Donaldson, Kara Virginia.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 139-53.
Absolon appropriates the language of courtly love, thereby rendering himself deaf to Alisoun's realistic language and setting himself up as a glossator of Alisoun's body/text. When Alisoun disrupts his gloss by exposing "hir hole" (i.e., her…
Reale, Nancy M.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 155-71.
Compares the consummation scenes in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and Chaucer's TC, focusing on Pandarus's role, and demonstrates how Boccaccio served as Chaucer's intermediary in a critical dialogue with Dantean assertions about language, love, and…
"The Plowman's Tale" was regularly included in editions of CT from William Thynne's second edition in 1542 until Thomas Tyrwhitt's 1778 edition. Various qualities of the tale might have led sixteenth-century readers to accept the poem as Chaucer's:…
Thum, D. Maureen.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 261-79.
Using the same folkloric motif as exemplum, Chaucer and Kipling conflate it with other motifs to form a new configuration; both embed the narrative in a series of fictive frames and modify it by commentary of multiple fictive voices. A comparative…
Patton, Celeste A.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 399-417.
The Manciple evinces linguistic fraud through his digression on language, his shaping of the crow fable, and his impersonation of his mother's voice arguing against speech (a mispresentation of Jean de Meun's discourse of Reason and a foil to the…
Schricker, Gale C.
Philological Quarterly 72 (1993): 15-31.
The epilogue reveals that the narrator of TC undergoes (in Freudian terms) a neurotic crisis. Ultimately, however, he demonstrates the psychic health of his ego by integrating conflicting forces of the id (functions of the received tale), the…
"As (s)he that" appears most frequently--twenty-five of forty-three occurrences throughout Chaucer's work--in TC, with twenty of these instances clustered in TC 4 and 5. Although in some of these passages the phrase clearly means "for" or "because,"…
Machan, Tim William.
Philological Quarterly 73 (1994): 299-316.
A clear-text, eclectic edition provides convenience and coherence for the reader by presenting a text (such as Chaucer's) as the artist's completed product. But current interest in "versioning"--seeing the text as a process by comparing versions and…
Hill, Ordelle G.,and Gardiner Stillwell.
Philological Quarterly 73 (1994): 317-28.
In PF 316-18, Chaucer alludes to Alain de Lille's discussion of love, the main points of which are Nature's law of love and humans' unnatural violation of it (with implicit references to the homosexuality of Richard's great-grandfather Edward II). …
Lee, Brian S.
Philological Quarterly 74 (1995): 17-35.
The rape victim in WBT quickly vanishes from the text because she is "excommunicated," or denied access to the privileges of the knight who exploits her.
Kline, Daniel T.
Philological Quarterly 77 (1998): 271-93.
Assesses the scenes of swearing and oath making in FrT, arguing that the Tale is not only a theological exemplum but also a reflection of "cultural anxiety concerning the nature of changing social and economic relations as mediated by new forms of…
Finlayson, J. Caitlin.
Philological Quarterly 79 : 225-47, 2000.
A major source of Keats's poem is the Middle English "La Belle Dame sans Mercy," mistakenly attributed to Chaucer in the 1782 edition of "The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer," which Keats owned.
Christine de Pizan's version of the Griselda story emphasizes the gaze theme less than the versions by Chaucer and Petrarch do. Pizan's version is more clearly feminist than ClT, which presents a male viewpoint addressed to a community of male…
HF advocates an "ethics of reading" as the narrator struggles to accommodate contradictions found in literary texts. Book 1 ponders the legend and textual transmission of the Dido and Aeneas story. Book 2 learns about the suspect nature of language…
Like the Canon's Yeoman and unlike St. Cecile (SNT), Roger the Cook is spiritually leaden, exhibiting all four of lead's distinctive qualities: heaviness, earthiness, pallor, and muteness. After his altercation with the Manciple in ManP, Roger is…
Critical review of two applied textual theories, exposing their weaknesses in light of recent theory and revealing their ongoing utility. Includes discussion of Laura Hibbard Loomis's arguments that Th indicates Chaucer's firsthand knowledge of the…
Although not lovers, Troilus and Pandarus express deep affection for each other, and Pandarus gains Troilus's dependence. In addition, Pandarus's speeches, silences, and gaze (staging sexual scenes for his pleasure), as well as more fluid medieval…
O'Brien examines the theme of brotherhood in TC as portrayed through the relationships of Troilus and Pandarus, Troilus and Criseyde, Diomedes and Criseyde, and the narrator and readers. The poem's ending portrays brotherly relationships as no remedy…
Mel interprets and transforms its source. Chaucer's alterations, although slight, tend to undercut the allegorical reading, qualifying Prudence's authority and conclusions. Mel makes explicit concepts that are implicit in the original: the…
Crafton, John Micheal.
Philological Quarterly 84 (2005): 259-85.
As a treatise on continence, the last chapter of the "Summa virtutem remediis anime" provides significant analogues to PhyT. Virginia represents true virginity and in her martyrdom appears saintly. Virginius represents foolish virginity, especially…
Interprets the biblical allusions and references in MerT as Chaucer's invitation to his audience to "consider the ethics of appropriating morally authoritative texts." The narrator, January, and May manipulate textual authority in various ways,…
Emphasizes Chaucer's influences on Hoccleve, paying special attention to ClT as an intertext with Hoccleve's "Letter," where Hoccleve appears rather misogynist. Yet, in the "Series," harkening back to his "Letter," Hoccleve seems to ridicule his…
Examines Chaucer's influence on Wordsworth's poetry, especially in "Lyrical Ballads" and "Ecclesiastical Sonnets." Establishes that Wordsworth is a "Chaucerian translator," because of his engagement with Chaucerian literary tradition.
Novacich, Sarah Elliott.
Philological Quarterly 94, no. 3 (2015): 201–23.
Discusses the idea of "poetic feet" of versification in poetry, and examines how travel narratives are linked to poetic language. Compares CT (particularly ParsT, MkT, KnT, Tho, Mel, and TC, to Dante's "Inferno" and Mandeville's travel narrative.
