Weisl, Angela Jane.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 115-31.
Criseyde shows more of a "mannes herte" than does Troilus in the consummation scene of TC. Throughout the poem, she chooses masculine, active self-interest rather than feminine, passive submission. In characterizing Criseyde, TC explores and…
Vial, Claire.
Danielle Buschinger and Arlette Sancery, eds. Mélanges de langue, littérature et civilisation offerts à André Crépin à l'occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire (Amiens: Presses du Centre d'Études Médiévales, Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, 2008), pp. 312-16.
Examines the laughter of Troilus in light of the tradition of contemptus mundi and stresses links between TC and pilgrimage literature.
Parsons, Ben.
Modern Language Review 103 (2008): 940-51.
Not just a continuation of CT, the "Tale of Beryn" engages Chaucer's work critically. Assigned, in the anonymous Interlude, to the Merchant on the return journey, "Beryn" challenges the Clerk's notion of male adolescence as a stage of pre-identity…
Pedagogical strategies for exploring how Chaucer's early reception and apocrypha can be used to "engage students in some of the larger issues of literary history and canon formation," with comments on how to use twentieth- and twenty-first century…
Conti Camaiora, Luisa.
Giovanni Iamartino, Maria Luisa Maggioni, and Roberta Facchinetti, eds. Thou sittest at another boke: English Studies in Honour of Domenico Pezzini (Milan: Polimetrica, 2008), pp. 305-18.
The theme of doubleness in "The Floure and the Leafe" appears to have been especially attractive for Keats,whose attention was always drawn to the relationship between life and art. He found in the medieval poem an interesting "authority" that…
Bolens explores David Rudrum's notion of "narrative use" (fiction as a speech act that is used for a purpose) and applies it to "The Book of Sindibad," "The Seven Sages of Rome," and especially "The Tale of Beryn." Narrative use is an overt concern…
Applies notions of links between tale and teller to apocryphal tales, an approach suggested by the medieval notion of "auctoritee." Concludes that post-medieval editions of CT do not "accurately" reflect the medieval understanding of the work as "a…
The artist of the Fairfax frontispiece manipulates similarities between traditional depictions of Venus "rising from the sea" (anadyomene) and Christ in baptism. The visual echoes express a form of "Christian skepticism" that parallels questions…
Walzem, Al.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 44-59.
Reads the Wife of Bath as ur-feminist and traces parallels between WBP and WBT. These parallels indicate the Wife's efforts to teach feminist principles.
Breeze, Andrew.
National Library of Wales Journal 34 (2008): 311-21.
Like Chaucer, the fourteenth-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym borrowed from Jean de Meun, using "Le Roman de la Rose" as the source for "Y Gwynt" ('The Wind'). Breeze notes sixteen motifs common to both poems and contrasts the Welsh poet's method…
Briggs, Julia Ruth.
Martha W. Driver and Sid Ray, eds. Shakespeare and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Performance and Adaptation of the Plays with Medieval Sources or Settings (Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland, 2009), pp. 161-77.
Briggs describes Shakespeare's "emendation and expansion" of his medieval sources in "Troilus and Cressida" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," assessing the importance of KnT and TC in Shakespearian work. Also explores how the various medieval influences…
Moll, Richard J.
Notes and Queries 254 (2008): 192-94.
An eight-line poem reminiscent of Chaucer's For in both theme and word choices survives in three copies (transcribed here), each in a different hand, written upside down on the final folio of this heraldic manuscript.
Maíz Arévalo describes the functions of rhetorical questions and assesses their uses in CT, where the device is linked to "heigh style" (Harry Bailey's term) and specific genres. Rhetorical questions are used to express and elicit emotion, to…
Di Rocco, Emilia.
Michelangelo Picone, ed. La letteratura cavalleresca dalle "Chansons de Geste" alla "Gerusalemme Liberata." Atti del II Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Certaldo Alto, Giugno 21-23, 2007 (Pisa: Pacini, 2008), pp. 191-205.
Di Rocco explores the role of Chaucer's works in the development of romance in England, commenting on the poet's fusion of classical material and romance in KnT and TC, the concern with gentilesse and trouthe in WBT and FranT, and the reference to…
Kowaleski, Maryanne, and P. J. P. Goldberg, eds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Eleven essays by various authors (and an introduction by the editors) address a range of topics: domestic and monastic spaces, attitudes toward living alone, various literary and historical depictions of homes and households, etc. The collection…
Gibbons, Victoria Louise.
JEBS 11 (2008): 198-206.
Modern notions and theory of literary titles ("titology") cannot be applied readily to medieval works. Gibbons comments on the titles of several of Chaucer's poems as an aspect of the "ordinatio" of their manuscripts. Medieval titles, especially…
Bloom, Harold, ed.
New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2008.
A summary/introduction to the pilgrims and plots (Part 7 excepted) of CT, with brief excerpts from fourteen critical commentaries written between 1956 and 2007; annotations of twenty-one book-length studies; and an index.
Bell, Adrian R.
John France, ed. Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages. Proceedings of a Conference Held at University of Wales, Swansea, 7th-9th July 2005. Smithsonian History of Warfare, no. 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 301-15.
Bell analyzes the military record of 5,600 soldiers from Chaucer's lifetime to discover how many had records of military service similar to the experience of Chaucer's Knight. It was not uncommon for English soldiers to serve as mercenaries in…
Rigby, Stephen H.
Matthew Davies and Andrew Prescott, eds. London and the Kingdom: Essays in Honour of Caroline M. Barron. Proceedings of the 2004 Harlaxton Symposium. Harlaxton Medieval Studies, no. 16 (Donington, England: Shaun Tyas, 2008), pp. 316-34.
Orthodox notions of royal prudence and magnificence underlie the idealized figure of Theseus in KnT. Theseus embodies the traits that Richard II was accused of lacking.
Sidhu, Nicole Nolan.
Maryanne Kowaleski and P. J. P. Goldberg, eds. Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 177-208.
Adaptations of its sources shape ClT in ways that encourage male, bourgeois readers to imagine themselves as Griselda's protectors. Infused with a sense of moral and patriarchal responsibility and driven by religious devotion, such readers also…
Jost, Jean [E.]
Albrecht Classen, ed. Words of Love and Love of Words in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008), pp. 395-420.
Courtly literature is an intellectual battleground in which reversals of gender and social positions clash. The men's rhetorical competition in FranT shows a courtly love of words.
