Palmer, R. Barton.
Robert G. Benson and Susan J. Ridyard, eds. New Readings of Chaucer's Poetry (Rochester, N.Y., and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 183-94.
Palmer argues that LGW is not merely a collection of tales retold from Ovid; it is also the story of the narrator's problematic relationship to the God of Love.
Olson, Glending.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 143-55.
Olson examines Gerard of Odo's "Facetus, multa documenta," a commentary on Aristotle's "Nichomachean Ethics," as background to the Prioress's description in GP. The Franciscan commentary may indicate that the courtliness of the description is more…
Tinkle, Theresa.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 157-74.
The treatment of Cupid in the various works of Bodleian MS Fairfax 16 reveals a cultural transition from the Gallic tradition of the supremacy of love-and from the Latinate tradition of the supremacy of religion-to a new English poetic tradition.…
Pearsall, Derek.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 99-112.
Although much medieval English writing is verse rather than poetry, Chaucer's poetic skill is an important and distinctive part of his narrative. Pearsall examines a number of passages (KnT, MilT, RvT, WBP, and PardT) to show how poetic adornment…
Stévanovitch, Colette.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 113-24.
The author explores some of the effects arising from polysyllables (i.e., here words with more than one stressed syllable), concentrating on those in rhyming position, especially words referring to worthynesse and gentillesse, the virtues credited to…
Raybin, David.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 213-26.
Raybin interrogates challenges to the dramatic approach to CT, concentrating on the personalities of the narrators of NPT and PardT. The Pardoner and Chauntecleer share a number of characteristics and artfully mix sentence and solace. Their voices…
Redford, Michael.
Paula Fikkert and Haike Jacobs, eds. Development in Prosodic Systems (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003), pp. 159-95.
Redford analyzes Chaucerian evidence pertaining to Middle English words that "appear to have initial stress" in certain contexts and "final stress in others." Examines several prominent theories and explanations, arguing that meter can be useful in…
Read, Dennis M.
William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum, eds. Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures (New Castle, Del. : Oak Knoll; London: British Library, 2003), pp. 211-31.
Read discusses the conditions of production and marketing of Stothard's Pilgrimage to Canterbury, arguing that the success of the painting and its engravings was due in good part to promotion by Robert Hartley Cromek, an antagonist of William Blake.
Stevenson, Warren.
William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum, eds. Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures (New Castle, Del. : Oak Knoll; London: British Library, 2003), pp. 191-209.
Stevenson interprets William Blake's depiction of the Canterbury pilgrims (rendered in several manifestations) in light of contemporaneous works and Blakes "Descriptive Catalogue" (1809). Visual symbols, juxtapositions, and contrasts indicate that…
Shippey, Tom.
Jean E. Godsall-Myers, ed. Speaking in the Medieval World (Boston: Brill, 2003), 125-44.
Just as in RvT Chaucer plays on his audience's awareness of dialect geography, in SumT he exploits strong contemporary awareness of linguistic class markers. If Chaucer was in some sense a philologist, he was also an efficient and deliberate…
Somerset, Fiona, Jill C. Havens, and Derrick G. Pitard, eds.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 2003
Thirteen essays by various authors on topics such as the conceptualization of Lollardy as a movement, its underlying thought, its book culture, and its relationships with other movements. Includes an extensive bibliography of Lollard study, with a…
Somerset, Fiona.
Fiona Somerset, Jill C. Havens, and Derrick G. Pitard, eds. Lollards and Their Influence in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 127-38.
Argues that details of SumT gain dimension in light of the contemporary debate concerning the Eucharist and transubstantiation as recorded in the "Upland Series." Division of the indivisible fart is a blasphemous joke on questions of divisibility in…
Phillips, Kim M.
Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003.
Examines how the "experiences and voices" of young, unmarried women in late-medieval England reflect ideals of femininity and the social processes of becoming adult women. Focuses on social history and literature, with recurrent mention of CT, TC,…
A personal memoir recording a childhood experience of reading about "Dan" Chaucer in "The Book of Knowledge," leading to an early understanding of the unchanging drives and characteristics of human nature. A childhood neighbor was like the Wife of…
As part of larger argument that miscellanies were an "essential material condition of vernacular literature before the introduction of printing," Shuffelton considers CT as a booklet miscellany.
Chaucer uses conventions of the friendship tradition to explore the power of erotic desire; Lydgate rewrites the fatal rivalry to emphasize male friendship over male-female attraction.
Passmore, S. Elizabeth
Medieval Feminist Forum 36: 36-40, 2003.
Passmore discusses three examples of "written women," whose stories are "filtered through the impressions and words of a male writer." The Wife of Bath's question about who painted the lion (WBP 3.692) indicates that women's writings, if unmediated…
Perfetti, Lisa Renée.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
Explores literary representations of women's laughter from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries and examines the contexts that shaped how women told jokes. The Wife of Bath's use of play coincides with Chaucer's own, dramatizing antifeminism as…
Passmore, S. Elizabeth.
Medieval Feminist Forum 36: 36-40, 2003.
Passmore discusses three examples of "written women," whose stories are "filtered through the impressions and words of a male writer." The Wife of Bath's question about who painted the lion (WBP 3.692) indicates that women's writings, if unmediated…
Pugh, Tison.
Journal of Narrative Technique 33: 115-42, 2003.
Reading the Wife of Bath's romance through her fabliau spirit reveals Chaucer's distaste for the Arthurian romance tradition (elsewhere seen in SqT, NPT) and (as seen in SqT, Th, and FranT) his ironic attitude toward male narrative authority, his…
Webb, Diana.
Christine Meek and Catherine Lawless, eds. Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Women: Pawns or Players? (Dublin and Portland, Ore.: Four Courts, 2003), pp. 75-89.
Webb briefly cites two CT characters: the Prioress is an unusual, but not impossible, instance of a nun on a local (as opposed to a foreign) pilgrimage; the Wife of Bath parallels several historical women who capitalized on their peripatetic…
