Biggs, Frederick M.
Review of English Studies 56 (2005): 497-523
Difficulties in dealing with the role of the three tubs (along with other issues) suggest that Chaucer's MilT is the source for the Flemish version. Chaucer may have originated this Tale to reflect on the theme of God's control, an idea also…
Arner, Timothy D.
Studies in Philology 102.2 (2005): 143-58
Examines Chaucer's use of Boccaccio's Teseida as a source for KnT. Also argues that by having the Miller parody the story of Palamon and Arcite, Chaucer transforms his own work, as well as Boccaccio's text, into a fabliau.
Chickering, Howell.
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. 3-18.
Close reading of the GP description of the Monk shows how a "complex interaction of the reader with Chaucer's text" produces a more satisfactory reading than does the positing of a naive narrator.
Morrison, Stephen.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. L'Articulation langue-littérature dans les textes médiévaux anglais (Nancy: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2005), pp. 117-32.
Explores the combination of "manly" and "man," as well as the meaning of "manly," in reference to the GP description of the Monk.
Scott-Macnab, David.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104 (2005): 373-85.
As used to describe the Monk in GP, the term pricking should not be understood in a sexual sense; review of sources, the OED, and the MED indicates that the term means "hard galloping."
Strohm, Paul.
Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
Explores the political discourse of fifteenth-century England, identifying a "pre-Machiavellian moment" in which awareness of political upheaval and the unreliability of Fortune influenced or produced a variety of vernacular texts. Assesses the…
MkP reflects the Monk's anxiety about cross-dressers such as Zenobia, whom he orientalizes in MLT as a monstrous threat to traditional authority. Eventually humiliated and punished, Zenobia trades her helmet for a woman's headdress.
Travis, Peter W.
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. 231-47.
Travis explores the Host's "hypermasculine vision of literary genius" in Part 7 of CT, especially the Host's comments in MkP, NPP, and NPE. Using parody rather than satire, Chaucer gently exposes the "phallocentric presuppositions" of Western…
Gaylord, Alan T.
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. 167-80.
A close reading of NPT 7.4347-61 (Chauntecleer on women as men's confusion), seeking to clarify subtleties via "prosodic criticism," i.e., reading the lines as a spoken performance.
Finlayson, John.
English Studies 86 (2005): 493-510.
NPT can best be approached by focusing on form and style rather than on theme and narrator. Attempting to define a central theme or message is frustrated by the Tale's allusive richness and multiplicity of perspectives, and the narrator is largely…
Harwood, Britton [J.]
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. 47-57.
"Parapractic" repetitions in PardPT indicate that the Pardoner may be an "unconscious inversion" of Chaucer's own desires for home and for his absent father.
Cox, Catherine S.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2005.
Four chapters and an epilogue. Chapter 1 establishes the background for exploration of "the late medieval legacy of early Christianity's appropriation of the Hebrew scriptures." Chapters 2-3 assess Dante's "Commedia" and "Sir Gawain and the Green…
Bidard, Josseline.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. L'Articulation langue-littérature dans les textes médiévaux anglais (Nancy: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2005), pp. 217-28.
Analyzes Chaucer's characterization of the birds in PF to explore the process of "distanciation," stemming from two coexisting viewpoints in the poem: the author's and the dreamer's.
Morgan, Gerald.
Review of English Studies 56 (2005): 1-36.
Following Aristotle, medieval poets consider poetry a branch of moral philosophy. Whether or not Chaucer knew Boccaccio's own glosses on the "Teseida," he adapts the Italian work to his own treatment of allegorical figures and so justifies Usk's…
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. 191-215.
Posits that uncertainty and ambiguity are structuring stylistic techniques of Chaucer's descriptions in PF.
Yvernault, Martine.
Colette Stévanovitch and Henry Daniels, eds. L'Affect et le jugement: Mélanges offerts à Michel Morel à l'occasion de son départ à la retraite, 2 vols. (Paris: AMAES, 2005), 2: pp. 563-71.
Yvernault explores various levels of the love discourse in PF in relation to the roles played by reflection and silence.
Watson, Nicholas.
Religion and Literature 37.2 (2005): 99-114.
Chaucer's religion is important even in his secular tales, a reflection of his public stance as a lay penitent, a member of the "mediocriter boni," a category of the religious to be distinguished from the contemplative path of the "perfecti." Reads…
Twu, Krista Sue-Lo.
Chaucer Review 39 (2005): 341-78.
Although ParsT relies heavily on Raymond de Penaforte's "Summa de poenitentia et matrimonio," Chaucer extracts one chapter from the treatise and substitutes a "tree of life" for Raymond's pilgrimage metaphor. By indicating that one can live a life of…
Wilsbacher, Greg.
College Literature 32 (2005): 1-28.
The linked anti-Semitism and poetic virtuosity of PrT confront medievalists with a paradox, in which accurately representing the past and combating bigotry in the present are pitted against each other. Resolving this paradox by ignoring aesthetics in…
Chaucer's ties to Lincoln and the reference to Hugh of Lincoln in PrT make it unlikely that Chaucer was satirizing anti-Semitism in the Tale. The punishment of drawing and hanging in PrT refers to historical cruelty and reflects an attitude prevalent…
Eaton, R. D.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104 (2005): 495-513.
In the GP description of the Prioress, the term conscience, used to describe her mental operations, implies not sensibility or emotion but rather prescription or governance. The Prioress's display is not emotive but mimetic, and her performance…
Morris, Andrew Jeffrey.
Dissertation Abstracts International 65 (2005): 4555A
As part of a larger discussion of medieval estate management and its literary representations, Morris examines the character of Piers Plowman and Chaucer's Oswald the Reeve.
Lee, Brian S.
South African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 15 (2005): 55-68.
Comments on the upbringing of young people in CT. Mentioned in only three lines, the "mayde child" in ShT exemplifies the late medieval practice of wardship. The words signify the callous immorality of the guardian who, like the governesses…
Crocker, Holly A.
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. 59-73.
The wife in ShT refuses to submit to the "comprehensive masculine dominance" of the competitive world of her husband and the monk. The two men understand their manliness in terms of the "image of potency"; like commerce, manliness is based on…
