Thompson, Jefferson M.
Piotr Fast and Wacław Osadnok, eds. From Kievan Prayers to Avantgarde: Papers in Comparative Literature (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Energeia, 1999), pp. 83-98.
Thompson traces parallels among several dichotomies--eros and agape, cupiditas and caritas, love and reason--arguing that Chaucer was unsatisfied with the simple dichotomies he found in the "Roman de la Rose." In KnT, love is "reprimanded" as folly,…
Five chapters, focusing on "Sir Orfeo," "The Awntyrs off Arthure," the "Second Shepherd's Play," BD, and Pearl, respectively. The study emphasizes the intertextual relationships between classical myths, on the one hand, and Celtic and Anglo-Saxon…
MilT, RvT, FrT, SumT, ShT, MerT can be called fabliaux if this term is taken in a typological, rather than strictly historical, acception. Their homogeneity is, however, only apparent. The six tales from CT are divided into three…
Voelker, Sarah Ray.
Piscataway, N. J.: Research & Education Association, 1995.
Study guide to the CT, with character lists, plot summaries and analyses, and study questions and answers for each tale. Also includes introductory backgrounds and suggested essay topics. Illustrated by Karen Pica. Reissued in 2003.
Richmond, Velma Bourgeois.
Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1966.
Studies the backgrounds and characteristics of literary laments for the dead and includes a survey of Chaucer's knowledge of and uses of the topos: his reference to Geoffrey Vinsauf's lament for Richard in NPT 7.3347ff., and several brief instances…
Sokolov, Danila.
Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2018.
Chapter 2, "Chaucerian Melancholy in Renaissance England," explores how in "Astrophel and Stella" Sir Philip Sidney "reactivates: the melancholic and ambivalent "poetics of selfhood" of BD, as mediated in the "Petrarchan and anti-Petrarchan poetry"…
Classical and medieval theories of allegory profoundly affected the interpretation and creation of medieval allegorical literature. The medieval audience believed that all worthwhile writing represented some truth, not necessarily Augustinian…
Low, Anthony.
Pittsburgh, Penn. : Duquesne University Press, 2003.
Subjectivity and a sense of the importance of the inner self and the individual developed gradually from the early Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. Nothing is altogether new in the stunning early-modernist sense of a vast, inner world of the…
Heffernan, Carol Falvo.
Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 1995.
Summarizes medieval and Renaissance attitudes toward melancholy as a medical disorder and examines literary uses of melancholy in BD, TC, and Shakespeare's "As You Like It" and "Hamlet."
Astell, Ann W., and J. A. Jackson, eds.
Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009.
Twelve essays by various authors, plus an introduction by the editors, consider interactions among Christian allegory, talmudic hermeneutics, and the interpretive theory of Emmanuel Levinas. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for…
Steadman, John M.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1979.
In a section called "Chaucer and Medieval Tradition" (pp. 67-114), reprints (with revisions and expansions) several previously published essays by Steadman, all of which explore iconographical or allegorical aspects of Chaucer's works. Includes the…
Sokolov, D. A.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2017.
Argues that the Petrarchism commonly held to have begun in English with Wyatt and Surrey is, instead, an alteration of a tradition already prevalent among English writers such as Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate. In particular, claims that…
Umland, Sam.
Platte Valley Review 21 (Winter 1993): 17-33.
In the GP sketch and in MLPT, Chaucer characterizes his Man of Law as one who does not recognize Divine design behind the pattern of natural events, eternal law behind natural law. The Man of Law errs in focusing on temporal events, failing to…
Green, Joe.
Platte Valley Review 21 (Winter 1993): 6-16.
In GP, Sq-FranL, and FranP, Chaucer characterizes the Franklin as obsessed "with appearances and good feeling." FranT manifests these obsessions and exposes the teller's "superficial understanding of 'gentilesse'."
Swortzell, Lowell.
Plays: The Drama Magazine for Young People 74.5 (2015): 23-28, 64.
One-act play for eight child actors adapted from PardT, with Chaucer speaking directly to the Pardoner at the opening and closing of the plot. Production notes indicate a running time of approximately 20 minutes.
Item not seen. The WorldCat record indicates that this filmstrip "Uses contemporary prints and paintings to illustrate fourteenth century England as reflected in the works of Chaucer" and that the "Recording includes The tale of the wyf of Bathe read…
Item not seen; WorldCat records state that it "Examines the life and ideas of Geoffrey Chaucer and traces the route of his pilgrimage." The records also indicate that the recording was released in 1985 on videocassette with a booklet and in 2005 on…
Anthologizes short stories, tales and fables for juvenile readers, including a version of PardT (pp. 430-34) adapted by Jennifer Westwood, titled "Three Young Men and Death," originally published in 1967, here accompanied by a color illustration of…
Altough the behavior of Alisoun and the knight of WBT counters the teachings of the medieval church, such behavior exemplifies a Christian attitude toward love and marriage.
Ellis, Steve.
Plymouth, U.K : Northcote House, in Association with the British Council, 1996.
An introduction to Chaucer that surveys critical issues and concentrates on how oppositions are posed in his poetry rather than resolved. Topics include the following: The Chaucer Business; Life, Works, Reputation; Dream, Text, Truth; Society,…
Study guide to CT, arranged topically, with sections that introduce the Host, the narrator, and other "voices"; genre and the relations of teller and tale; and several thematic concerns: ideal womanhood and its subversion, writing and authority, and…
The last tales of CT form a closing sequence of transformation: SNT (conversion fervor in the early church), CYT (alchemical madness of fourteenth-century England), ManT (debasing of myth), and ParsT (change of soul through penitence), as Chaucer…
Though the antipoetic and devoutly Christian voices of ParsT and Ret conclude CT, Chaucer assumes three voices in GP: a "clerkly" and rhetorically trained voice for the opening, Chaucer the Pilgrim's voice reporting on the group, and Harry Bailly's…
Owen, Charles A., Jr., and James Dean.
PMLA 101 (1986): 251-53.
Exchange of letters in the Forum section of PMLA, disagreeing about the validity of the Ellesmere order of the CT and about the speaker of Chaucer's Ret.
