Hirsh, John C.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 241-60.
Hirsh summarizes how religious concepts, contexts, and developments in the politico-religious situation in Ricardian and Lancastrian England bear on our understanding of CT. Discusses the Great Schism, pilgrimage, mysticism, and the shared themes of…
Lerer, Seth.
Seth Lerer, ed. The Yale Companion to Chaucer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 243-94.
Lerer reads CT as a "set of representative performances" that "question literary and social selves" and explore the functions of language, literature, and the imagination. Recurrent concern with clothing and representation, communication and monetary…
Mertens-Fonck, Paule.
Catherine Bel, Pascale Dumont, and Frank Willaert, eds. Contez me tout: Mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales offerts à Herman Braet (Paris: Dudley, 2006), pp. 281-96.
The structure of the Clerk-Knight debates, based on the rivalry between a clerk and a knight, underlies most Tales in CT and can be used to reveal unsuspected meanings.
In his initial governance of the carnivalesque "play" of tale-telling, Harry Bailly augments his masculinity by "queering" his fellow pilgrims; by the end of CT, his own masculinity is "undermined" by his inability to control the carnival he set in…
Smith, Peter J., and Greg Walker.
Cahiers Élisabéthains 69 (2006): 53-57.
Smith and Walker review the dramatic performance of CT (all but CYT), describing the staging and tracing the emotional swings of the adaptation. Includes one black-and-white and four color photographs of the production.
Theatre Record 25.25 (2005):1678-83 and 26.14 (2006): 815-18.
Reprints of Stratford and London newspaper and magazine reviews of Mike Poulton's two-part adaptation of CT for the stage, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Includes cast list for each part.
Thompson, Kenneth J.
Chaucer Review 40 (2006): 386-415.
Although the Knight's Yeoman may be a "forster" (1.117) before all else, the skills he would possess in that role "would find ready application on military campaign," which helps to explain the Knight's choice of his Yeoman, rather than another…
Eyler, Joshua R., and John P. Sexton.
Chaucer Review 40 (2006): 433-39.
Following Arcite's death in KnT, Theseus designates for his funeral "that selve grove" (1. 2860) where Arcite and Palamon first fought privately, which technically would have been "destroyed" to erect the lists for the public tournament in which…
Greenwood, Maria K.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. Marges/Seuils: Le liminal dans la littérature médiévale anglaise ((Nancy: AMAES, 2006), pp. 271-89.
As Greenwood has shown in a previous study, garlanding often implied criticism. In KnT and A Midsummer's Night's Dream, however, it is an acknowledgment of power.
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 152-65.
Kelly recounts military and political events in Lithuania around 1390-92 involving Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox Christians, and recent converts. Focuses on the involvement of Henry Bolingbroke and on uses of the word "pagan," as backdrop to…
Minnis, Alastair.
Ursula Schaefer, ed. The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 43-60.
Minnis discusses the impact of Aristotelian social and political theory on the rise of a growing lay culture in France and England. Considers similarities among several "discourses of secular power" - including Chaucer's KnT and Gower's advice to…
Pearman, Tory Vandeventer.
Essays in Medieval Studies 23 (2006): 31-40.
The language used to describe Hippolyta in KnT undermines the praise of Theseus and exposes "the dramatic irony in the Knight's perception of Theseus's military exploits and subsequent exchange of ethnic women."
Rock, Catherine A.
Chaucer Review 40 (2006): 416-32.
Arcite breaks his oath of brotherhood with Palamon, the promise he made to Theseus never to return to Athens, and the code of knighthood by doing menial labor disguised as a "povre laborer." The "ignoble, freakish manner of [his] death" thus suits…
Snyder, Martin.
Journal of Liberal Arts (Seijoh University) 2 (2006): 69-82.
Snyder explores how, despite initial impressions to the contrary, women can be said to have a central function in KnT, even though no woman in the Tale serves as an agent of change.
The relation between public and private in MilT may be understood as the condition of "extimacy": "the presence of the Other at the place thought to be most intimate." The "structure of extimacy" frustrates masculine attempts to control or acquire…
Peter G. Beidler identifies "Heile van Beersele" as a likely source for MilT, supporting his argument with seventeen words he ascribes to Middle Dutch origin in MilT. Only one "or perhaps two" of those words prove to be "distinctively Dutch,"…
Bullón-Fernández, María.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 141-74.
Explores links between privacy and urban spaces in Fragment 1 of CT, especially MilT, in which each of the major male characters fails to control his own "pryvetee." The article follows Pierre Bourdieu in conceptualizing the practices of privacy as a…
Cannon, Christopher.
Mark Chinca, Timo Reuvekamp-Felber, and Christopher Young, eds. Mittelalterliche Novellistik im Europäischen Kontext: Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2006), pp. 326-46.
Cannon explores the critique in MilT of the limited Boethianism of KnT. The double plot of MilT and its emphasis on turning harm to joke are more genuinely Boethian than is the tragic emphasis of KnT.
When Absolon "froteth" his lips upon realizing the real target of his kiss in MilT, he acts in accordance with his training as a barber-surgeon. More than a synonym for "to rub," the verb "froten" connotes a range of medical and surgical approaches…
Yvernault, Martine.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. Marges/Seuils: Le liminal dans la littérature médiévale anglaise (Nancy: AMAES, 2006), pp. 209-24.
Yvernault focuses on the narrative imbalance in MilT caused by the intrusions of the margin through description of holes and through open and broken architectural structures.
Benson, C. David.
Ardis Butterfield, ed. Chaucer and the City (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 129-44.
Significantly, the setting of GP is located outside the limits of London proper, and most of the pilgrims are not Londoners. CkT offers a clear vision of fourteenth-century London and reflects what is both good and appalling about the city.
In view of Chaucer's resistance to the "finality of closure," allusions to CkT in Fragment 9 suggest that CkT "may be complete for Chaucer, although not completed by the Cook." Perhaps the Tale's "unfinished business" is an interruption by one of the…
Cooper, Christine F.
Yearbook of English Studies 36 (2006): 27-38.
In MLT, Chaucer uses the case of Custance's Latin being understood by Northumbrians - an instance of xenoglossia, more characteristic of the saint's life genre - to focus on translation in various genres and to make Custance, "subtly active," an "apt…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Kathy Lavezzo. Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature, and English Community, 1000-1534 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 93-113.
Revised version of an essay of the same title in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 24 (2002): 149-80.
