Nolcken, Christina von.
Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager, eds. Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 239-66.
Assesses the Miller in the historical context of clerical responsibilities and the Wycliffite translation of the Bible. MilT is comic, but its narrator is "deadly serious about furthering the cause of lay intellectualism and the Wycliffites'…
Yager, Susan.
Ann W. Astell and J. A. Jackson, eds. Levinas and Medieval Literature: The "Difficult Reading" of English and Rabbinic Texts (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009), pp. 35-56.
Examines parallels between Levinas's writing and medieval allegory. Yager reads ClT in a Levinasian mode to generate an open-ended reading or "an exercise in ifs." ClT can be read as an ethical allegory; Chaucer, as an ethical allegorist. Yager…
Stillinger, Thomas C.
Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager, eds. Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 223-38.
Observing that threshold between the Wife of Bath and the Clerk and between their tales, Stillinger explores how Chaucer stands at the "threshold between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance" (224): "If the Clerk imports the new science of the…
Chaucer modifies his sources for ClT in a way that emphasizes Griselda's virtue as specifically "feminine" and exclusively "wifely." The reflections of her wifely virtue in the pagan wives of LGW, who "view devotion to their husbands as their highest…
Scala, Elizabeth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 31 (2009): 81-108.
In Lacanian terms, WBT and ClT reveal "what each speaker seems most desperate to deny." Ideas of sovereignty ("self-determination"), mastery ("control over another"), and the desires they help to constitute are parallel in the Tales. So are the…
Hodges, Laura F.
Chaucer Review 44 (2009): 84-109.
Hodges "reads" Griselda's "sartorial transformation[s]" in light of detailed knowledge of fourteenth-century material culture. For instance, the fact that a smock could be made of plain linen or embroidered silk, or that it was the innermost of many…
Ginsberg, Warren.
Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager, eds. Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 145-64.
Ginsberg compares Dante's, Petrarch's, and Chaucer's descriptions of geography in their poems: Dante relied on the landscape of Italy to establish a geographical base; Petrarch allegorized Dante's geography; and Chaucer then "translated Petrarch's…
ClT and MLT dramatize contemporary uncertainties concerning the extent of a mother's genetic "influence" on her offspring, even as they critique the "fantasy of an autonomous male line." Given that disputes regarding monarchal succession formed the…
By framing his "Pentacostal parody" within a parody of fourteenth-century English academics' preoccupation with measuring "both physical and metaphysical realities," Chaucer registers "a cautious but not gloomy attitude" regarding the spectrum of…
Sayers, William.
Notes and Queries 254 (2009): 341-46.
Glossed in "The Riverside Chaucer" as "illusionists, magicians," tregetours cause their subjects to experience "a fall from cognitive certitude to amazement and bafflement," a result that is captured in the "associational field" that includes both…
A study of works featuring the test-of-love motif argues for including FranT among them rather than among narratives employing the motif of the "maiden's rash promise." However, by devising a "test" for Dorigen's suitor that expresses her concern for…
As knight, sheriff, and "contour" (I.359), the Franklin is the quintessential late medieval county "bureaucrat," whose duties provided incentives both to disclose and to hide the financial information to which he was privy. From its "dramatic irony"…
Setting out to establish what medieval readers thought about romances and what they labeled romances, Furrow concentrates on a wide range of romances from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Her discussion of romance and truth includes analysis…
Ingham, Patricia Clare.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 31 (2009): 53-80.
Reads SqT as Chaucer's exploration of the "double-face of newness." Cambyuskan's encounter with the brass steed is counterpointed by Canacee's communication with the falcon, posing an ambiguous pairing of "creative rationality" and "enchanted…
Benton, Andrea Gronstal.
Dissertation Abstracts International A69.09 (2009): n.p.
Benton contrasts SqT and the work of the "Gawain"-poet with popular romances as a way of understanding how romances employ descriptive passages as an essential "formal and conceptual" element.
Kolve, V. A.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009.
Reprints six of Kolve's essays on visual imagery and iconography in Chaucer and medieval literature and adds two new ones--both on MerT: "Of Calendars and Cuckoldry (1): January and May in The Merchant's Tale" (pp. 93-122) and "Of Calendars and…
Dahood, Roger.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 31 (2009): 125-40.
Dahood attributes several features of the plot of PrT to "non-Marian, historical English narratives of Jews crucifying English Christian boys" and explores how and when these features became attached to narratives of a chorister murdered by Jews. The…
Its fierce anti-Semitism notwithstanding, "Titus and Vespasian" is an important document of cultural uses of the "fall-of-Jerusalem narrative" and of attitudes toward Jews and Judaism in late medieval England. Thus, it deserves scholarly attention…
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 44 (2009): 186-204.
Reading ShT in the context of fabliaux in which children witness their mothers' infidelity, Beidler recalls that the Tale was originally intended for the Wife of Bath. He argues that the placement of a prepubescent girl on the scene of another wife's…
Swan, Richard.
Deddington, Oxfordshire: Phillip Allan Updates, 2009.
Study guide to PardPT, with discussion of themes, genre, verse, and characterization. Includes running commentary on the poem and various pedagogical tools for teachers and students, keyed to the U. K. exam board specifications and assessment…
Minnis, Alastair.
Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager, eds. Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 287-315.
Exploring the "cultural sources and significance of the humor which Chaucer brings into play" in PardT (288), Minnis examines medieval relics, shrines, and cures and suggests that if we understand more about these practices, "we may gain a better…
Minnis, Alastair.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Six studies by Minnis on the relationships among the vernacular, demotic attitudes, and Lollard concerns. One study pertains to Chaucer: chapter six, "Chaucer and the Relics of Vernacular Religion" (pp. 130-62), reads the Pardoner's involvement with…
Reconsiders Harold Bloom's argument that Shakespeare, when creating Iago, was influenced by Chaucer's Pardoner. Goth explores the "dramatic" nature of the Pardoner's character and his relations with Vice figures from late medieval drama as well as…
Astell, Ann W.
Ann W. Astell and J. A. Jackson, eds. Levinas and Medieval Literature: The "Difficult Reading" of English and Rabbinic Texts (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009), pp. 255-80.
Two talmudic tales interpreted by Levinas complement PardT in "uncanny ways." While Chaucer explores the impossibility of forgiveness from the perspective of the offender, the talmudic tales explore the impossibility of forgiveness from the…
