Rossiter, William T.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010.
Assesses Chaucer's relationship with Petrarch, focusing on translation theory, humanism, and Chaucer's uses of the Italian writer as source for ClT and the "Canticus Troili" of TC. Also assesses Chaucer's references to Petrarch in ClT and in MkT, as…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 47-64.
Traces recent critical engagement with the "problem" of late medieval English national identity in Chaucer, especially as it reflects anxieties about political upheaval, linguistic variety, cultural "hybridity," and English geographical isolation.…
Kamath, Stephanie Gibbs, and Rita Copeland.
Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 136-47.
Kamath and Copeland survey the legacy of philosophical allegory and secular allegory--largely inspired by the "Roman de la Rose"--in late medieval France and, by extension, England. They focus on Machaut, Froissart, and Deschamps and their relative…
Considers the alternation between the pedagogy of argument (prose sections) and pleasure (metrical sections) in "prosimetrum," arguing that the form of Boethius's "Consolation" was as essential as its content for writers such as Chaucer, Usk,…
Kamath, Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs.
Chaucer Review 45 (2010): 32-58.
In both "Reson and Sensuallyte" and "Troy Book," Lydgate establishes the literary authority of English poetry by placing it in the "allegorical landscape" of the "Roman de la Rose." He frequently follows Chaucer's "method of Rose citation," while…
Hordis, Sandra M.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 46-64.
Hordis argues that Henryson's poem aggressively explores Chaucer's authorial authority. The text was produced in a time of emergent efforts by the Scots to construct a national identity, and it questions English literary influence.
Honeyman, Chelsea.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 65-81.
Honeyman situates Palice of Honour within the development of an autonomous tradition of Scottish poetry, addressing the work as a self-aware response to HF.
Examining how post-Chaucerian writers and critics even to the present day have added and responded to CT, Higl argues that their works are analogous to the pilgrims' fictive contest. The dissertation assesses the evidence of reception in select CT…
Higl, Andrew.
Joshua R. Eyler, ed. Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 167-81.
Treating a book or a "corpus" of literature as a body encourages a prosthetic approach to texts and to narratives. Henryson's addition to Chaucer's TC in his "Testament of Cresseid" works as a "double prosthesis" in which Henryson seeks to…
Haydock, Nickolas A.
Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2010.
Haydock examines poetic authority in Henryson's "Testament" as it simultaneously affirms and seeks to replace TC, in effect treating Chaucer's poem in Chaucerian fashion. One of Henryson's three major works, "Testament" is part of his effort to…
Havely documents Dante's reception in sixteenth-century England, focusing on the perception of Dante in relation to England as "empire" and treatments of Dante as a "proto-Protestant" writer. Observes recurrently how Dante and Chaucer were yoked in…
Gross, John, ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Surveys parodies in English, including two brief examples from Alexander Pope that parody Chaucer, plus Stanley J. Sharpless's "The Tale of Miss Hunter Dunn [Geoffrey Chaucer Rewrites Sir John Betjeman]" (pp. 6-7).
Gelineau, David.
SEL: Studies in English Literature 50 (2010): 557-81.
Arguing that the sequence of tales in Dryden's "Fables" is significant and meaningful, Gelineau examines a sequence of tales in which Dryden "uses the Chaucerian tales, with their Catholic love of order, to frame his critique of military brutality…
Edwards, A. S. G.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 520-37.
Edwards cites the "pivotal" nature of the 1532 publication of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and Chaucer's "Werkes" and explores "Chaucerian modes and language" in fifteenth-century poetry by Hoccleve, Lydgate, Dunbar, and Henryson--a "subject that…
Saunders, Corinne.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 647-60.
Discusses the "living tradition" of Middle English poetry in later English culture, commenting on continuities, revivals, and imitations, with recurrent references to the status of Chaucer.
Tracing the revival of the romance genre, Santini describes in chronological order the work of amateur scholars, editors, and editorial societies that produced editions and commentary on Middle English romances between 1760 and 1860. Comments on the…
Rossiter, William.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 2-27.
In his courtly verse, Lydgate elevates Chaucer's established topoi and discourse to bolster his own unique reformations and enhancements of Chaucerian style.
Riddy, Felicity.
Michael O'Neill, ed. The Cambridge History of English Poetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 96-114.
Riddy describes the literary accomplishments of Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, and Gavin Douglas as they together "created Older Scots as a literary language." Includes recurrent references to Chaucer and Chaucerianism in the works of these poets.
McCabe, Richard A., ed.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Covers a wide range of concerns in Spenser criticism, with forty-two individual essays arranged under five headings: Contexts, Works, Poetic Craft, Sources and Influence, and Reception. The handbook cites Chaucer and his works recurrently, with…
Luft, Joanna, and Thomas Dilworth.
F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 8 (2010): 79-91.
Rejects a previous attempt to link Fitzgerald's Daisy Fay and Alceste of LGWP, arguing instead that, via imagery, Gatsby's love for Daisy in the novel resonates with the love of Chaucer's narrator for the daisy in the poem.
Lerer, Seth.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 83-95.
Lerer comments on the recent study of Chaucer reception and exemplifies the "status of Chaucer's authority" in a letter of Alice Paston to her son, a version of Truth in Tottel's "Miscellany," and an allusion to KnT in "The Two Noble Kinsmen." Each…
Lerer, Seth.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp.75-91.
Lerer assesses the mid-sixteenth-century versions of Truth and TC in Tottel's "Miscellany" (among other texts) as evidence of Renaissance reception of medieval literary history.
Laird, Edgar (S.)
Chaucer Review 44 (2010): 344-50.
By taking into account the increasing degree of willful irrationality attributed to Cupid in Chaucer's PF, KnT, and LGW and in Clanvowe's "Boke of Cupid," it becomes possible to view the writers' "god of Love [as] to some extent a collaborative…
Assesses the location and implications of one stanza from TC (1.400-406) as quoted in the "Disce mori," a fifteenth-century manual of religious instruction addressed to "Dame Alice." The quotation indicates that some may have read TC as a warning…
Nicholson, Peter.
Elisabeth Dutton, with John Hines and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 206-16.
Nicholson asserts that critics' "willingness to detect irony at every turn" is appropriate in Chaucer studies, but not in Gower studies, arguing that paradox is a recurrent and sustained mode of thought and expression in Gower's "Confessio." Surveys…
