arguing that in form and content the poem presents an ambivalent, "permeable, and even unstable" view of secularity but also implies the "palpably absent" other of transcendence. More…
Argues that the use of Dante's "Paradiso" 53 in the initial presentation of faith in PrT reflects Chaucer's sophisticated engagement with the ways humans try to articulate transcendent truth.
Murton, Megan.
Carmina Philosophiae 25 (2016): 1-8.
Argues that Chaucer anticipates readings of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" as centrally devotional rather than philosophical. Chaucer's word choices in Bo bring this emphasis to the fore, especially of the concluding lines of the work.…
Muscatine, Charles.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 249-62.
Posits that "different ages or cultures do not so much misread a great text (from a different time or place) as make from it special abstractions, acutely suited to their particular concerns." At midcentury, the twentieth-century reception of…
Muscatine, Charles.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981): 3-11.
(Presidential address to the New Chaucer Society). Chaucerians must engage undergraduate minds, going beyond source studies, textual studies, and narrow explications into cultural history, sociology, historiography, and ethnography.
Muscatine, Charles.
Columbia : University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Fourteen previously printed pieces by Muscatine, including articles, sections of books, and reviews. The four essays that pertain to Chaucer are "The Canterbury Tales: Style of the Man and Style of the Work" (1966), "Chaucer's Religion and the…
Muscatine, Charles.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972.
Characterizes late fourteenth-century England as an age of "crisis" and pursues a "style-and-culture" assessment of the poetry of the "Pearl"-poet, William Langland, and Chaucer, summarizing what is known (and not known) of each writer and reading…
Muscatine, Charles.
Urban T. Holmes, ed. Romance Studies in Memory of Edward Billings Ham (Hayward: [California State College], 1967), pp. 109-14.
Argues that Gautier Le Leu's "La Veuve" is a source--perhaps an oral source--of the WBP as a dramatic monologue; considers garrulousness, imagery, details of character and background, and marital violence
Muscatine, Charles.
D. S. Brewer, ed. Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature (University: University of Alabama Press; London: Nelson, 1966), pp. 88-113.
Describes and comments on Chaucer's characteristic style, explaining how "insouciance" and "naturalness" combine with forward narrative movement, mastery of meter, formal listings, etc. to demonstrate his "great technical range." Then explores how in…
Muscatine, Charles.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957.
Describes aspects of medieval French poetry that influenced Chaucer's style, high and low, tracing the idealizing, nonrepresentational conventions of courtly romances from the early twelfth century to their epitome in Guillaume's de Lorris's portion…
Muscatine, Charles.
Modern Language Notes 70 (1955): 169-72.
Suggests that the Friar's name, "Huberd" (GP 1.269), "may be an ironic literary allusion, to Hubert 'l'escoufle,' the kite, a bird of prey, and a lewd cleric and confessor in the Old French poems of the 'Renart' tradition."
Musgrave, Thea, composer.
London: J. & W. Chester, 1960.
Sets MerB to orchestral music, sung by tenor; text in Middle English. A Special Oder Edition / Study Score was commissioned by the Saltire Music Group, apparently in 2009.
Musical score for a normalized-spelling version of the closing song (rondel) of PF (ll. 680-92). Performance notes suggest harp effects and ways to involve audience participation. Commissioned by the Buck Hill-Skytop Music Festival.
Musson, Anthony.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 206-26.
Portrays the "moral, social, political, and professional" worlds of medieval lawyers, often found in estates satires, enriching understanding of Chaucer's Sergeant of Law in GP.
