Noji, Kaoru.
Bulletin of Yamamura Women's Junior College 3 (1991): 245-62.
Explicates FranT, focusing on the characterization of Dorigen and how it reveals the "social compromises which women are conditioned to make." The "cracks in mutual understanding" between Dorigen and Arveragus also reveal how the values of women and…
Noji, Kaoru.
In Yuko Tagaya, ed. Chaucer, Arthur, and Medieval Roman III (Koshigaya: Hon-no-Shiro, 2018), pp. 1-19.
Considers the relationship between Chaucer's position in courtly society and his attitude toward his female audience through the examination of his creation of female characters, especially those in TC, LGW, Mel, and WBP.
Nokes, David.
Review of English Studies 27 (1976): 180-82.
Argues that Pope's copy of Chaucer--the Hartleby copy of Speght's 1598 edition of Chaucer's "Works"--gives evidence of Pope's plan for reworking HF into his "Temple of Fame." Elsewhere in the volume, Pope's reader's marks are light.
Nolan, Barbara.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Nolan analyzes continental verse narratives from which Chaucer borrowed for KnT and TC--namely, the Roman de Troie, Roman de Thebes, Roman d'Eneas, and Boccaccio's Filostrato and Teseida. TC uses Ovidian fine amor as a "fulcrum," and history as a…
Nolan, Barbara.
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 21-38.
The "special quality" of MLT, ClT, PrT and SNT is their focus on spiritual transcendence rather than simply religious or moral values. All four tales "reveal exactly the same incandescent core of prayerful faith and spiritual aspiration presented…
Though the antipoetic and devoutly Christian voices of ParsT and Ret conclude CT, Chaucer assumes three voices in GP: a "clerkly" and rhetorically trained voice for the opening, Chaucer the Pilgrim's voice reporting on the group, and Harry Bailly's…
Nolan, Barbara.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 203-22.
In BD Chaucer skillfully breaks with French poetic practice to produce a new kind of poetry. The enigmatic narrator does not participate in established conventions; an insomniac amateur reader, he does not fully understand the matter he presents.
Nolan, Barbara.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature (Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1999), pp. 79-105.
Comments on similarities between the mixture of bawdy and sublime in CT and in other medieval tales, collections, and contexts, exploring how bawdiness challenges official discourse. Examines at length Henri d'Andeli's aristocratic fabliau,…
Nolan, Barbara.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 255-99; 8 color figs.
"In-etched" reminiscences of the Annunciation strain against the dominant sexuality of MilT, simultaneously suggesting and denying the metonymic and synecdochaic relations between divine and earthly love. Nolan cites analogous examples of…
Nolan, Charles J.,Jr.
Chaucer Review 13 (1979): 363-72.
Pity blends the language and structure of amorous and legal complaints. Legal bills, like "The Bill of Complaint" in the second part of Pity, have a tripartite structure: address, statement of grievance, and prayer for remedy. Recognition of this…
Nolan, Edward Peter.
Edward Peter Nolan. Now Through a Glass Darkly: Specular Images of Being and Knowing from Virgil to Chaucer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990) pp. 193-217.
Contrasts Dante's clarity and order in the dead world of the "Commedia" with Chaucer's living world of CT, seen "in a glass darkly." Discusses Chaucer's appropriations from Dante: passages, images and ideas, and subtle influences--how the "living…
Nolan, Edward Peter.
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 1990.
Studies the figure of the Pauline paradigm "videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate" (1 Cor. 13.12) in Western ontology and epistemology, examining "the functions of intra- as well as intertextual literary mirroring" (Virgil's use of Homer, Chaucer's…
Nolan, Maura Bridget.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60 (1999): 123A.
The poetry of the age demonstrates the construction and manipulation of history, while popular culture reflects the changing relations of ruler and laws. Thus "Wynnere and Wasture" treats the 1352 Statute of Treasons. Chaucer's MLT,a poetic revision…
Nolan, Maura.
Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington, eds. The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England (New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 136.53
MLP "stages a confrontation" between the legal and the poetic that reveals the "degree of Chaucer's investment in the latter as well as his need for the former." The textual uncertainties of MLE and the Host's appropriation of legal language reflect…
Nolan, Maura.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 27 (2005): 59-92
Reads Lydgate's tale of Canacee (Fall of Princes, Book 1) as a subtle response to its source (Gower's "Confessio Amantis"), complicated by several allusions to Chaucerian narratives (ClT, MLT, PrT). Lydgate's confrontations with various kinds of…
Nolan, Maura.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 207-21.
Nolan argues that the description of Alison in MilT is Chaucer's means to "stage an investigation or exploration of the relationship of beauty to individual perspectives . . . and the idea of a universal aesthetic." The passage also confronts the…
Nolan, Maura.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 396-419.
Nolan exemplifies the continuity of English versification through close metrical analyses of samples from Chaucer (Truth), Lydgate, and Wyatt. Each text "displays inherited forms at the very limits of their capacities."
Nolan, Maura.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Studies how John Lydgate's occasional poetry, including mummings and diguisings, reacts to and helps to shape an emergent notion of "public culture" that differs from that of his predecessor, Chaucer. Lydgate, Nolan argues, translated "the poetic…
Examines what is lost when we look at a digitized manuscript instead of the material book, which invokes the senses of touch, smell, and taste and the habits of the medieval reader. Mentions the graphic tail-rhyme in Th as a type of habit that…
Nolan, Maura.
Susan Yager and Elise E. Morse-Gagné, eds. Interpretation and Performance: Essays for Alan Gaylord (Provo, UT: Chaucer Studio Press, 2013), pp. 97-114.
Lydgate's meter differs from Chaucer's for several reasons, but their differences have been exaggerated by editorial practices. When performed, the "Lydgate" or "broken-backed" line emerges as an aesthetic choice. The broken-backed line characterizes…
