The reference to "Symoun" alludes not to Simon Magus (as previously suggested) but to Simon the Apostle, whose connections with sin and confession advance some of the larger themes of SumT.
Olson, Glending.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21: 209-45, 1999.
Explores a variety of practices and meanings associated with Pentecost in Chaucer's time as context for a nuanced understanding of responses to SumT, especially its ending, which parodies the feast. In addition to traditional iconography, dramatic…
Olson, Glending.
David Wallace, ed. The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 566-88
Surveys Chaucer's life and art in light of their cultural contexts, commenting on his status as a court poet, the nature of his audience, his self-consciousness and uses of contemporary literary forms, his relations to his contemporaries, and his…
Olson, Glending.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 325-45.
Identifies possibilities for recognizing "political resonances" in ClT, discussing Walter's title (marquis) as it was granted in 1385 to Robert de Vere, Richard's favorite. The title was "unusual" and "short-lived" in Chaucer's experience. Olson…
Olson, Glending.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 143-55.
Olson examines Gerard of Odo's "Facetus, multa documenta," a commentary on Aristotle's "Nichomachean Ethics," as background to the Prioress's description in GP. The Franciscan commentary may indicate that the courtliness of the description is more…
Reading Adam as a specimen of the genre of book curses reveals a tension in Adam between the incipient humanist idea of the author, "whose inventions transcend their scribal incarnations," and the reality in late medieval London of authors'…
By framing his "Pentacostal parody" within a parody of fourteenth-century English academics' preoccupation with measuring "both physical and metaphysical realities," Chaucer registers "a cautious but not gloomy attitude" regarding the spectrum of…
Nicknames for geometric propositions occur in TC ("dulcarnon," "flemyng of wrecches") and one seems to be at play at the end of SumT ("figura demonis"), where the squire's "natural" solution to the problem of dividing the fart opposes the…
Describes the "literary attitudes" evident in Eustace Deschamps' "L'Art de Dictier," focusing on its concern with the "natural music" of lyric poetry, a concern also found among troubadour poets and in Chaucer's ballades and complaints, even though…
Olson, Glending.
Modern Language Review 64 (1969): 721-25.
Shows that in details and atmosphere the relation between RvT and its analogue, Jean Bodel's twelfth-century "Gombert et les Deux Clers," is a "good deal closer than has been realized." Suggests that Chaucer's source combined details of "Gombert" and…
Olson, Glending.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 117 (2018): 185–211.
Proposes using a more philosophical reading of RvT to enhance understanding of Chaucer's "academic knowledge and his relationship with Ralph Strode." An academic joke in RvT relies on snubness and whiteness as stock examples of inseparable and…
Olson, Linda.
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Maidie Hilmo, and Linda Olson, eds. Opening up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012), pp. 291-354.
Discusses monastic libraries and scribal communities where texts could be "copied and translated without repercussions behind the monastic walls of England." Also reveals how demand for vernacular writing increased in female convents. Section 2,…
Olson, Mary C.
New York and London: Routledge, 2003
Proposes and applies several "reading strategies" for understanding the relationships between word and image in several Old English manuscripts and the Ellesmere manuscript of CT.
Olson, Mary C.
William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum, eds. Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures (SAC 27 [2005], no. 105), pp. 1-35.
Olson describes the visual features of the Ellesmere manuscript and assesses its illustrations as schematic, metonymic, and stereotypic-representations of character types rather than realizations of fictional individuals. The juxtaposition of Th and…
Olson, Mary Catherine.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4645A.
Seeks to explain how and in what ways illustrations affect reading, discussing the manuscripts of the Harley Psalter, the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, the Marvels of the East, and the Ellesmere manuscript of CT. Ellesmere raises questions…
Olson, Mary.
Enarratio 14 (2010, for 2007): 118-38.
Surveys classical uses and techniques of ekphrasis and explores how Chaucer uses it in HF to comment on the shifting nature of communication. In descriptions of the House of Fame, House of Rumor, and especially the House of Glass (Aeneas and Dido),…
Olson, Paul A.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 2 (1980): 53-69.
The discussion of love between men and women is the vehicle for discussing the nature of society and social love. The parliament itself--a talking together--represents the means provided to fallen man for discovering how to achieve the common…
Olson, Paul A.
Modern Language Quarterly 24 (1963): 227-36.
Argues that the "static portraiture" in MilT establishes "character traits precisely" for the main characters so that the plot may "punish" these traits and convey "comic moral justice." Explores connections between Carpenter John and Oswald the…
Olson, Paul A.
Studies in Philology 59 (1962): 1-17.
Characterizes Oswald the Reeve as a guiler beguiled and a "judge who unwittingly judges himself by his own principles," examining aspects of GP (Miller and Reeve), MilPY, and RvPT for the ways that Oswald's retributive assault on Robin lacks…
Argues that in MerT "January's love of May reflects, in heightened colors," the Merchant's own "commercial love of the world's goods." Explores the possessive nature of January's love of May, focusing on the Merchant's metaphors and references to…
Olson, Paul A.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 3 (1961): 259-63.
Explores the Merchant's "animus toward Italians or, at least, toward Lombards from Pavia" in his characterization of January. Responding to the Clerk's view of Lombards, the Merchant reflects late-medieval English malice against Italian commercial…
Olson, Paul A.
Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 33 (2020): 89–117.
Examines views of monarchy and Catholic/Protestant conflicts in Shakespeare's "second tetralogy," plays set during and soon after Chaucer's lifetime. Includes discussion of Falstaff as a figure viewed "through the lens of Chaucer's time"--a figure of…
Olson, Paul A.
Dissertation Abstracts 19.10 (1959): 2603.
Places the medieval "Jaloux tale" in "its philosophic and historical framework," rooted in the marriage controversies of Sts. Augustine and Jerome with the Pelagians, Manichee, and Jovinians Traces the tradition in French humanists of the twelfth and…
Olson, Paul.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.
CT reflects the social, political, economic, and intellectual milieu of the late fourteenth century: the tales arise from Chaucer's deep concern about contemporary crises and his conviction that the "parlement"--all levels of society engaged in…
KnT offers a reflection of several problems in late fourteenth-century society and of a judge and commentator, Theseus, who is free because he can rationally interpret history. Through KnT and its inversion in MilT, Chaucer offers a mythos of peace…
