King, Laura Severt.
Dissertation Abstracts International 54 (1994): 3757A.
Among the handful of converted whores, Mary Magdalene is best known in late medieval writing through the homily "De maria Magdalena" (which Chaucer translated) and the Digby play. These works reveal remarkably literal physicality in which carnal…
Fradenburg, L. O. Aranye.
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
Fradenburg theorizes a new combination of historicism and Lacanian psychoanalysis and explores the medieval idea of sacrifice and its role in cultural production. Linking ethics and desire, sacrifice is a way of pursuing and prolonging desire, even…
Fradenburg, Louise O.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997): 47-75.
The logic of sacrifice (in particular, the sacrifice of the subject, Arcite) that permeates KnT produces a "jouissance," which the discourse of charity attempts to disguise.
Fradenburg, L. O. Aranye.
Holly A. Crocker and D. Vance Smith, eds. Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debates (New York; Routledge, 2014.), pp. 455-69.
Examines the "logic of sacrifice" that motivates actions in KnT, arguing that previous criticism "has done insufficient justice to the vile enjoyment and identificatory power" of KnT.
Read as symptoms of a "childlike" individual "dealing with a number of psychosexual developmental issues," the Prioress's personal habits and narrative performance register anxiety not only about boundaries of the individual human body but also about…
Suhamy, Henri.
Mythes, Croyances et Religions dans le Monde Anglo-Saxon 6 (1988): 119-23.
Examines whether NPT manifests a superficial or an intrinsic religiosity and treats NPT--a tale appropriate to the teller--as a religious allegory with Chauntecler as Man or Adam, Pertelote as Eve, and the fox as Devil.
Johnston, Andrew James.
Poetica: Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 41 (2009): 381-407.
Argues that in "Pericles" Shakespeare links Catholicism to English literary history "for the purposes of a complex investigation into the politics of literary history." Allusions to incest in the play, and allusions to Gower and to Chaucer's…
Winstead, Karen A., ed. and trans.
Karen A. Winstead. Chaste Passions: Medieval English Virgin Martyr Legends (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 49-60.
A translation into Modern English of SNT, based on The Riverside Chaucer (3rd ed.). Includes a short introduction and select bibliography.
Grennen, Joseph E.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 65 (1966): 466-81.
Demonstrates the "relationship in theme and imagery" between SNPT and CYPT and the "controlling design that links them artistically." Posits that SNT may have been based on a Gnostic version of the Cecilia legend, an alchemical allegory of the…
Pratt, Robert A.
Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 5 (1963): 316-2.
Discusses medieval manuscripts that combine materials from Walter Map's "Valerius," the "golden book" of Theophrastus, and excerpts from Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum," focusing on the seven manuscripts that include the latter two, and showing how…
Voss, Paul J.
Journal of Markets and Morality 21 (2018): 331-49.
Clarifies the life and tradition of St. Omobono as a "merchant saint" and "patron of businesspeople and entrepreneurs," incorporating discussion of "early literary representation of the merchant character in Chaucer and Shakespeare." Includes…
Sherman, Gail Berkeley.
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, eds. Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 136-60.
By allowing the pilgrims no comment on the hagiographic discourse of the faceless, feminine "Second Nonne," and by allowing the Prioress to identify with the Word and the bearer of the Word, CT interrogates the doctrines on which it rests:…
Winstead, Karen A.
Chaucer Yearbook 2 (1995): 137-54.
Addresses medieval writers' uses of saints' lives in Middle English romances of persecuted laywomen. "Le Bone Florence of Rome," "The King of Tars," "Emare," and MLT exemplify the influence of, and variations from, early pious romances. The…
Winstead, Karen A.
Helen Cooper and Robert R. Edwards, eds. Oxford History of Poetry in English. Volume 2, Medieval Poetry, 1100–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 227-42.
Traces the writing of saints' legends in poetry in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, highlighting the innovative approaches taken by a number of poets, including Chaucer in SNT.
In giving the tale of Constance the form and narrative structure of a saint's life while omitting conventional motivations or explanations, Chaucer has made the Man of Law an inept narrator and has invested the tale with irony and humor.
Discussing the use of relics as a site of "institutional control," Malo argues that in works such as CT, writers "use relics as tools" for affirmation or critique of the Church's position as dispenser of grace and healing.
Treats the Old Man of PardT as the "total opposite" of the three revelers: he "embodies or manifests . . . in some manner Christian goodness." He first offers to the revelers a merciful "way to salvation," but when they "flatly reject" it, he justly…
Jackson, Gabriel, composer.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this vocal score for unaccompanied mixed voices is printed with the text of the Antiphon to the Virgin Mary, "Salve Regina," in Latin by Herman Contractus (attributed), "interspersed with English words by…
Psychoanalytic reading of PF that identifies a reversal of the "logical sequence of origin, wish, and desire." This reversal "represses consciousness" and disguises the presence of the "Chaucerian ego" of the poem that is recognizable in the…
Linkinen, Tom.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015.
Includes a chapter, "Sharing Laughter" (pp. 205-32), that identifies examples from late medieval art and literature where laughter constitutes "moral censorship" of same-sex desire or actions, then focuses on the Pardoner; his relation with the…
Chaucer prepares for Arcite's Samsonlike vow to cut his hair by drawing on the traditions of Samson as a fool for love and by reworking and adding details to the story of Boccaccio's "Teseida." Samson was commonly paired with Hercules as biblical…
Argues that Johnson's perfunctory references to Chaucer reflect the former's view of the latter not as an excellent "English" poet but as one who successfully transmitted literature from the Continent into Britain. Considers possible reasons Johnson…
Cowen, J. M.
Notes and Queries 232 (1987): 152-53.
The handwritten collations in the British Library 643.M.1 copy of Urry's "Chaucer" are in the hand of Samuel Pegge the elder, antiquary and vicar in Kent, 1730-51. The collations are from British Library MS Add. 9832, which Pegge evidently owned.
Bradley, Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 56 (1996): 4763A.
Chaucer's Troilus derives from three reflections of the "Iliad": classical, the Christian-allegorical, and the romance. Sarpedon's feast is central to TC, with classical, Scholastic, and finally Dantesque treatment of free will, fate, and…
