Mehtonen, Päivi.
Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2003.
A "premodern conceptual history" of obscurity in literature, with emphasis on rhetorical traditions, philosophy, and exegesis. Includes comments on Mel and Th as literary examples of the "vices of narration" described in rhetorical handbooks.
Whitehead, Christiania.
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003.
Whitehead describes the complex significations of architectural structures in medieval thought and memory, examining Christian and classical roots of such thinking. Discusses classical, scriptural, and exegetical commentaries on concrete figures…
Rigby, Stephen H.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed. A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 497-520.
Rigby explores how a variety of Middle English texts reflect and reinforce the normative ideologies of class and gender in late medieval England. Contempt for the world helped to assert social hierarchies, justify inequalities, and quell tensions.…
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…
Recorded digitally at Boulder, Colorado, in association with the 13th International Congress of the New Chaucer Society. Edited and mastered by Troy Sales and Paul Thomas.
Evans, Ruth.
Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 47 (2003): 87-99.
Comments on Pierre Nora's theory of cultural memory loss and on Christopher Nolan's film "Memento" (2000). Then explores TC for the ways that it represents the relations between historical events and the reconstruction or remembering of these…
Finger, Roland.
Exit 9: The Rutgers Journal of Comparative Literature 5 (2003): 65-74.
Assesses the sexual relations between the Wife of Bath and her husbands in WBP as a dynamic between her sadism and their masochism. Through her sadism the Wife "avenges herself on the medieval patriarchal subordination of women."
Gergely, Nagy.
Tar Ibolya, ed. Studia Iuvenalia in Honorem Emerici Tegyey Septuagenarii. Acta Universitatis Szegediensis. Acta Antiqua et Archaeologica, supplement no. 9 (Szeged: n.p., 2003), pp. 34-40.
Argues that the characterization of Pandarus in TC was influenced by the tradition of the comic servant in Greco-Roman New Comedy. In Hungarian.
Cornelius, Michael G.
Fifteenth-Century Studies 28 (2003): 80-96.
Reads Henryson's pastoral "Robene and Makyne" as a burlesque, attributing its generic variety to the poet's attempt to emulate Chaucer's "virtuosity," and exploring several instances where Henryson follows Chaucer's steps more closely, treating most…
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
David Lyle Jeffrey. House of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (Waco, Tx,: Baylor University Press, 2003), pp. 87-110.
Considers the three-part structure of HF, the poem's references to Virgil's "Aeneid," and its allusions to Dante's "Divine Comedy" and to Ezekiel, arguing that, thematically, it abandons history as a source of truth, considers the potential of…
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
David Lyle Jeffrey. House of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (Waco, Tx,: Baylor University Press, 2003), pp. 111-16.
Explores ecclesiastical connotations of the word "rente" in the GP description of the Friar, in SumT, and elsewhere in medieval usage.
King, Pamela M.
Harlow: Longman; London: York Press, 2003.
Study guide to MerPT that includes a plot synopsis, running commentary, and glosses (text not included, except for three passages for closer analysis). Also includes descriptions of the Merchant's character and the characters in his tale, various…
MacDonald, Paul S.
Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003.
Includes a chapter entitled "Mind and Soul in English from Chaucer to Shakespeare" (pp. 245-78) that surveys the denotations and connotations of the words "soul" and "mind," with examples drawn a range of authors, including Chaucer.
Prose, Francine.
New York: New York Public Library; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Surveys understandings of and attitudes toward gluttony (especially drunkenness and overeating) from Church fathers to M. F. K. Fisher in theology, literature, art, and popular culture, including a summary of PardT (pp. 15-19).
Riley, Martin
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Rev. ed.
An adaptation for the stage of selections from CT, designed for juvenile actors. Includes versions of PardT, NPT, WBT, KnT, and MilT, framed by a prologue and interludes that feature the antics of four "alchemists." The volume includes instructions…
Suggests several revisions to traditional classifications of the typefaces of William Caxton, drawing evidence, in part, from the digital reproductions of British Museum copies of Caxton's two editions of CT.
Vial, Claire.
François Laroque and Franck Lessay, eds. Enfers et Délices à la Renaissance (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2003), pp. 119-34.
Argues that Chaucer anticipates Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers in using the "poetic motif of the multifaceted dance of Venus," exploring passages from SqT, MerT, FranT, and KnT, and arguing that the dance of Venus "could adumbrate either…
A narrative history of the English language that includes a chapter entitled "Chaucer" (pp.67-76) which emphasizes Chaucer's variety of linguistic registers in CT. Also published in the U. S., with the title The Adventure of English: The Biography…
Burnley, David.
Irma Taavitsainen and Andreas H. Jucker, eds. Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, no. 107 (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2003), pp. 27-45.
Describes the "difficulties faced by scholars in unraveling" the complications involved in the usage and nuances of meaning of late Middle English you /thou pronouns, with particular attention to Chaucer's works, Eustace Deschamps' address to…
Dinshaw, Carolyn, and David Wallace, eds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Seventeen essays by various authors on topics that pertain to women, writing, and social conditions in England and the Continent in the late Middle Ages. None of the essay pertains to Chaucer exclusively, but references to his works recur throughout,…
Fletcher, Chris, and others.
London: British Library, 2003.
An anthology of reproductions of selections from English literary manuscripts and books held at the British Library, including portraits of Chaucer ("one of the earliest English writers to have been accurately represented in portraits") from…
Maggioni, Maria Luisa.
Analisi Linguistica e Letteraria 11 (2003): 13-28.
Close comparison of Chaucer's translation of Petrarch's Sonnet 132 in TC 1.400-420 as a process of paraphrase and commentary on the original, with particular attention to Chaucer's treatment of the Italian phrase "S'a mal mio grado" and nuances he…
