Finlayson reads FrT as anticlerical comic satire rather than a moral exemplum, exploring similarities between the Tale and Boccaccio's story of Ciapellatto in Decameron 1.1. The probable source of FrT is a sermon by Robert Rypon, but Boccaccio may…
Hodges, Laura [F.]
Rochester, N.Y.; and Woodbridge, Suffolk : D. S.Brewer, 2005.
Assesses the details and implications of the clothing and accoutrements of the clerical and academic pilgrims in GP, discussing the Prioress, Monk, Friar, Clerk, Physician, Parson, Pardoner, and Summoner. More richly symbolic than secular dress,…
Kendrick, Laura.
Teodolinda Barolini, ed. Medieval Constructions in Gender and Identity: Essays in Honor of Joan M. Ferrante (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), pp. 103-15.
Kendrick compares GP to the vernacular compilations of lives of the troubadours in fourteenth-century songbooks. A revised version of "Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and the 'Lives' of the Troubadours," published in 2001.
Assesses the political character of late medieval English poetry, arguing that it extends the political thinking found in contemporary legal writing. Focuses on the notion of "diversity" in "Piers Plowman" and other alliterative verse as an extension…
Allen, Valerie.
Anne Marie D'Arcy and Alan J. Fletcher, eds. Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005), pp. 35-52.
Allen explores the showiness and ideology of tournaments in late medieval England, not only for knights but also for archers, focusing on Roger Ascham's "Toxophilus" for information about the latter. Allen comments on Chaucer's GP Yeoman as an absent…
Compares the attitudes toward fame and poetic fame in HF and in Skelton's The Garlande of Laurell, arguing that Chaucer's willingness to accept the Boethian transience of fame contrasts a greater desire for certainty in Skelton.
Yvernault, Martine.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. L'Articulation langue-littérature dans les textes médiévaux anglais (Nancy: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2005), pp. 229-46.
Yvernault explores the representation of space(s) and the problem of deconstruction in HF, focusing on the poem as textual architecture.
Simeroth, Rosann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 66 (2005): 2207A.
Beginning with Boethius's feminine Philosophia, Simeroth examines "her" transformation in such texts as the "Roman de la Rose" (where she becomes Reason); Boccaccio's "Convivio" (where she is a gentle lady); and HF, where Chaucer merges Philosophia…
In GP, "Belmarye," one of the Knight's destinations, might well be glossed as a reference to Almerin (a province between Granada and Algezir), spelled "Balmarie" in a mid-fifteenth-century manuscript.
Thomas, Paul R.
T. L. Burton and John F. Plummer, eds. "Seyd in Forme and Reverence": Essays on Chaucer and Chaucerians in Memory of Emerson Brown, Jr. (Provo, Utah: Chaucer Studio Press, 2005), pp. 19-35.
Argues that Palamon and Arcite in KnT are very carefully balanced, "even equivalent" as warriors, lovers, and husbands to Emelye. Explains aspects of the symmetry by means of fin amor, or courtly love.
Discusses the "amatory fatalism" of KnT as Chaucer's means to explore "problems of chance, destiny, and Providence." Somewhat different from TC in this regard, KnT poses love as analogous to fate. Chaucer uses the analogy to focus on human perception…
Greenwood, Maria.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. L'Articulation langue-littrature dans les textes médiévaux anglais. Collection GRENDEL, no. 5 (Nancy: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2005), pp. 133-56.
Greenwood contrasts Chaucer's and Malory's uses of models and antimodels in depictions of chivalry and courtly love.
Boehler, Karl E.
Dissertation Abstracts Interbational 66 (2005):1348A
Boehler employs the concept of "shame culture" (which emphasizes satisfaction and honor over personal happiness, or even survival) as a means to examine medieval heroes (including those in KnT.) Ultimately, shame culture contributes not only to the…
Williams, Tara Nicole.
Dissertation Abstracts International 65 (2005): 4190A
In exploring development of the word/concept "womanhood," Williams discusses KnT and ClT, as well as works by Gower, Lydgate, Henryson, Kempe, and Julian of Norwich.
Greenwood, Maria.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. L'Articulation langue-littrature dans les textes médiévaux anglais. Collection GRENDEL, no. 5. Nancy: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2005, pp. 157-75.
Greenwood examines the meaning of "manly" as applied to the character of Theseus in KnT.
Renda, Patricia A.
Dissertation Abstracts International 66 (2005): 1759A.
Considers Chaucer's rendition of Lucrece (in LGW) as part of a series of narratives that transform Lucrece's story into a text that "reveal[s] an evolving patriarchal ideology."
Horsley, Katharine Frances.
Dissertation Absracts International 65 (2005): 3796A.
As part of a larger consideration of dream poems and medieval ritual, Horsley argues that Chaucer intended liturgical elements of LGWP to evoke saints' day ceremonies recorded in the Sarum Missal.
Unlike the character in the sources and analogues, Custance in MLT forcefully confronts her father's authority at times. This confrontation and her willingness to disclose her past inscribe a "lesser version of the incest motif that has supposedly…
Reads ManPT, ParsPT, and Ret in light of the Dionysian/Apollonian opposition posed by Nietzsche in "The Birth of Tragedy Out of Music." Whereas Nietzsche treated the two as irreconcilable, Chaucer combines them in "an ethical aesthetics and an…
Sheridan, Christian.
Studies in Philology 102.1 (2005): 27-44.
Discusses how readers of MerT are encouraged to view all texts in mercantile terms and how texts (medieval texts in particular) are formed in the interactions among reader, author, and language. Both a product (a text to be consumed) and a producer…
Bodden, M. C.
Susannah Mary Chewning, ed. Intersections of Sexuality and the Divine in Medieval Culture: The Word Made Flesh (Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 51-73.
The carnal quest in MerT has as its goal an erotic union in the "paradys terrestre." This desire is fulfilled in an inverted via mystica, enforcing the ambiguity of mystical language as a mode of knowing.
Chaucer's descriptions of Alison and of Absolon's love of her in MilT parody the courtly diction and conventions found in "Alysoun" of the Harley lyrics. Possibly, Chaucer was influenced by the lyric.
Robinson, Peter.
International Journal of English Studies 5.2 (2005): 115-32
Selection from among variant readings should be based on both literary judgment and variant distribution. In the case of MilT, the richest readings are likely to be Chaucer's own. Analysis of them leads to greater appreciation of MilT, "of the…
Pappano, Margaret Aziza.
Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds. Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 248-70.
Pappano characterizes late medieval craft guilds and the roles they play in CT, particularly the recurrent concern with "male artisan identity." Through MilPT, Chaucer critiques the exclusionary nature of "craft fraternalism."
In calling the GP Miller a "knarre," Chaucer probably draws on an iconographic tradition illustrated in a pilgrim badge depicting a boar playing a bagpipe and inscribed "Laet knorren."
