McCormick uses game theory and the debate genre to investigate the structure of LGW and of Pizan's "Le livre de la cité des dames." The former is "a ludic puzzle"; the latter, "an architectural mnemonic."
Meyer, Cathryn Marie.
Dissertation Abstracts International A68.05 (2007): n.p.
Meyer examines confessional discourse in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Chaucer's LGW, "The Book of Margery Kempe," and Robert Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," assessing how this discourse "produc[es] truth" and conveys "textualized bodies."
Phillips, Helen.
Marios Costambeys, Andrew Hamer, and Martin Heale, eds. The Making of the Middle Ages: Liverpool Essays. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007, pp. 71-92.
Phillips gauges Romantic responses to LGW and the "Flower and the Leaf" (attributed to Chaucer in the Romantic age), indicating that Keats, Tennyson, William Morris, Pre-Raphaelite artists, and others admired the poems for their depictions of Nature…
Sanok, Catherine.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
Discusses the creation of female audiences, examining LGW and other works (including WBT) to explore how saints' lives shaped literary history, thus making women "visible participants" in vernacular literary culture. Alceste is a metonym for a…
Chaucer's depiction of the legendary battle of Actium likely reflects both his understanding of contemporary naval warfare technology and his awareness of military treatises by Vegetius and Giles of Rome.
Tolhurst, Fiona.
Gail Ashton and Louise Sylvester, eds. Teaching Chaucer (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 46-64.
Describes procedures for incorporating student performances of portions of LGW into classroom activities and using these performances to help students evaluate other Chaucerian texts.
Johnston, Andrew James.
Sabine Volk-Birke and Julia Lippert, eds. Anglistentag 2006 Halle. Proceedings of the Conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English, no. 28 (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2007), pp. 147-57.
Johnston discusses the treatment of political concerns in PF and Clanvowe's "Book of Cupid." PF defuses the political conflicts it conjures up through a conscious policy of aesthetic deferral, whereas the "Book of Cupid" openly shows the violence…
Female involvement in construction of the Findern anthology (Cambridge University Library MS Ff 1.6) resulted in "subtle interventions" in thematic concerns of several works included in the anthology: for example, "female eloquence" (in Gower's story…
Using the fourteen extant manuscripts of PF as points of reference, Preston questions reductive thematic approaches to compilations and argues that other factors--authorial attribution and class, for instance--are equally plausible as explanations…
Archibald, Elizabeth.
Carolyn Muessig and Ad Putter, eds. Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture, no. 6 (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 222-36.
Archibald surveys Italian, French, and English literary instances of love compared to heaven, hell, paradise, or purgatory, commenting on Chaucer's uses in CT (WBT, KnT, and especially MerT) and LGW and exploring the more sustained use of this set of…
Cannon, Christopher.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 177-90.
Cannon summarizes medieval theories of literary form, including that of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, as adapted by Chaucer in TC. Applies the theories to various works in Middle English.
Federico, Sylvia.
Medieval Feminist Forum 43.1 (2007): 72-75.
Discusses, on the one hand, psychoanalytic approaches to literature, femininity, and various aspects of Troilus and the narrator of TC; and, on the other hand, historicism, masculinity, and other features of Troilus and the narrator. Points out…
Federico, Sylvia.
Laura L. Howes, ed. Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), pp. 171-79.
Federico explores how "Ricardian court culture haunts the chivalric spaces inhabited and visited by" Chaucer's TC and by Gawain in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Parallels between the "moral lapses" of Richard II and those of the two protagonists…
Hopkins, Amanda.
Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton, eds. The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 53-70.
Hopkins explores depictions of sexual frisson, or arousal, in a variety of Middle English romances, focusing on the presentation of clothing, nudity, and partial nudity. She surveys examples in which female ugliness is represented almost as often as…
Kaylor, [Noel] Harold, [Jr.]
Marcin Krygier and Liliana Sikorska, eds. To Make His Englissh Sweete upon His Tonge (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 11-19.
Following a four-part epistemological scheme posed in Boethius's Consolatio, Chaucer develops Troilus's love in TC from senses through images and reason to intelligence. As a figure of emotion, subject to tragedy, Troilus serves as a contrast to…
Koster, Josephine A.
Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 79-91.
Examination of social spaces and residential settings that Criseyde inhabits reveals that she is not isolated (as generally argued) until she enters the Greek camp. She conforms to the social expectations, the "habitus," of her social sphere, even as…
Although he derives it from Boccaccio, Chaucer alters the topos of the lover's gaze at the end of TC, transforming it into a Boethian, Christian vision of God. The article includes a coda on Criseyde's prudential "third eye."
In his analyses of the TC narrator as a character in his own right--most notably in "The Ending of Chaucer's Troilus" and "Criseide and Her Narrator"--E. Talbot Donaldson "created the most clear-cut paradigm shift in twentieth-century readings of the…
Pandarus's reference to two crowns (TC 2.1735), when speaking to Criseyde before she visits Troilus in Deiphebus's house, alludes to Saint Agnes, sets the date of this meeting as Saint Agnes's Eve (January 20), and thus establishes a chronology for…
Oka, Saburo.
Hans Sauer and Renate Bauer, eds. "Beowulf" and Beyond. Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature, no. 18. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 223-34.
Oka compares various classical and medieval descriptions of Troilus and then offers "The Book of Troilus" or simply "Troilus" as a more appropriate title for Chaucer's TC. Also traces the personal development of Troilus from a "fierse and proude…
Pérez Fernández, Tamara, and Ana Sáez Hidalgo.
SELIM 14 (2007): 197-220.
Analyzes the unique marginal annotations in the Harley 2392 version of TC, exploring the role played by the scribe of the manuscript. The marginalia seem to hint at something beyond the task of a copyist, since they entail interpretation of what…
Troilus ultimately travels to the ninth--not the eighth--sphere at the end of TC, a place ripe with "symbolic valence," reinforcing Chaucer's narrative focus on constant change and the ambiguity that comes with it.
Utz, Richard.
Sven Rune Havsteen, Nils Holger Petersen, Heinrich W. Schwab, and Eyolf Østrem, eds. Creations: Medieval Rituals, the Arts, and the Concept of Creation. Ritus et Artes, no. 2. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007, pp. 121-38.
The nominalist concept of absolute divine power may underpin Chaucer's experiments "with a variety of authorship roles." In TC, both Pandarus and the narrator complicate the author's pose as a mere compiler or translator. Robert Henryson's "Testament…
Gillespie, Alexandra.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 86-103.
Focusing on perspectives evident in Chaucer's Adam (and the career of Adam Pinkhurst) and "Mum and the Sothsegger," Gillespie explores the importance of "the book" as a technology that spans the oral-print divide.
