Brief comments about "pairing" WBP and Christine de Pizan in the classroom; mentions the Wife's "deliberate misreading, invective, and outright mockery" of misogynistic writing, and Chaucer's irony that "slices Jerome and the Wife with a single…
Newman, Barbara.
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22 (1992): 121-57.
Because Heloise is canonized in Jankyn's "Book of Wikked Wyves" between Jerome and Ovid, her authentic voice is overwhelmed by their reinforcing discourses; the Wife of Bath is similarly contained between Chaucer and Jankyn. Chaucer and Jean de Meun…
Newman, Barbara.
Stephen A. Barney, ed. Chaucer's Troilus: Essays in Criticism (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1980), pp. 257-75.
The dichotomy between "trouthe" (fidelity) and truth (actuality) marks TC from the outset. "Trouthe" in love is linked to "routhe" and "kyndenesse," and on every level is compromised by the characters' feigning.
Newman, Barbara.
Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds. Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 2003, pp. 135-55.
Traces two medieval constructions of Nature as goddess: the antifeminist tradition that runs from Alan de Lille through Jean de Meun to Chaucer's PF, and the relatively profeminist legacy of Heldris of Cornwall ("Roman de Silence") and Christine de…
Newman, Barbara.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
Considers PF (pp. 111-15) as part of an expansive discussion of medieval depictions of Nature as a goddess, observing Chaucer's modifications of Jean de Meun's Natura and commenting on the political implications of the later poem. Also comments on…
Newman, Barbara.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013.
Explores how the "sacred and the secular interact" in Latin, French, and English texts and frames this "crossover concept" as key to understanding medieval literature. Includes discussion of PrT, FranT, KnT, MLT, WBPT, LGW, and TC.
Offers perspective on affiliations of Elizabeth and Alice Chaucer with Barking Abbey; comments on cats in late-medieval literature (CT, "Piers Plowman," and more); identifies "Gyb" as a conventional name for a cat; and explores international versions…
Newman, Claire.
English Review (Deddington, Oxfordshire) 13.1 (2003): 2-5.
Summarizes performance features of WBP (echoes of preaching, animal imagery, range of emotion, entertainment value) appropriate to fourteenth-century encounters with the text as an aural experience.
An abstract of a paper that considers ClT and Petrarch's version of the Griselda tale in comparison with "Laxdaela Saga" and Marie de France's "Le Fresne". In all, the central female figure "possesses a greater value than may at first appear."
The "partridge wings" at the end of the "pictura" of Fame result not from error but from Chaucer's following the commentary on the "Metamorphoses" in "Ovide moralise," where Perdix (partridge) represents a clever but deceitful craftsman and Daedalus…
Newman, Francis X.
English Language Notes 6 (1968): 5-12.
Explores the sources and ironies of the disquisition on dreams that opens HF, and argues that its list of "six dream words" (HF 7-12) are made up of "three contrasting pairs," each of which is "distinguished by a contrast between a dream that conveys…
Newman, Francis X., ed.
Binghamton, N.Y. : Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1986.
Five essays dealing with the peasants' revolt, peasant resistance, the plague, and social conscience. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Social Unrest in the Middle Ages under Alternative Title.
Newman, John Kevin.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.
Anatomizes the tradition of the classical epic in Western literature, from Homer to Tolstoy and Thomas Mann, tracing the "Alexandrian" mode that originated with Callimachus and his school and runs counter to the more strictly restrained tradition of…
Romps through the western literary canon, including commentary on CT and scoring it a 10 in Importance, 6 in Accessibility, and 9 in Fun; TC rates 4, 3, and 4, respectively. Distinguishes CT from the novel tradition, and summarizes, irreverently,…
An anthology of previously published materials, including selections from Boccaccio (on the Black Death) and Froissart (on the Peasants' Revolt), essays on cultural backgrounds to the fourteenth century (imagination, technology, science, courtly…
Newstead, Helaine.
J. Burke Severs, ed. Recent Middle English Scholarship and Criticism: Survey and Desiderata (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 1971), 97-107.
Identifies trends in Chaucer criticism from ca. 1950-1970, observing attention paid to his religious views, rhetoric, style, and poetics, with comments on individual studies.
Newton, Allyson.
John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Medieval Mothering (New York and London: Garland, 1996), pp. 63-77.
Classical and medieval theories of sexual reproduction privilege the male role as active and occlude the female as passive. This occlusion is paralleled by the plot and language of ClT, in which mothering is subordinated to paternalistic concerns…
Newton, Judith May.
Dissertation Abstracts International 28.12 (1968): 5026A.
Offers a critical edition of Kynaston's "Amorum Troili et Creseide," with attention to his "methods of translating" TC and his "explication of Chaucer's life and artistry."
Ni Cuilleanain, Eilean, and J. D. Pheifer, eds.
Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993.
An introduction and eleven essays consider romances of the English tradition written between the late Middle Ages and Spenser, with recurrent concern for relations to the Continental tradition of romance. Topics include Chaucer, the "Gawain" poet,…
Demonstrates that PF reflects a movement from natural law to a more subjective interpretation of individual rights and ties this transition to the crisis of "commonalty" in the late fourteenth century.
Transcribes witnesses to three of Chaucer's short poems--"For," "Truth" (both from Leiden University Library Vossius 9), and Gent (from Cambridge University Library Gg 4 9.27.1b)--all previously unpublished and here supplied from, perhaps, "the final…
