Vance's concept of "power semantics" articulates how Chaucer uses transgressive exempla--"meta-examples which confound expectations"--to pit the discourse of medieval history against itself in PardT, predicating a literal critique of medieval culture…
Nichols, Stephen G., and Siegfried Wenzel, eds.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
Nine essays by various authors and a closing commentary address organization, inclusion, and definition of medieval miscellanies--Latin, French, and English. The essays were first presented at a colloquium at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993.…
Nichols, Stephen G., Jr., ed.
New York: Appleton-Century-Croft, 1967.
An edition of Guillaume de Lorris's portion of "Le Roman de la Rose," with glosses and an Introduction (pp.1-12) in modern French. Includes as an Appendix fragment A (lines 1-1705) of Rom, with glosses and an Introduction (pp.149-51) in modern…
Nicholson, Lewis E.
English Language Notes 19 (1981): 98-102.
Despite recent scholarship of MilT that equates Alison's "pa" (line 3709) with the Wife of Bath's "ba" (WBT, line 433), the two words should be distinguished. "Pa" seems to be a shortening of "pax," the liturgical embrace of Christian love. In…
Nicholson, Peter Charles.
DAI 34.08 (1974): 3114A.
Argues that the source of ShT is Boccaccio's "Decameron," and that their several differences were "made necessary by Chaucer's alteration of the ending." Chaucer gave his tale the "superficial appearance of a French fabliau" in order to critique the…
Nicholson, Peter.
Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1989
Line-by-line commentary on the Confessio that synthesizes criticism and scholarship. The introduction surveys critical tradition, and the notes clarify details, patterns,and literary relations of the work.
Nicholson, Peter.
R. F. Yeager, ed. Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutability, Exchange (Victoria B. C.: University of Victoria, 1991), pp. 85-99.
Chaucer had two sources for MLT: Gower's Confessio Amantis (2.587-1707) and Trevet's Chronicles, which also served as Gower's source. Placing all three versions side by side, one can find evidence that Gower was Chaucer's principal source.
Chaucer's primary source for MLT was not Nicholas Trevet's Chronicles but Gower's Tale of Constance. Chaucer found in Gower's tale a streamlined shape, sharper focus, a greater depth of character, and a heightened moral emphasis. It was Gower who…
Transcription and English translation of the Latin exemplum discussed in Nicholson's earlier article on the FrT analogues (English Language Notes 17 (1979): 93-98).
J. W. Spargo has not proved the existence of an extraliterary tradition among texts written by Chaucer and Boccaccio. The oral circulation of the tale does not support the hypothesis that Chaucer and Boccaccio had a common source.
Nicholson, Peter.
English Language Notes 17.2 (1979-80): 93-98.
Archer Taylor's account, in "Sources and Analogues," of the analogues to FrT is incomplete and misleading. Exempla from two fourteenth-century English manuscript collections show that it is possible to be much more precise about Chaucer's…
ShT contains within itself the opposing standards contrasted in KnT, MilT and RvT. The voice of ShT is more nearly Chaucer's own than in any of the more dramatically employed fabliaux.
Nicholson, Peter.
Medievalia et Humanistica 19 (1993): 159-68.
Reviews Priscilla Martin's "Chaucer's Women: Nuns, Wives, and Amazons" and Helen Cooper's "The Canterbury Tales," arguing that they "provide a good indication of some of the newest orthodoxies in Chaucer studies."
Evaluates the evidence for the proposition that Sercambi wrote two versions of his tales--the "Novelliero" and the "Novelle," arguing that that this evidence is ambiguous and that it offers no concrete support for the notion that Sercambi may have…
Nicholson, Peter.
Elisabeth Dutton, with John Hines and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 206-16.
Nicholson asserts that critics' "willingness to detect irony at every turn" is appropriate in Chaucer studies, but not in Gower studies, arguing that paradox is a recurrent and sustained mode of thought and expression in Gower's "Confessio." Surveys…
Nicholson, R. H.
English Language Notes 25:3 (1988): 16-22.
The reference to the slaughter of Antonius in KnT 2032 is not to Mark Antony, as is commonly believed, but to Antonius Bassianus. Usually known as Caracalla, Emperor Antonius was betrayed and murdered--a reference far more suitable to Chaucer's…
Nicholson, R. H.
Chaucer Review 22 (1988): 192-213.
The public ceremonies--the triumph, trial by battle, and the state funeral--underlining the Knight's conversion of romance into figurative narrative suggest that the public personality of Theseus, the ruler, is the dominant personality in KnT.
Comments on brief selections from a translation of PardT as evidence that Chaucer accepts the validity of the True Cross even though he rejects the Pardoner's "fraudulent" practice. Discusses how John Calvin "took the matter several steps further"…
Nickell, Joe.
The Science of Miracles: Investigating the Incredible (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2013), pp. 91-99.
Comments briefly on PardT as "a satirical attack on relic mongering," and notes the Host's seemingly earnest reference to St. Helen's finding of the cross (6.951) and the possible implication that Chaucer "accepts the relic . . . as authentic."
Nickinson, Patricia Anne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 2482A, 1999.
The romance knight needs chances to prove himself and achieve fame; he must act. The damsel needs words, often to ask for help. Nickinson treats "Beues of Hamtoun," "The Sowdone of Babylone," Malory's Alysaundir episode, KnT, and FranT, with…
Nicolaisen, W. F. H., ed.
Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995.
Four plenary papers and eight sectional papers from the Twenty-Second Annual Conference, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 21-22 October 1988.
Includes a chronology of Chaucer's life and works, a discursive "Sketch of His Life and Times," a description of his language, summaries and commentaries on all of CT (in Ellesmere order), a list of the pilgrims with brief characterizations,…
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.
Niebrzydowski, Sue.
Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton, eds. The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 18-26.
Surveys medieval commentary on women's enjoyment of sex, noting that sexual pleasure distinguishes Alisoun's marriage to Jankyn in WBP--a result of Jankyn's ability to read his wife's body like a text. Niebrzydowski contrasts Alisoun's sexual…
