Nolan, Maura.
The Minnesota Review 80 (2013): 145-58.
Analyzes two medieval explorations of sensation--one by Thomas Aquinas, the other by Chaucer--and locates them within Theodor Adorno's account of aesthetics. Views Chaucer's poetry as a hinge between Aquinas' explanation of sensory perception and…
Nolan, Maura.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 41 (2019): 33-71, A1-A12; 6 b&w illus.
Combines computer-assisted stylometry and close reading to explore Chaucer's concept of style and his uses of the word "style" itself as they compare with those of John Gower and John Lydgate. Clarifies aspects of stylometric analysis, distinguishes…
Nolan, Maura.
Robert John Meyer-Lee and Catherine Sanok, eds. The Medieval Literary: Beyond Form (Cambridge: Brewer, 2018), pp. 213-41.
Explores individuality in visual and verbal portraiture, arguing that facial expressions or movements in art--i.e., "the extent to which a given image evokes or represents movement"--are the basis of perceptions of individuality in portraits.…
Nolan, Maura.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 73-88.
Offers a "step by step" reading of MilT "as it unfolds its argument.: Focuses on the crafting of the fabliau that refers to common elements of the genre and to Chaucer's specific context. Argues that the "artful carelessness of the Miller" is an…
Nolan, Peter E.
William Calder, Ulrich K. Goldsmith, and Phyllis B. Kevevan, eds. Hypatia: Essays in Classics, Comparative Literature, and Philosophy Presented to Hazel E. Barnes on Her Seventieth Birthday (Boulder, Colo.:Associated University Press, 1985), pp. 137-50.
A "double game" of "dual modes of organization, verisimilitude and ordination" informs medieval literature. Nolan examines von Murungen's "Ich horte uf der Heide," Dante's story of Paolo and Francesca, Chaucer's tale of Walter and Griselda, and two…
Nolcken, Christina von.
Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager, eds. Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 239-66.
Assesses the Miller in the historical context of clerical responsibilities and the Wycliffite translation of the Bible. MilT is comic, but its narrator is "deadly serious about furthering the cause of lay intellectualism and the Wycliffites'…
Nolcken, Christina von.
Katherine E. Ellison, and Susan M. Kim, eds. Collaborative Humanities Research and Pedagogy: The Networks of John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), pp. 303-42.
Examines archival records that pertain to the Chaucer Project (which produced "The Text of the Canterbury Tales" [1940]) to explore the history of the project, focusing on the work, working conditions, and attitudes of several scholars who assisted…
Noll, Dolores L.
Chaucer Review 17 (1982): 159-62.
Allusions to serpent and sting intensify the irony of the Pardoner's posture as preacher. The imagery is further complicated and intensified by the natural association readers make with the Pauline passage on the sting of death.
Noonan, John T.,Jr.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987.
Studies bribery in a "variety of cultures from ancient Egypt to modern America," with short treatments of Chaucer (pp. 287-90, powerfully articulating "the anti-bribery ethic" in FrT, SumT, PardT, ClT, ParsT); Langland (pp. 275-79); and Dante (pp.…
Norako, Leila K.
Valerie B. Johnson and Kara L. McShane, eds. Negotiating Boundaries in Medieval Literature and Culture: Essays on Marginality, Difference, and Reading Practices in Honor of Thomas Hahn (Boston: De Gruyter; Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2022), pp. 49-76.
Explores how SqT and "The Book of John Mandeville" "traffic in fantasies of cultural, religious, and racial annihilation . . . in a quieter, more subtextual way than that seen in other works of crusades-inspired literature" Argues that the Squire…
Norako, Leila Kathleen.
Ph.D, Dissertation. University of Rochester, 2012. Dissertation Abstracts International A73.09 (E).
Argues that a variety of "fourteenth- and fifteenth-century recovery romances create a convergent set of fantasies that reflect desires both for the reclamation of the Holy Land and for the protection and ascendance of Christianity." Chapter four…
The tautologies of the "Roman de la Rose," formally co-ordinate and semantically emphatic, Chaucer usually renders by conservation, grammatical transcategorization, amplification, or emphasized reduction.
Norem, Lois Elizabeth.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 1753A.
With the inevitable variations produced by different scribes, CT has been edited by copyists who interpret the work variously (e.g., as ordered or unordered). A critical edition of the spurious links is here presented.
Norgate, Paul.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 9-17.
Interprets the interplay of literal and symbolic implications in GP, reading pilgrimage as a "metaphor for a society in the act of 'being itself'." The poem "declares its intention to deal less with what 'should be' in society than what is actually…
Norman, Arthur.
E. Bagby Atwood and Archibald A. Hill, eds. Studies in Language, Literature, and Culture of the Middle Ages and Later (Austin: University of Texas, 1969), pp. 312-23.
Describes the episodic symmetrical structure of MLT; comments on the characterization of Constance; identifies the rhetorical uses of occupatio and elaboration in the Tale; and (in footnote 1) summarizes its concern with astrology, fate, and Boethian…
Examines the motif of renunciation in CT, ranging from renunciation of poetry (MkT, ParsT, and Ret) to renunciation of music and high-flown rhetoric (ManT), renunciation of curiosity (MilT, CYT), and praiseworthy acts of renunciation (ClT, FranT).…
Normandin argues that a "surplus of urine in the absence of fecal matter affects the tone" of WBP. Chaucer "associates the Wife of Bath with urine because antifeminist traditions often represented females as liquid, dripping creatures and because…
Normandin, Shawn.
Notes and Queries 260 (2015): 218–19.
In rendering Petrarch's explanation for why God tests humans in the form of a disjointed sentence (ClT, 1153-61), Chaucer points out its irrationality. Argues how this ploy resonates with the Clerk's expression of qualms about Petrarch at the…
Argues that MkT models "rumination," a reading method used by monks. Includes close reading of the form and content of specific lines. Also claims ABC as a model for monastic reading techniques because it is fragmented, repetitive, monologic, and…
Normandin, Shawn.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 58 (2016): 235-55.
Reads ClT closely as a "fundamentally enigmatic parable" that, as part of the "glossing group" of the CT, focuses on interpretation and hermeneutic resistance. Chaucer alternately abbreviates and amplifies his Petrarchan source "so that interpretive…
Theorizes ecopoetic criticism, considering anthropocentrism, anthropotropism, and the "writability" of voices, whether human or nonhuman. Considers the "turn" to the human that opens GP and how the "impenetrability" of the human in GP is "often…
A comic, absurdist, satirical novel of interlocking tales told by a series of ship's passengers, loosely modeled on CT, opening with a "General Prologue" that introduces the tale-tellers and proceeds in chapters dedicated to individual tellers and…
Norris tallies and assesses the major and minor sources of Malory's "Morte Darthur," suggesting that Malory was more widely read than is usually assumed. Chaucer's influence (especially WBT, FranT, and KnT) is neither close nor sustained in plot,…
