Millersdaughter, Katherine Elizabeth.
Dissertation Abstracts International 64 (2003): 1245A.
English political claims to Wales depended in part on claims of Welsh incest; Millersdaughter discusses various texts (including MLT) in which this "heterogeneous, colonialist discourse" is evident.
Black, Merrill.
Diane P. Freedman and Olivia Frey, eds. Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines: A Reader (Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2003), pp.85-95.
An autobiographical reading of WBPT by a woman who was for a time an abused wife. Black records three different responses to Chaucer's materials at three different stages in her life, focusing on the Wife's responses to abuse by her husbands.
Moore, Jeanie Grant.
Laurel Amtower and Dorothea Kehler, eds. The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and Representation (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003), pp. 133-46.
As an often-married single woman, the Wife of Bath confronts and eludes the "binarisms that contained married women": married/not married, male/female, experience/authority, etc. In the fantasy of WBT, she succeeds partially in creating a "world of…
Scanlon, Larry.
Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds. The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 220-56.
Scanlon considers contemporary ideas of vernacular literature and its potential for "subversiveness" through incompleteness, focusing on the concept of "poet laureate" as introduced into English by Chaucer in ClT and on the interdependence of…
Scanlon, Larry.
New Medieval Literatures 6 (2003): 129-65
Scanlon reads ClT against a historical tension between aristocratic arranged marriage and canonist marriage of consent, focusing on the espousal scene, the papal letter forged by Walter, and the conclusion and Envoy of the Tale.
Bodden, M. C.
Jennifer C. Vaught, ed., with Lynne Dickson Bruckner. Grief and Gender: 700-1700 (New Yorl: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 51-63.
In FranT and ClT, masculine grief is aligned with courtly ideals of gentility; feminine grief, with courtly suffering. By complicating these associations and disallowing consolation of grief, Chaucer intervenes in the "discursive practices" of the…
Minnis, Alastair.
New Medieval Literatures 6 (2003): 107-28.
Argues against specifying the Pardoner's sexuality, on the grounds that historical evidence discourages such specification and that specification can only render the character less enigmatic and thereby less queer. Sexual characteristics ascribed to…
Zieman, Katherine.
Sarah Rees Jones, ed. Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, no. 3 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003), pp. 97-120.
Zieman examines the "liturgical literacy" of medieval nuns, exploring the extent to which they may have understood Latin texts that they performed. PrT presents "singing explicitly characterized as illiterate" as "the purest form of piety"; SNT…
Reads Mel as a narrative of anger and anger management in which Prudence's "transformative" advice helps Melibee resolve his personal and political anger, even though his fundamental anger against God is not reconciled.
Eisner, Sigmund, and Marijane Osborn.
Daniel T. Kline, ed. Medieval Literature for Children (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 155-87.
An introduction to Astr by Eisner that emphasizes Chaucer ability to write clear instructions for a child, followed by Osborn's Modern English version of the treatise.
Wilcockson, Colin.
Joanna Burzynska and Danuta Stanulewicz, eds. PASE Papers in Literature and Culture: Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Polish Association for the Study of English. Gdansk, 26-28 April 2000 (Gdansk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdánskiego, 2003), pp. 431-36.
The puppy in BD is not only a guide, but also a complex symbol of psychological and literary connectivity.
Kerr, John.
Stephen Gersh and Bert Roest, eds. Medieval and Renaissance Humanism: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reform (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 185-202.
In HF, Chaucer poses "epistemological instability" as a condition of the sublunar realm, which he characterizes as hellish through associations with Proserpina in her triple manifestation, references to Claudian, and allusions to Virgil and Dante.
Steiner, Emily.
New Medieval Literatures 6 (2003): 199-22.
Steiner assesses political "clamor," "appeal," and "voice," using them to discuss the Prologue to "Piers Plowman" as a work in which "commonality" is "the poem's ideological subject and poetic process." Suggests briefly that the same is true of PF.
Alexander, Michael.
Rosalynn Voaden, René Tixier, Teresa Sanchez Roura, and Jenny Rebecca Rytting, eds. The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 201-13.
Identifies ways Dante influenced the invocations in TC, as well as TC's depictions of love and hell. Also explores the words that Chaucer invented to rhyme with "Troie" and with "Criseyde."
Amtower, Laurel.
Laurel Amtower and Dorothea Kehler, eds. The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and Representation (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003), pp. 119-32.
Surveys Chaucer's treatments of widows, which reveal an "awareness of their excluded social status and how it affects their assertions as individuals." Focuses on Dido and Cleopatra of LGW, the Wife of Bath, and, especially, Criseyde.
Duncan, Thomas G.
Rosalynn Voaden, René Tixier, Teresa Sanchez Roura, and Jenny Rebecca Rytting, eds. The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 215-22.
Considers Henryson's Testament of Cresseid as an extension of Chaucer's TC and a transformation of it-two different senses of "translation." Duncan examines the characterization of Calkas and other means of creating compassion for Cresseid.
Zeikowitz, Richard E.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Examines homoerotic acts between knights (kissing, expressions of love, and forming of lifelong bonds) in a variety of late medieval texts: "Amys and Amylion," the "Prose Lancelot," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," the "Stanzaic Morte Arthur," and…
Weisl, Angela Jane.
New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Weisl explores residual traces in contemporary American popular culture of medieval narrative structures and patterns - e.g., pilgrimage, veneration of relics, conversion, heroic accomplishment, romance, fabliau - identifying such patterns in sports…
Burger, Glenn, and Steven F. Kruger.
Tanya Agathocleous and Ann C. Dean, eds. Teaching Literature: A Companion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 31-40.
Argues for an expansion of the notion of queer readings of Chaucer, encouraging a broad concern with questions of identity and its formulations. Comments on possible queer approaches to Chaucer the Pilgrim and the "Marriage Group" of CT.
Weinstock, Horst.
Horst Weinstock. Kleine Schriften: Ausgewahlte Studien zur Alt-, Mittel- und Fruhneuenglischen Sprache und Literatur. Heidelberg: Winter, 2003, pp. 99-109.
Weinstock constructs a pseudo-sonnet from Chaucerian couplets and submits it to translation, analysis, and commentary. First publishesd in Peter L. Oesterrich and Thomas O. Sloane, eds. Rhetorica Movet: Studies in Historical and Modern Rhetoric in…
Sallfors, Solomon, and James Duban.
Leviathan 5 (2003): 73-77.
Sallfors and Duban contend that MilT "informs the dramatic setting, humor, and tension of Ishmael's response to Queequeg's 'Ramadan'" in Chapter 17 of Melville's "Moby Dick." Specifically, the characterization of John the Carpenter underlies…
Similar concerns with fairies and male oppression encourage comparison of WBT and Jane Eyre; they reflect either Brontë's familiarity with Chaucer's work or a significant coincidence.
Beidler, Peter.
Studies in American Indian Literature 15 (2003): 92-103.
Comments on the possible influence of CT on the frame-tale structure of Erdrich's "Tales of Burning Love" and considers to what extent parallels between the Wife of Bath and Lulu Nanapush ("Love Medicine") indicate that Chaucer's work is a source for…
Jung, Verena, and Angela Schrott.
K. M. Jaszczolt and Ken Turner, eds. Meaning Through Language Contrast. 2 vols. (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2003), 2:345-71.
Combines historical pragmatics and translation studies, using them to clarify issues fundamental to both. Examines translations of questions in "Cantar de mio Cid" and translations of lines from WBP (ll.1-3 and 149-51), assessing in the latter case…
