Grigsby, Bryon Lee.
New York and London: Routledge, 2004.
Grigsby considers leprosy, bubonic plague, and syphilis, focusing on how they were constructed as moral phenomena and how literary depictions contributed to historical developments in our (mis)understandings of them.
Pearcy, Roy J.
English Language Notes 41.4 (2004): 1-10.
Pearcy traces the history and literary use of amphibology-'in Chaucer, a statement capable of two interpretations, uttered by a speaker with supernatural or oracular powers to a listener who can perceive only a meaning at variance with the true…
Dane, Joseph A.
Modern Language Review 99 (2004): 287-300
During the nineteenth-century construction of the fabliau as a distinct genre, scholars grouped ShT with other "coarse" tales and theorized that Chaucer had reassigned it from the Wife of Bath to the Shipman, assuming that the fabliau form was not…
Heffernan, Carol F.
Chaucer Review 39 (2004): 103-16.
Heffernan considers the clergeon's devotion to Mary's image in relation to historical medieval religious images and the "affective piety" they were produced to evoke among the unlearned.
Lampert, Lisa.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
Lampert decenters Christianity and releases the study of Jews and Judaism from a "restricted economy of particularism." She shows how representations of Jews go beyond representations of the "Other" in a range of English texts by revealing…
Spence, Timothy L.
Scott D. Troyan, ed. Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 63-90.
The Prioress's prayer to Mary shares characteristics with the "genre of prayer known as 'pura oratio'." Spence identifies features of this genre in rhetorical tradition, shows where they are evident in PrP, and suggests that they extend into PrT,…
Kennedy, Kathleen E.
Chaucer Review 39 (2004): 165-76.
Events depicted in Chaucer's French source "mirror a popular English legal remedy, the loveday or accord," and Chaucer uses the occasion to comment on the importance and role of "maintenance" (the "exchange of money and influence between a lord and…
Czarnowus, Anna.
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 40 (2004): 299-310
Suggests a link between KnT and MkT: Saturn's "children" can be either individuals born under the sign of Saturn or societies suffering the effects of the "Age of Saturn." The predicament of the Monk's Hugelyn and his children can be read in light of…
Despairing in his sin, the Monk ignores the providential aspect of the story of Job, and so his tragedies emphasize only death. He particularly ignores the conventionally exegetical readings of Adam and Sampson as examples of Providence.
Chaucer's use of the Ovidian source of ManT, insisting on the tale of the crow--and not the connecting tale of the raven--allows him to argue for the "potentially treacherous nature of language" and to lead smoothly into Ret. The influence of Ovid is…
Pitard, Derrick G.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004): 299-330
Considers ParsT in light of Lollard concern with the use of English, the themes and drama of MLE and ParsP, and the inclusion of ParsT in MS Longleat 29. Longleat indicates that lay readers used ParsT for private devotional purposes, although the…
The chess metaphor in BD shows that Chaucer's knowledge of the game, while not extraordinary, was adequate for his purpose. His knowledge could have come from being an actual player, from studying medieval chess puzzles, from knowledge of the…
Cawsey, Kathy.
University of Toronto Quarterly 73 (2004): 972-79
Cawsey suggests an emendation to HF 1124 and argues that the image of an "ice mountain limned in light, illuminated with gold, covered with melting writing" indicates Chaucer's concerns about literary transmission.
Scattergood, John.
Notes and Queries 51.3 (2004): 233-34.
Argues for the adoption of "thy selven" instead of "they shynen" (line 1015) as the "lectio difficilior: and as the reading supported by Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 16, the copy-text for most editions of HF.
Gilbert, Jane.
Nicola F. McDonald and W. M. Ormrod, eds. Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century (York: York Medieval Press, 2005), pp. 109-31
Gilbert's anthropological reading of BD and LGW emphasizes how in BD Blanche is represented as having successfully left the land of the living for the land of the dead. In LGW, the female protagonists resist this rite of passage and, in doing so,…
Cadden, Joan.
Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal, eds. The Moral Authority of Nature (Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 207-31.
Cadden traces the "persistent association of nature with moral conduct and social order" in various late medieval texts, from commentaries on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to vernacular poetry. Focuses on PF as an example in which both desire and…
Davis, Kathleen.
Kathy Lavezzo, ed. Imagining a Medieval English Nation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), pp. 161-90.
Parallels between the sex/gender system and establishing medieval English identity indicate that the perceived doubleness of woman echoes that of the nation. PF does not fantasize about a unified nation, but it does produce "England" as a site of…
Baker, Alison Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 64 (2004): 2481A
Baker compares medieval and modern theories of textual production and examines the development of characters in TC by means of textual variants among the work's manuscripts.
Far from viewing herself as a "passive pawn," Criseyde sees herself as actively fleeing from an unhealthy relationship with Troilus to a healthy one with Diomedes. At the end of TC, she is no longer the cynical widow of Book 2, but instead a more…
Beidler, Peter G.
Cindy L. Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. New Perspectives on Criseyde (Fairview, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004), pp. 255-76.
Challenges R. E. Kaske's argument that Criseyde's aube is appropriate for a male speaker and suggests that her words indicate anxious weariness, perhaps even a death wish.
Bergquist, Carolyn Jane.
Dissertation Abstracts International 64 (2004): 2898A
As in the worlds of Sidney's "Arcadia" and Milton's "Paradise Lost," the fictive world of TC is grounded in a key ethical concept. According to Bergquist, "Kynde or nature is the making and undoing of both Criseyde and the fiction that contains her."
Burrow recommends repunctuating TC 2.255 as "Nece, alwey lo to the laste," suggesting that it means "look to the last," a phrase that might have been inspired by Chaucer's experiences as a "diplomat and negotiator."
Chewning, Susannah.
Cindy L. Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. New Perspectives on Criseyde (Fairview, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004), pp. 165-80.
To alleviate disappointment at Criseyde's lack of agency, readers should appreciate her not as a "real" woman but as an embodiment of the medieval masculine imagination. Criseyde follows the pattern of many of Chaucer's female characters: caught in a…
Crocker, Holly A.
Cindy L. Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. New Perspectives on Criseyde (Fairview, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004), pp. 139-64.
Seen in light of external texts that establish the medieval rhetoric of feminine virtue, Criseyde's betrayal reflects betrayal of the patriarchal culture that sets up expectations for feminine conduct and that uses a woman such as Criseyde for its…
