Bedford, Ronald.
Philippa Kelly and L. E. Semler, eds. Word and Self Estranged in English Texts, 1550-1660 (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 167-81.
Bedford explores the development of the term "irony" and interpretive issues surrounding its use, focusing on Chaucer's use of irony as reflected in Milton's interpretations of SqT.
Brent, Harry.
Phillip C. Boardman, ed., and Robert Gorrell, pref. The Legacy of Language: A Tribute to Charlton Laird (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1987), pp. 1-19.
At a memorial conference for Charlton Laird, a former student pays tribute to the late medievalist and Chaucer scholar.
Minnis, A. J.
Phillip Lindley and Thomas Frangenberg, eds. Secular Sculpture: 1300-1550 (Stamford: Shaun Tyas), 2000, pp. 124-43.
Minnis considers possible sources or inspirations for Chaucer's techniques of describing the architecture and statuary in the Temple of Venus of HF, surveying previous scholarship. Despite the possible influence of actual art and architecture or the…
Dalrymple, Roger.
Phillipa Hardman, ed. The Matter of Identity in Medieval Romance (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2002), pp. 149-62.
Although based on Ovid's tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, "Amoryus and Cleopes" (1449) was clearly influenced by TC in diction and style. Metham's amelioration of tragedy simplifies Chaucer's complex and ambiguous combination of de casibus tragedy and…
Johnson, Ian.
Phillips, Philip Edward, and Noel Harold Kaylor, eds. A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages (Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 413-46.
Explores the "special place at the commanding heights of literary culture" that Boethian translation held in Middle English, surveying the variety of translations and uses of the "Consolation," commenting on the importance of Jean de Meun and…
Stanisoara, Codruta Mirela.
Philologia: Naučno-stručni časopis za jezik, književnost i kulturu/Academic Journal for Language, Literature and Culture 18 (2020): 97-107.
Advocates an "anthropological" approach to reading Chaucer's works, especially CT, in which the reader observes the writer's roles as not only poet, narrator, and social historian, but also an anthropologist who crosses borders and invites us to…
Guerra Bosch, Teresa.
Philologica Canariensia 0 (1994): 181-91.
Comments on examples of ecclesiastical satire in CT and "The Decameron," arguing that Chaucer viewed contemporary abuses as comic, through Boccaccio's ironies are "slyer."
Parry, Joseph D.
Philological Quarterly 80.2 : 133-67, 2001.
Because Alisoun in MilT and May in MerT are exempted from retribution for their active roles in adultery and deception, readers are invited to ask how women are or are not fully part of the systems by which we conceptualize accountability for…
Centers on LGW, 212-18, where Alceste, the Queen of Love, has an appearance similar to a daisy, and suggests that a source for this could be Remigius of Auxerre's "Commentum in Martianum Capellam."
Melton, John L.
Philological Quarterly 35 (1956): 215-17.
Suggests that "charbocle" (carbuncle) in Th 7.871 may refer, not to part of the charge on Thopas' shield, but to his sword, with a jewel on its pommel.
Compares Mars with the "Ovide moralisé" and examines its adaptations of the "aubade, the complaint, the Valentine-tradition (Gower and Graunson), and the conventions of courtly love"--as inflected by Chaucer's own concerns and "personality," and…
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Philological Quarterly 36 (1957): 49–60.
Identifies parallels between the characterizations of January and May in MerT and those of Pluto and Proserpine in Claudian's "De Raptu Proserpinae." Anticipating the role of the fairy deities in Chaucer's Pear-Tree episode, Claudian's "myth of…
Friedman, William F., and Elizebeth S. Freidman.
Philological Quarterly 38 (1959): 1-20.
Introduces literary acrostics and anagrams as examples of "unkeyed" transposition ciphers, clarifying some terminology of cryptography, and applying technical analysis to invalidate Ethel Seaton's claims (1957) about "so-called double acrostic…
Benjamin, Edwin B.
Philological Quarterly 38 (1959): 119-24.
Attributes the disruption of order in the plot of FranT to Dorigen's pride and "indecisiveness" and to Aurelius's "moral flaw" and use of "unlawful" magic. Order is reinstated by means of seriatim "self-sacrifice" triggered by the "manly firmness" of…
Identifies an early modern allusion to Chaucer and CYT (by Hugh Platt) and one on dreams and, possibly, NPT (by William Vaughan), neither previously noted.
Critiques attempts to modernize Chaucer's verse for the sake of the "common reader," preferring Augustan "imitations" to twentieth-century renderings in verse or prose, but finding them all to be relatively dull and incapable of replicating Chaucer's…
Bradley, D. R.
Philological Quarterly 39 (1960): 122-25.
Adduces details and emphases in Virgil's "Aeneid" to suggest that Chaucer used it directly in composing his Dido legend in LGW, though perhaps in combination with parallel sources.
Biggins, D.
Philological Quarterly 42 (1963): 558-62.
Examines the statement about alliterative verse in ParsP 10.42-46, arguing that the "rum, ram, ruf" sequence has its source in French and helps to constitute a "meaningful . . . and technically adroit comment on alliterative poetry."
Grennen, Joseph E.
Philological Quarterly 42 (1963): 562-66.
Shows that the phrase "secree of secrees" in CYT 8.1447, cast as a "superlative genitive," suggests a "whole class of alchemical expressions identical in form" and thereby "sharply emphasizes Chaucer's ironical denunciation of the oracular…
