GP, KnT, MilT, RvT, WBT, SumT, ClT, FranT, PardT, and NPT in comic-book style, with watercolor-and-ink drawings and synoptic modern English text. Middle English phrases included in illustrations. Designed for children / early readers (grades 3-7).
Explores the "kinship" between hypertext theory and the mode of analysis in Donald Howard's The Idea of the "Canterbury Tales" (1976), commenting on memory and associative thinking, nonlinearity and closure, and the technology of the book. Also…
Robertson, Kellie.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 441-58.
Robertson explores effects of the English labor laws of 1349 on attitudes toward writing, surveying reactions by various writers and using Chaucer's GP "as a lens through which to view the critical stakes in thinking about" work--particularly the…
Chaucer employs ekphrasis ("verbal representation of a visual representation") in the temples in KnT to comment on the social contexts and cultural production of art. The paintings and sculptures aesthetically justify Theseus's own authority, but…
Examines Theseus as political hero in light of the literary history of KnT. The character combines wisdom and chivalry and reflects the Tale's narrator, including his attitude toward women.
Jardillier, Claire.
Bulletin des Anglicistes Médiévistes 71 (2007): 35-41.
Explores connections between text and places (landscapes, architecture, textual architecture) in KnT, focusing on Theseus's efforts to organize space and events and on the narrative's introduction of original motifs and discrepancies.
Violence and all excess reveal the uncontrollable nature of the world Theseus tries to order. Chaucer makes his story less chivalric than Boccaccio's to emphasize that humans, completely at the whim of Fortune, are incapable of maintaining any…
Medieval allegory "prefigures cinematic consciousness." In Wegener's film "Der Golem," "Judaeo-Christian figural allegory, coupled with the narratology and the phenomenology of film," shifts "the deep past into the present in centrifugal, shocking,…
Rudd, Gillian.
New York: Manchester University Press, 2007.
Explores relationships between humankind and natural landscapes through critical readings that combine ecological emphases with literary analysis. In a chapter titled "Trees," Rudd suggests that the eventual fate of the forest in KnT illuminates the…
Sancery, Arlette.
Martine Yvernault and Sophie Cassagnes-Brouquet, eds. Frères et sœurs: Les liens adelphiques dans l'Occident antique et médiéval (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), pp. 221-28.
Focuses on the meaning of brotherhood in "Ipomadon," "Octavian," and Chaucer's KnT.
Sutton, John William.
Lewiston, N.Y.: b Mellen, 2007.
Gauges the degree of "heroism" in death scenes in a variety of narratives, considering in individual chapters "The Battle of Maldon," "Beowulf" and "Judith," Layamon's "Brut," the "Alliterative Morte Arthure," the death of Arcite in KnT, the…
Allen, Valerie, ed.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
A school-text Middle English edition of MilPT and the GP description of the Miller, with notes, a running narrative summary, and facing-page glosses. Accompanied by commentary on several topics (Chaucer's language, town versus gown in Oxford,…
Beidler, Peter G.
Sandra M. Hordis and Paul Hardwick, eds. Medieval English Comedy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), pp. 195-208.
Beidler compares and contrasts MilT with its likely source, the Middle Dutch "Hiele van Beersele." Of the two, MilT provokes greater laughter because it is more plausible, a result of more carefully deployed details.
Chaucer's special contribution to the fabliau genre is the design whereby apparently disconnected, often spontaneous plot incidents are suddenly "knit up"--that is, perceived by readers as belonging to a providential master plan. Although MilT is the…
Nolan, Maura.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 207-21.
Nolan argues that the description of Alison in MilT is Chaucer's means to "stage an investigation or exploration of the relationship of beauty to individual perspectives . . . and the idea of a universal aesthetic." The passage also confronts the…
By "acknowledging and exploiting the affections of [its] female characters," RvT "fashions a masculine collective." By excluding Symkyn from this collective, the Tale demonstrates that "cherl" identity after the uprising of 1381 was ethically and…
Benson, C. David.
Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 1-20.
Benson describes the very different views of London produced by Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, as well as the depictions in William FitzStephen's "Description of London" (1174) and "London Lickpenny" (fifteenth-century). These representations…
Forkin, Thomas Carney.
Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 31-41.
Close reading of CkT, of descriptions of Roger the Cook in CT, and of relevant late fourteenth-century laws and statutes reveals that Chaucer's powers of observation extend to the lower levels of society and the workings of London's "underworld."
Goldstein considers Custance of MLT and Alisoun of WBP in relation to the Augustinian theology of perfection, particularly in light of late fourteenth-century adaptations of Augustine, both orthodox and heterodox. MLT exemplifies the deterministic…
Uses MLT, among other works, to show that in Middle English romance, with its limited expression of characters' inner lives, identity is expressed and revealed through "external signs," outward behavior, and immutable "key characteristics."
Warner, Lawrence.
Laura L. Howes, ed. Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), pp. 43-59.
Warner examines affiliations of the London Church of St. Thomas of Acre with mercantile interests that, in turn, help to clarify features of MLT, including its concerns with merchants, with the Crusades, and with legal discourse. MLT also explores…
Biebel-Stanley, Elizabeth M.
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 73-82.
Rooted in Irish analogues, the sovereignty theme is anchored in the queen figure in WBT. The theme reflects "women's integral role in governance," a "wishful vision of a movement toward more egalitarian society," and Anne of Bohemia's role in the…
Bobac examines the "social life of medieval justice as discursively constituted," considering WBT as an example of a text that explores the "theory and purpose of the punishments for rape."
Borysławski, Rafał.
Marcin Krygier and Liliana Sikorska, eds. To Make His Englissh Sweete upon His Tonge (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 121-33.
Discusses how sheela-na-gig carvings share appearance and function with loathly lady figures in Middle English literature, including the one found in WBT.
