Browse Items · Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer: Reading with Feeling.

Downes, Stephanie. Patrick Colm Hogan and Bradley J. Irish, eds. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2022), pp. 409-20.

Surveys historical interest and recent theorization of emotion and affect produced by 'works, and assesses the role of books in the opening of TC (tears as ink) and in WBP (Jankyn's book) as "affective, emotional objects that arouse a range of…

The Ambivalence of Truth: Chaucer's 'Clerkes Tale'

Morrow, Patrick D. Patrick D. Morrow. Tradition, Undercut, and Discovery: Eight Essays on British Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980), pp. 16-36.

Adjustments to the traditional narrative in ClT compel us to read Walter, Griselda, and the "peple" as complex characters, rich in ambiguity, in a setting that "moves between an ideal and real world" (27). These complications enrich the simple…

The Squire's 'Steed of Brass' as Astrolabe: Some Implications of the 'Canterbury Tales'

Osborn, Marijane. Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico, eds. Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture (Albany : State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 121-31.

In SqT, Chaucer obliquely introduces the astrolabe, an instrument used for celestial observation in navigation and timekeeping. According to Osborn, the diagram and operation of the astrolabe clarify our understanding of both time and place in CT.

Chaucer and Hermeneutics

Ridley, Florence H. Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico, eds. Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 15-25.

Ridley views certain aspects of hermeneutic study of Chaucer, in company with certain modes of classical rhetoric, to "help us better to understand both 'how' the poet crafted his poetry and 'why' as a medieval writer he did so."

The Author's Address to the Reader: Chaucer, Juan Ruiz, and Dante

Wood, Chauncey. Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico, eds. Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 51-60.

"Medieval authors mistrusted their readers' potential responses and felt obliged to direct that response accordingly"; in medieval literature, the author's address to the reader was "a device to activate the critical intelligence, while deactivating…

Literary and Symbolic Inspiration in the Pardoner's Prologue 1924

Cooper, Helen. Patrick Mileham, ed. Harry Mileham, 1873-1957: A Catalogue. His Life and Works, with a Selection of Paintings, Designs, and Sketches (Paisley: University of Paisley, 1995), pp. 45-47.

Comments on Harry Mileham's painting of the Canterbury pilgrims, depicted in a tavern during the telling of PardPT. Mileham is sensitive to literary and historical detail, derived especially from GP and the Ellesmere illustrations. The painting…

Metaphor and Exemplum in 'The Nun's Priest's Tale'

Pizzorno, Patrizia Grimaldi. Patrizia Grimaldi Pizzorno. Metaphor at Play: Chaucer's Poetics of Exemplarity (Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 1997), pp. 31-51.

Argues that exempla should be regarded as essentially metaphorical rather than didactic, and reads NPT as an exemplary tale that parodies the uses of exempla in the other tales of fragment 7, especially MkT.

The Prioress, the Jew and the Knight

Pizzorno, Patrizia Grimaldi. Patrizia Grimaldi Pizzorno. Metaphor at Play: Chaucer's Poetics of Exemplarity (Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 1997), pp. 53-78.

PrT develops the concerns with food, gluttony, and filth that are established in the GP description of the Prioress, where she is characterized as childish, greedy, and sinful. The tale of Thopas parodies PrT and restores moral balance.

Metaphors of the Self in the 'Book of the Duchess'

Pizzorno, Patrizia Grimaldi. Patrizia Grimaldi Pizzorno. Metaphor at Play: Chaucer's Poetics of Exemplarity (Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 1997), pp. 79-109.

In BD, Chaucer combines a series of sustained unconventional allusions to the Narcissus exemplum from the "Roman de la Rose" with the narrative of Ceyx and Alcyone from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" to produce a "moral lesson against suicide" with a…

Translating Two Guillaumes

Taylor, Paul Beekman. Paul Beekman Taylor. Chaucer Translator (Lanham, Md., New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998), pp. 155-69.

Compares Antigone's song in TC to Machaut's "Paradis d'Amour," ABC, to Guillaume de Deguileville's "Le pelerinage de la vie humaine." Explores the ironies of Antigone's song, especially those extending from the possibility that the "goodlieste mayde"…

Redressing Nero's Array

Taylor, Paul Beekman. Paul Beekman Taylor. Chaucer Translator (Lanham, Md., New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998), pp. 105-18.

