Payne, Robert O.
Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. Chaucer at Albany (New York: Franklin, 1975), pp. 179-92.
The idea that Chaucerian criticism must be approached from the premise that Chaucer wrote only for a select court circle is bad history and bad criticism.
Payne, Robert O.
Chaucer Review 9 (1975): 197-211.
The "G" Prologue to LGW is central to Chaucer's poetic career both chronologically and artistically. The Prologue and its narrator are a "mythic distillation" of Chaucer's earlier works and show the love poet's mature awareness of his position in…
Although technically a "second edition," Payne's "Geoffrey Chaucer" is essentially a new book, having little in common with the first Twayne Chaucer, written by Edwin J. Howard and published in 1964. Payne's seven chapters treat Chaucer's life,…
Payne, Robert O.
Lois Ebin, ed. Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, Medieval Institute Publications, 1984), pp. 249-61.
Among poets who "present images of themselves both as poets and as readers" was Chaucer, though the idea-language model was not fully appropriate, as in HF.
Payne, Robert O.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 42-64.
Scholars of the early twentieth century such as Naunin and Manly denied any significant influence of medieval rhetoric upon Chaucer. In more recent days, however, this attitude has been reversed, so that Payne ("The Key of Remembrance") could claim…
Payne, Robert O.
Jame J. Murphy, ed. Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 270-87.
When Chaucer looked at old books, he not only saw the decorous verbal projections of medieval rhetorical archetypes, he heard the voice of a man like and unlike himself. The idea/language model which "rhetorica"-turned-"poetria" had generated became…
Payne, Robert O.
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press for the University of Cincinnati, 1963.
Explores how "the problems and operations of poetry and the poet are repeatedly raised into the consciousness of the reader" of Chaucer's poetry, adding a "peculiar dimension" to engaging with his works by requiring a "deliberate assent to their…
Payne, Roberta L.
New York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, and Paris: Peter Lang, 1989.
Payne first considers the question of Dante's influence on fourteenth-century English poets and the ways it can be studied. In the following four chapters, she examines the relationship of the "Divine Comedy" to "Pearl" and to HF, studies the…
Payne, Roberta Louise.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1986): 2688A.
"Pearl" is much more closely related to Dante than has previously been shown. Chaucer draws on Dante not only in HF and PF but also for Criseyde's dream (TC), drawn from the "Vita nuova." Only a few other English works (Lydgate's "Temple of Glass"…
CT is filled with proverbs, maxims, and witticisms included consciously by Chaucer for entertainment combined with instruction. The sapiential material in CT falls into four thematic groups: time, transcience and death; god, destiny and fortune;…
Surveys the literary tradition of the term "vavasour" and explores the implications of its use to describe the Franklin in GP. Focuses on encounters between vavasours and knights in French Arthurian romances, the juxtaposition of FranT and SqT, and…
Pearcy Roy J.
Notes and Queries 214 (1969): 333-35.
Argues that the "fabliau of the 'Sot chevalier' by Gautier le Leu" is a source for the branding scene of MilT and for the summary of action at the end of the Tale.
Benson and Andersson's discussion in "The Literary Context of Chaucer's Fabliaux" (1971) fails to account for the complexity of folktale derivation. A tale may have two sets of analogues, one set related through surface structure (detail, character,…
The statement that the fox "thurghout the hegges brast" into the barnyard, which does not accord with the earlier description of the yard as surrounded by a fence and a dry ditch, is perhaps best accounted for as a narrational paraphrase of the name…
Pearcy, Roy J.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 329-84.
The comic, satiric, and philosophic sophistication in Chaucer's narratives has no precedent in the fabliaux, but there are models in twelfth-century Latin comedy--notably for MilT (Geta) and MerT (Lidia). Also discusses the theories of Northrop…
Pearcy, Roy J.
American Notes and Queries 23 (1985): 64-68.
Only one analogue, Jean Bodel's "Gombert et les deus clers," includes after the cradle story a "moralitas" against the danger of harboring strangers (in Bodel, friars). The moral of RvT, spoken by the Cook (CkP 4331), recalls the passage.
Pearcy, Roy J.
Arts: The Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association 12 (1984): 35-39.
The line "Aux ignorans de la langue pandras" in Deschamps' ballade to Chaucer refers to the Saxon element in English culture, as opposed to the British or Anglo-Norman elements with which Chaucer is associated. Deschamps dissociates a poet he…
Pearcy, Roy J.
American Notes and Queries 17 (1979): 70-71.
The likelihood that Chaucer in ShT was consciously punning on "cousin"/"cozen" is increased by the appearance of such a pun in a "ronde" which belongs to a special subgroup of "chansons de mal marie(e)."
