Van, Thomas A.
Papers on Language and Literature 7 (1971): 3-12.
Traces the imagery and diction of hunting, snaring, imprisoning, and entrapment in TC and KnT, showing how it informs the concern with destiny, freedom, and interpersonal manipulation in the poems.
Van, Thomas A.
Studies in the Literary Imagination 4.2 (1971): 83-100.
Assesses Theseus in KnT as a character who is capable of anger, self-centeredness, pity, reason, restraint, and charity, considering him in light of Boethian philosophy and Boccaccio's characterization of Teseo in the "Teseida." Central to Chaucer's…
Although WBP and WBT seem more disparate than similar, they are not. The pairing of the two allows Alison to make a statement about how to love well and how to be happy.
Van, Thomas A.
Southern Humanities Review 12 (1978): 89-97.
Pandarus is a persuader, not a philosopher; so he sees before him not existential problems so much as materials to be shaped to a happy resolution. An earthly maker, at points an imitation of the Divine Creator, he tries but fails to achieve a human…
Criseyde's garden and Pandarus's home are integrated symbolically with the theme of mutability in TC. Both sites display Pandarus's dream of circumventing mutability and figure his attempts as a go-between to shape an unchanging earthly union in the…
Walter is not just testing his wife but doing the worst he can imagine himself doing as a stage in achieving a better unity among the parts of himself and between his private and public selves.
Van Nolcken, Christina.
ChauR 47.1 (2012): 107-33.
Discusses William Thomas Stead's 1895 publication of Masterpiece Library's CT, part of the "Penny Poets" series, and its effects on the circulation of Chaucer's works.
van Gelderen, Elly.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
Classroom textbook of examples for syntactical analysis in English language history, with texts reproduced in color manuscript, original-language transcriptions, and modern translations, plus commentary on significant features of language and…
van Gelderen, Elly.
Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2000.
Diachronic analysis of how reflexive pronouns follow the "transformation of English from a synthetic to an analytic language," particularly their increase in "Uninterpretable features." Includes a section on Chaucer's reflexive pronouns (pp. 86-91)…
van Gelderen, Elly.
Jan Terje Faarlund, ed. Grammatical Relations in Change. Studies in Language Companion Series, no. 56 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2001), pp. 137-57.
Cites examples from Chaucer and others to show the demise of the "(slight) person split" evident in earlier English impersonal constuctions.
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Susan McHugh, Robert McKay, and John Miller, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 127-40.
Surveys the functions and understanding of the nightingale in myth, literature, music, and sign theory, observing how the bird "inhabits the borders between states of being." Then discusses its roles in John Lydgate's "A Seying of the Nightingale"…
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Modern Philology 115 (2017): 1–30.
Examines manuscript rubrics and glosses that engage ideas of authorship, specifically those that cite an "auctor" or "aucteur" in manuscripts of the "Roman de la Rose," Machaut's "Judgment of the King of Navarre," TC, and CT. Gauges the kinds and…
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 101-12.
TC includes references to animals through frequent analogy and extended imagery, but these are often generically inappropriate. Dreams about animals are largely unexplored. Comparison of Troilus to the horse Bayard not only emphasizes the hero's…
Exemplified by those of Carolyn Dinshaw and Elaine Tuttle Hansen, feminist critiques of E. Talbot Donaldson's scholarship are curiously similar to D. W. Robertson's critiques of that scholarship. These critiques find fault in its subjectivity and…
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Madison, [N. J.] : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005.
Examines agency as theme and narrative technique throughout Chaucer's corpus, considering the "multifariousness" of the topic. Agency does not refer exclusively to the human will; it also "embraces innumerable forces that operate interdependently" -…
Chaucer's complaints develop a "poetics of agency" as they explore questions of subjectivity and causation. His most sophisticated complaint, Mars, presents "incompatible forms of causation" but makes them congruent poetically, achieving a…
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Chaucer Review 31 (1996): 164-72.
The multiple voices in "Complaint of Mars" mask the identity of the real lyric subject. An examination of these voices reveals that the real lyric subject is the reader, who discovers that he or she is not, like Mars, an autonomous self.
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Studies In the Age of Chaucer 17 (1995): 45-66.
Griselda and Dorigen embody more coherent subjectivities than do their counterparts in analogous tales, although neither becomes a true agent in the outcome of her plot.
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Donald V. Stump and others, eds. Hamartia: The Concept of Error in the Western Tradition: Essays in Honor of John M. Crossett. Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 16 (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1983), pp. 171-91.
Chaucer's treatment of Troilus, the good man flawed by error, is compared to the treatment of Gawain in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," with a source study of the "Poetics" of Aristotle and "De consolatione philosophiae" of Boethius.
Van Dyke, Carolyn, ed.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Sixteen essays by various authors examine animals in Chaucer, with an Introduction and Afterword that describe the grounds for challenging the "anthropocentric perspective" and align this challenge with feminism and the rejection of hierarchical…