Assesses Chaucer's alterations of his sources (Jean de Meun and Boethius) in the Nero account of MkT. Through selection and emphasis, especially emphasis on clothing, Chaucer "forges a link between the emperor's name and his deeds," associating Nero…

Translating Spiritual to Corporeal in the Dusk of the Miller's Tale

Taylor, Paul Beekman. Paul Beekman Taylor. Chaucer Translator (Lanham, Md., New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998), pp. 39-50.

Reads MilT as a dim, worldly "eschatological drama" in which providential order is turned to disorder and "spiritual grace to secular disgrace." Analyzes various words and details ("ba," "stone," the ring, etc.), the concern with Noah's Flood, and…

The Curious Eye and the Alternative Endings of 'The Canterbury Tales'

Taylor, Andrew. Paul Budra and Betty A. Schellenberg, eds. Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel. (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 34-52.

Reads the "Tale of Beryn" and Lydgate's "Seige of Thebes" as acts of resistance to Chaucer's dissolution of his fiction in the meditation that is ParsT. These continuations of CT seek to keep alive the drama of CT through visualization, a form of…

Typography and Gender: Remasculating the Modern Book

Benton, Megan L. Paul C. Gutjahr and Megan L. Benton, eds. Illuminating Letters: Typography and Literary Interpretation ( Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), pp. 71-93.

Exploring the relationship between gender identity and book production at the turn of the twentieth century, Benton assesses the format and typography of the Kelmscott Chaucer (1896) and Eric Gill's illustrations to The Canterbury Tales (1930). Also…

Peirs Plouhman [sic] and the 'Formidable Array of Blackletter' in the Early Nineteenth Century

Kelen, Sarah A. Paul C. Gutjahr and Megan L. Benton, eds. Illuminating Letters: Typography and Literary Interpretation. Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press), pp. 47-67, 2001.

Assesses factors in Thomas Dunham Whitaker's decision to print Piers Plowman in 1813 in blackletter type, even though Chaucer had been printed in roman type nearly one hundred years earlier (by Urry) and anthologists of medieval poetry such as Joseph…

Prototype and Parody in Chaucerian Exegesis

Ames, Ruth M. Paul E. Szarmach and Bernard S. Levy, eds. The Fourteenth Century. Acta 4. (Binghampton: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, SUNY Binghampton, 1977), pp. 87-105.

Drawing on exegetical tradition, Chaucer effectively combines piety and irreverence in his handling of biblical themes and characters. In Mel and MLT he presents Old Testament platitudes and stereotypes as practical moral guides, while in MilT and…

Chaucer and Comedy

Garbaty, Thomas J. Paul G, Ruggiers, ed. Versions of Medieval Comedy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), pp. 173-90. Reprinted in Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor (Garland, 1994), pp. 79-99.

There are those Chaucer readers who feel that he failed to take life seriously enough. His view of the world was indeed serious; it was not, however, a tragic view. His art is his love of the human comedy and thereby hang the tales of some of the…

'Oure Occian': Littoral Language and the Constance Narratives of Chaucer and Boccaccio

Hsy, Jonathan H. Paul Gifford and Tessa Hauswedell, eds. Europe and Its Others: Essays on Interperception and Identity (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 205-24.

Hsy compares the ways MLT and Boccaccio's "Decameron" 5.2 present transnational diversity, especially through their depictions of "littoral language," i.e., Custance's and Gostanza's communications with people on the shores of foreign lands. Both…

Talking Dirty: Vernacular Language and the Lower Body

Hardwick, Paul. Paul Hardwick, ed. The Playful Middle Ages: Meanings of Play and Plays of Meaning: Essays in Memory of Elaine C. Block (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010), pp. 81-91.

Explores relations between vernacularity and scatology in MilT and "Til Eulenspiegel," commenting on how use of the "kultour" in MilT plays upon the Knight's earlier reference to a plough and undermines clerical discourse in which the plough is a…

The Translator as Author: The Case of Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Parliament of Fowls."

Krajník, Filip. Paul Poplawski, ed. Studying English Literature in Context: Critical Readings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 27-43.

Contrasts medieval and modern ideas of authorship, focusing on how Chaucer "treated old authorities in developing his own reputation and what strategies he employed to establish a harmony among the multiple authorial voices" in PF. Proposes that, for…

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