Malone, Kemp.
Arno Esch, ed. Chaucer und Seine Zeit: Symposion für Walter F. Schirmer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), pp. 71-95.
Scans the verse in the first 100 lines of BD, with commentary on emendations and unusual features; then offers a catalog of scansion (with analysis and extensive notes) of the entire poem, concluding that the "basis of Chaucer's metrics" in BD (and…
Wimsatt, James Irving.
Dissertation Abstracts International 27.04 (1966): 1041A.
Describes the French influences on BD of, among others, three poems by Machaut, one by Froissart, and Guillaume de Lorris's portion of the "Roman de la Rose," demonstrating the dependence and innovations of Chaucer's work in the tradition of the…
Buermann, Theodore Barry.
Dissertation Abstracts International 28.12 (1968): 5009-10A.
Shows how Biblical narratives underlie the CT, not only allusively but in narrative plots and figural schema, focusing on how materials from Genesis are present in GP (springtime creation), KnT (brotherly conflict similar to Cain and Abel), MilT…
Reads HF as Chaucer's "vindication of poetry," even though he comically proposes to eschew it. Identifies the various echoes of classical and medieval sources in HF, particularly Virgil's "Aeneid," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Alain de Lille's…
Machan, Tim William, ed.
Heidelberg: Winter, 2008.
A critical text of Bo, collated "with all medieval and late-medieval authorities and also with the modern critical editorial tradition." Includes a list of glosses and an extensive introduction, with a survey of interpretive responses to Bo.
Four essays and two appendices place Bo in the "tradition of the academic study and translation of the 'Consolatio,'" clarifying the relative importance of such predecessors as William of Conches, Jean de Meun, anonymous commentators, and especially…
O'Connell, Brendan.
Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith, eds. Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 189-211
Observes that in sixteenth-century editions of CT, ManT follows NPT, and that after c. 1550 the pair is followed by the story of the Pelican and Griffin from the apocryphal "Plowman's Tale," then the references to fables in ParsP, providing a…
A pattern of Chaucerian poetics emerges through four themes--courtly love, morality, order, and poetry--found in his early poetry (BD, HF, and KnT). Starting as a poet of courtly love, Chaucer overcame limitations of this theme by analyzing its…
Pearcy, Roy J.
Notes and Queries 212 (1967): 322-25.
Explains the use of "impossible" as a noun in SumT 3.2231, discussing the term as a label for classroom examples of logical sophistry and commenting on Chaucer's familiarity with such academic practice.
Klinefelter, Ralph A.
Explicator 24.1 (1965): item no. 5.
Argues that the "allegory of the Four Daughters of God" (also known as "The Reconciliation of the Heavenly Virtues" and "The Parliament of Heaven") influenced several details of ABC.
Salisbury, Eve.
Jacek Fisiak and Hye-Kyung Kang, eds. Recent Trends in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Young-Bae Park (Seoul, South Korea: Thaehaksa, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 347-75.
Assesses how WBT, FranT, and other Breton lays in Middle English "underwrite and reinforce the laws of the land"--laws that allowed for domestic violence and left ambiguous the relations between rape and marriage.
Salisbury, Eve.
Eve Salisbury, Georgiana Donavin, and Merrall Llewelyn Price, eds. Domestic Violence in Medieval Texts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), pp. 73-93.
"Daungerous," the term Alisoun uses to describe Jankyn's love, reflects an ambiguous relation between courtly love and marriage; canon and civil law clarify the nature of physical and psychological violence in WBP and FranT.
Folks, Cathalin Buhrmann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 50 (1990): 2062A.
Neither WBT nor "Gawain" presents straightforward satire on late-fourteenth-century English romance. At once ironic and idealistic, the two works provide a human redefinition of the genre as exemplified in contemporary chivalric writing.
Duncan, Edgar H.
Modern Philology 66 (1969): 199-211.
Shows that in the Wife of Bath's account of her three "goode" husbands Chaucer "adopted a means of amplification which he found described and illustrated in the 'Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi' . . . attributed to Geoffrey of…
Steadman, John M.
Notes and Queries 201 (1956): 374-75.
Offers support for the notion that the whelp episode in BD (387-96)--likely derived from Machaut's "Dit dou Lyon"--serves as a "symbol of fidelity," adducing instances of Renaissance "canine symbolism" and the appearance of dogs "on medieval tombs."…
Kim, Hyonjin.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 16 (2008): 77-111.
Surveys critical approaches to KnT, particularly New Critical, Feminist, and New Historical, focusing on discussions of order and disorder in the Tale. KnT functions as a "second prologue" to CT and, with GP, asserts and affirms the diversity of…
Harrison, Thomas P.
Notes and Queries 199 (1954): 189.
Offers historical "bird-lore" as evidence of the poisonousness of the "wariangles" (shrikes, or butcher-birds), cited in the description of the summoner in FrT 3.1408).
Reichl, Karl.
Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 133-52.
In TC, philosophical terminology "provides a continual gloss on the text." A philosophical reading of the poem--free will versus determinism, fantasy versus reason--does not, however, detract from the poem's narrative, "an intensely moving story of…
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…
Bestul, Thomas H.
Chaucer Review 14 (1980): 366-78.
Like other late medieval art, TC exhibits a growing concern with the portrayal of emotions, especially through the shifting role of the narrator. He sometimes resorts to "occupatio," claiming inability to describe an emotional state, and eventually…
Heffernan, Carol F.
Neophilologus 74 (1990): 294-309.
Considers the medieval medical views on "amor hereos" and Chaucer's descriptions of it, first in KnT and BD, then in TC. In TC 1, Chaucer shows Troilus as suffering from the lover's disease, to which the consummation of his love in bk. 3 is, from a…
