Wicher, Andrzej.
Marcin Krygier and Liliana Sikorska, eds. Naked Wordes in Englissh (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 160-68.
Wicher tallies a number of folktale motifs in FranT and argues that they are rationalized or obscured in ways that qualify the exemplary value of the Tale. Central is the motif of the "rash promise given to a supernatural suitor," with Arveragus,…
Bauer, Renate.
Manuel Braun and Cornelia Herberichs, eds. Gewalt im Mittelalter: Realitaten - Imaginationen (Munich: William Fink, 2005), pp. 181-201.
Bauer assesses formulaic or stereotypic depictions of Jews in "Cursor Mundi," Chaucer's PrT, Gower's "Confessio Amantis" (7.3207-3360), "Elene," "The Siege of Jerusalem," passion treatises, and The Croxton Play of the Sacrament.
Morgan contends that TC is coherent; it has no sudden reversals, palinodes, or "unresolved dialectics." He discourages attention to Andreas Capellanus's theory of courtly love and encourages viewing TC in light of Dante's "Commedia," demonstrating…
Hirsh, John C., ed.
Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005.
A classroom anthology with notes, marginal glosses, introductions, bibliographical citations, and occasional illustrations. Fifty poems arranged by topic into ten categories, with three appendices of additional poems, including one appendix titled…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Jacek Fisiak and Hye-Kyung Kang, eds. Recent Trends in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Young-Bae Park (Seoul, South Korea: Thaehaksa, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 321-45.
Nakao examines uses of gentil in TC, MerT, and FranT, gauging the level of subjectivity involved on the part of the character, the narrator, and/or the author, modified by the audience's subjective understanding. Poses a "double-prism" structure…
Cartwright, John [H].
John H. Cartwright and Brian Baker, eds. Literature and Science: Social Impact and Interaction (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2005), pp. 1-29.
Summarizes "Aristotelian cosmology" and describes its role as a structural and thematic device in Dante's "Paradiso." Describes the roles of astrology, the humours, and alchemy in Chaucer's CT, especially in the description of the Physician and in…
Fisiak, Jacek, and Hye-Kyung Kang, eds.
Seoul, South Korea: Thaehaksa, 2005.
Twenty essays by various authors on topics in theoretical linguistics and in Old and Middle English linguistics and literature. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Recent Trends in Medieval English Language and Literature under…
Lochrie, Karma.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Lochrie theorizes what sexualities, particularly female sexuality, might "have looked like before heterosexuality and the normal" were constructed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by statistical practices, exploring various medieval texts,…
Worsfold, Brian J., ed.
Lleida and Catalunya, Spain: Department of English and Linguistics, University of Lleida, 2005.
Thirteen essays by various authors, with an introduction by the editor and a preface by Tavengwa M. Nhongo. Literary topics include Chaucer and modern fiction and poetry. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Women Ageing Through…
An, Sonjae (Brother Anthony).
Jacek Fisiak and Hye-Kyung Kang, eds. Recent Trends in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Young-Bae Park (Seoul, South Korea: Thaehaksa, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 283-308.
The compassion for human failure and potential failure in Chaucer's GP reflects Christian awareness of sin and grace. Like later poets Christopher Hill, Seamus Heaney, and Ko Un (Korea), Chaucer is a "prophet-poet" whose recognition of human…
Salisbury, Eve.
Jacek Fisiak and Hye-Kyung Kang, eds. Recent Trends in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Young-Bae Park (Seoul, South Korea: Thaehaksa, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 347-75.
Assesses how WBT, FranT, and other Breton lays in Middle English "underwrite and reinforce the laws of the land"--laws that allowed for domestic violence and left ambiguous the relations between rape and marriage.
Crafton, John Micheal.
Philological Quarterly 84 (2005): 259-85.
As a treatise on continence, the last chapter of the "Summa virtutem remediis anime" provides significant analogues to PhyT. Virginia represents true virginity and in her martyrdom appears saintly. Virginius represents foolish virginity, especially…
Heffernan, Carol Falvo.
Florilegium 22 (2005): 105-20.
Cipolla's tale concludes a set of stories focusing on wit, and PardT ends a fragment that precedes one centered on poetic language. The tales of both speakers coincide in "genre, character, theme, and placement," even though Cipolla improvises his…
Adamina assesses the trickster qualities of the fox and of the Nun's Priest, including various kinds of linguistic slipperiness, doubleness, and flattery.
Kelly, Stuart.
Stuart Kelly. The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You Will Never Read (New York: Random House, 2005), pp. 105-09.
Comments on implications of the lists of works in Chaucer's Ret and their relationship to the fragmentary nature of CT.
St. John, Michael.
Carla Dente, George Ferzoco, Miriam Gill, and Marina Spunta, eds. Proteus: The Language of Metamorphosis. Studies in European Cultural Transition, no. 26. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005, pp. 83-92.
Argues that an "individual's knowledge of history" is presented in HF in a way that is metaphorically linked to alchemical transformation--with "tydynges" either substantially transformed or flying into uncontrollable energy. CYT shows Chaucer's…
Fujiki considers comic "misapplication of proverbs" in TC (Pandarus), MilT (John), MerT (January), and SumT (the friar), suggesting that Chaucer capitalized on his audience's expectation of proverbs to characterize some users as foolish.
Harriss, Gerald.
Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Harriss studies English social and political history from the Hundred Years' War to the Wars of the Roses as a period of cultural transformation that established the "shape of English society and government" that "it was to retain until the Civil…
Raskolnikov, Masha.
Literature Compass 2 (2005): 1-20.
Surveys recent discussions of the role of confession in constructing a vernacular sense of self in late medieval English writing, with recurrent references to Chaucer's works.
Kennedy, Victor.
ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries 2.1-2 (2005): 139-54.
Draws examples and discussion from Astr to argue that modern teachers of literature should "look to history, cross boundaries between academic fields, and use practical, as well as theoretical,teaching methods" (quotation from abstract at …
Fernández Rodríguez, Carmen María.
SELIM 13 (2005): 225-52.
From a feminist perspective, Fernández Rodríguez compares FranT and ClT with Fanny Burney's "The Wanderer" (1814) and Maria Edgeworth's "The Modern Griselda" (1805). Dorigen's and Griselda's domestic constraints contrast the ones depicted by…
Alexander, Michael, and Mary Alexander.
Harlow: Longman; London: York, 2005.
Study guide to GP that includes a synopsis, commentary, and glosses (text not included, except for three passages in Middle English for closer analysis--lines 1-18, 118-62 [Prioress], and 331-60 [Franklin]). Also includes descriptions of Chaucer's…
