Gaston, Kara.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Considers Chaucer's writings and their Italian influences, arguing for a view of Chaucer's poetry and its form over time, tracing "form as an object of discovery, rather than of recovery, and reading as a way of actively participating in the history…
Sawyer, Daniel.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Studies medieval reading of verse manuscripts and includes analysis of canonical Middle English verse texts, such as works by Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, as well as lesser-known fourteenth-century northern religious manuscripts. Argues…
Davis, Alex.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Explores ho inheritance was imagined between the lifetimes of Chaucer and Shakespeare. Examines medieval writings, including CT and TC, and Renaissance writings, such as Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene" and William Shakespeare's "As You Like It,"…
Davis, P. J., ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
The introduction to this edition of Valerius includes a section on "The Later Middle Ages: Benoit, Guido, Chaucer, and Boccaccio," discussing whether or not "medieval writers were familiar with Valerius Flaccus." Demonstrates that, although Chaucer…
Copeland, Rita.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
Explores emotion as a device of rhetoric from Antiquity through the fifteenth century, and describes the influence of Aristotle's "Rhetoric" on political, ethical, and literary discourse from the thirteenth century forward. Assesses a wide range of…
Hanning, Robert W.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
Close comparative analysis of CT and Boccaccio's "Decameron," arguing that they present "pragmatic prudence" or "expediential calculation" as essential forms of human agency in negotiating limited knowledge, faulty perception, and cultural turmoil.…
Bower, Hannah.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
Explores relations between the practical purposes of medieval medical recipes and their imaginative and aesthetic effects, focusing on how the texts of these recipes reflect their broader discursive culture, c. 1375-1500. Cites Chaucer's recurrent…
Cooper, Helen, and Robert R. Edwards, eds.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
Twenty-nine essays devoted to the examination of poetry from the end of Old English verse through the Ricardian poets, including an introduction by the editors. For nine essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Oxford History of Poetry in English.…
Wakelin, Daniel.
Oxford: Oxford University Press,2007.
Explores "reading habits" in fifteenth-century England and the extent to which they are part of the humanist movement, examining how manuscript glossing, responses, and other forms of commentary reflect philological, stylistic, and political…
Includes previously published essays on English medieval writers, including Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, and Ranulph Higden. Contains one unpublished essay, "Towards a Bohemian Reading of Troilus and Criseyde." Topics are divided into subsections:…
Boitani, Piero.
Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1977.
An extended examination of Boccaccio's "Teseida," Chaucer's KnT, and their relations. After describing "Teseida" and its debts to Dante and the classics, Boitani surveys Chaucer's uses of the work in Anel, PF, TC, and, more extensively, KnT.…
Guastella, Gianni.
Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2016.
Includes a chapter entitled "Chaucer, House of Fame" (pp. 355-83) that describes HF and characterizes Chaucer's treatment of literary reputation as unusual in lacking the "moralistic slant" of his predecessors, opting instead for a "disillusioned…
Annunziata, Anthony.
P. E. Szarmach and B. S. Levy, eds. The Fourteenth Century. Acta 4. Binghampton: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, SUNY, Binghampton, 1977), pp. 125-35,
The tree paradigms in MerT are illuminated by the etymological kinship of "tree" and "true," by the tree's biblical and allegorical implications, and by evocations of the Tree of Jesse and trees of virtues and vices.
Scheps, Walter.
P. E. Szarmach and B. S. Levy, eds. The Fourteenth Century. Acta 4. (Binghampton: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, SUNY Binghampton, 1977), pp. 107-23.
By studying fourteenth-century numismatics and representations of greed, one finds that the Pardoner's extreme avarice is reflected in his knowledge of coins, his identification with horses, and his sterility.
Peden, Helen.
P. J. M. Marks and Stephen Parkin, eds. The Book by Design: The Remarkable Story of the World's Greatest Invention (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023), pp. 204-13; 10 color illus.
Summarizes the development of Morris's Kelmscott Press and describes the achievement of his aesthetic ideals in the Kelmscott Chaucer.
Blake, N. F.
P. L. Heyworth, ed. Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 101-19.
Most if not all early scribes used Hg, which avoided editorial tampering--i. e., introduction of new tales and links, revision of order of tales, "corrections" of lines, words, spellings. "The best an editor can do is follow Hg closely."
Brewer, Derek.
P. L. Heyworth, ed. Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 121-38.
Emends three readings of the Corpus ms. of TC (1.502, 1.458, 1.89) and notes that evidence does not support the theory of extensive authorial revisions.
Stevens, John.
P. L. Heyworth, ed. Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 297-328.
A valuable edition based on British Library Arundel 248 with variants from other texts of the late-thirteenth-century Latin song sung by "hende Nicolas" in MilT. In addition to its sources, Stevens discusses it as a type of canto that eventually…
Cooper, Helen.
P. L. Heyworth, ed. Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 65-80.
KnT, MilT, MerT,and FranT share the same plot--the story of the girl with two lovers--and show striking interrelations and variations of episodes, conventions, images, and ideas.
Norton-Smith, John.
P. L. Heyworth, ed. Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 81-99.
As suggested by the manuscripts, Anel is a complete, finished poem (with the omission of an unchaucerian final stanza). It is concerned with the theme of poetry as an art functioning as a record of history. Its closest affiliations are with the…
Heyworth, P. L.
P. L. Heyworth, ed. Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 140-57.
The punctuation of medieval texts, including Chaucer's, imperfectly shows relationships between parts of the sentence. Standardized punctuation adopted in early Chaucer reprints often confuses meaning.
Ballard, Linda-May.
P. M. Tilling, ed. Studies in English Language and Early Literature in Honour of Paul Christopherson. Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning, no. 8. (Coleraine: New University of Ulster, 1981): pp. 1-12.
Compares a folktale analogue found in County Tyrone with FrT, examining issues and implications.
Minnis, A. J.
P. R. Robinson and Rivkah Zim, eds. Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers. Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes (Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press; Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1997), pp. 259-79.
Explores the "complicated medieval matrix of ideas concerning the relationship between authority and fallibility," commenting on representations of the topic from Petrarch's depiction of Cicero to Chaucer's depiction of the Pardoner. As a preacher…
Beadle, Richard.
P. R. Robinson and Rivkah Zim, eds. Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers. Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes, pp. 116-46.
Describes Glasgow, University Library, Hunterian MS U.I.1 (Gl) and its relation to its exemplar-Cambridge University Library Mm.2.5 (Mm). Spirleng was the sole scribe for the portion of Gl that depends on Mm,and preliminary analysis of variations…
Green, Donald C.
Pacific Coast Philology 18 (1983): 59-69.
"Nuditarian," a euphemism for "bawdy" that was applied to Chaucer in 1869, points to a "cognitive dissonance" between Chaucer's greatness and his dealing with unfit subjects.
