Galloway, Andrew.
London and New York: Continuum, 2006.
A guide to Old and Middle English literature, its contexts, and its reception. Separate sections address political and social contexts; literary genres and the communities that produced them; reception from the Renaissance to current debates; and…
Gust, Geoffrey William.
Dissertation Abstacts International C67.02 (2006): 496.
Examines the "many ways in which the I-speaker has been deployed by both Chaucer and Chaucerians," considering concepts of the persona, influences from Chaucer's biographies, and representations of the poet in his short poems and CT.
Crawford discusses the unfinished CkT in relation to the Tale of Gamelyn; their thematic associations; connections to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381; who added the Tale of Gamelyn to CT; and why it was inserted right after CkT.
Heinzelman, Susan Sage.
Susan Sage Heinzelman. Representing Justice: Stories of Law and Literature, Parts 1 and 2. The Great Courses (Chantilly, Va.: Teaching Company, 2006), part 1, disc 3, lecture 6; 30 min.
Audio recording (on CD) of a lecture about the "inextricability" of religious and secular law in Chaucer's age as reflected in PardT, ParsT, and especially MLT. Heinzelman contrasts material and spiritual wealth in PardT and ParsT and explores the…
Dennis, Erin N.
Bruce E. Brandt and Michael S. Nagy, eds. Proceedings of the 14th Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature, April 7-8, 2006 (Brookings, S.Dak.: English Department, South Dakota State University, 2006), pp. 107-23.
Dennis explores how WBP and WBT affirm and challenge the patriarchal assumptions of medieval literary and social traditions.
In later medieval thought, spinning women represent two often contradictory ideas: rebellion against hierarchical order and, paradoxically, Marian obedience. Citing scripture, Chaucer's Wife fuses both viewpoints in WBP. When Lancastrian mores…
Moon, Hi Kyung.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 14 (2006): 431-46.
Compares and contrasts the strategies and outspoken polemics of WBP with those of Speght's "A Mouzell for Melastomus" (1617). Speght exposes antagonist Joseph Swetnam in ways similar to those used by Chaucer to expose the Wife.
Giaccherini, Enrico.
Silvia Bigliazzi and Sharon Wood, eds. Collaboration in the Arts from the Middle Ages to the Present (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 7-15.
Giaccherini reads PhyT as an experiment in "collaboration"--Chaucer's adaptation of the plot from Livy and the Roman de la Rose--that develops a concern for the private realm while downplaying the public.
Minnis, Alastair.
Lawrence Besserman, ed. Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: New Essays. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 63-82.
Minnis explores medieval attempts to "explain the difficult and dangerous relationship" between "material and spiritual economies" underlying pardons or indulgences, commenting on the explanations of Albert the Great, Aquinas, and Bonaventure and…
Beidler, Peter G.
Holly A. Crocker, ed. Comic Provocations: Exposing the Corpus of Old French Fabliaux. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 149-61.
When Chaucer used Boccaccio's "Decameron" 8.1 as his source for ShT, he was also influenced by French fabliaux, particularly a garden scene in the thirteenth-century "Aloul" and, more generally, the animal euphemisms typical of the genre in French…
Treanor, Lucia.
Santa Casciani, ed. Dante and the Franciscans. The Medieval Franciscans, no. 3. Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 229-88.
Pope Innocent III explicitly recognized the Greek letter 'tau' as representing the form of the cross and saw it as a sign of renewal in the church. Likewise the syllable 'te' was interpreted as a sign of the cross. Treanor explores graphic…
Kang, Ji-Soo.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 14 (2006): 33-56
Medieval texts interact with their sources as memory operates, according to classical tradition, in individual cognition. Chaucer's depiction in HF of Virgil's story of Dido and Aeneas exemplifies this interaction and lets readers determine what is…
Kerr, John.
Bruce E. Brandt and Michael S. Nagy, eds. Proceedings of the 14th Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature, April 7-8, 2006 (Brookings, S.Dak.: English Department, South Dakota State University, 2006), pp. 77-93.
Kerr argues that the sixth canto of Dante's Inferno was the model for Chaucer's use of gluttony and alimentary metaphors in PF, particularly the latter's concern with literary transmission and the birds' debate.
Chance, Jane.
Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, eds. The Lord of the Rings, 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 2006), pp. 153-68.
In his fiction, Chance contends, Tolkien subverts traditional class distinctions, and his studies of Chaucer reflect a similar sensibility.
Guy-Bray, Stephen.
Buffalo, N.Y.; and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
Argues that poetic influence can be regarded as an erotic or romantic relationship between male couples, focusing on literature of Dante, Spenser, and Hart Crane and questioning notions of literary influence promulgated by T. S. Eliot and Harold…
Studies the distribution of Chaucer's impersonal verb "listen" (to be pleasing), focusing on disparities between distributions in prose and verse, usage in formulaic expressions, and transition from impersonal to personal usage.
Labbie, Erin Felicia.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
Jacques Lacan's "methodologies follow those established by the medieval scholastic scholars who sought to determine the potential for the human subject to know and represent real universal categories"; and his seminars engage medieval discourses on…
Niebrzydowski documents "significant attention," positive and negative, paid to wives and wifehood in the literature and architecture of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England. The volume is structured to "follow the life cycle of a wife," from…
Sebastian, John T.
Literature Compass 3.4 (2006): 767-77.
Surveys recent historicist and psychoanalytic approaches to Chaucer's writing, positing an impending turn toward "an emerging norm of multi- and post-theoretical criticism."
Risden explores how several medieval narratives "subvert" readers' expectations and "hint at the loneliness of the moral act." Includes comments on WBP, as well as on "Beowulf," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," "Piers Plowman," and other works.
Intertextual relationships among MerT, SqT, and FranT indicate differing attitudes toward perception, loyalty, and treason, particularly focused in the depictions of squires. Chaucer's Squire condescends to the lower classes and their ignorance of…
Croft, Steven, ed.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,2006.
Textbook edition of PardPT and the GP description of the Pardoner. Includes glosses and discursive notes (at the back of the book) and discussion of approaches to the text: sources and analogues, characterization, assessment of theme and topic, and…
Mead, Jenna.
Literature Compasss 3.5 (2006): 973-91.
Surveys critical responses to Astr, highlighting recent discussions that emphasize patterns of readership, pedagogical strategies, and the status of science in late fourteenth-century England.
Berrozpe Peralta, Carlos.
[Albacete, Spain]: C. Berrozpe, 2006.
Includes a diachronic linguistic analysis--phonetic, orthographical, morphological, syntactical, lexical, and stylistic--of the description of the Reeve from GP. Traces elements backward to Old English and forward to Modern English.
