Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitatsverlag, 1985.
Includes chapters on classical allusion in Pope, More, and Milton, and two chapters devoted to Chaucer. Chapter 2 explores Chaucer's allusions to Virgil's "Aeneid" in KnT, concerning fate. Chaucer's view of a chaotic universe is compared to…
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Northern New England Review 8 (1983): 32-41.
The narrator in TC ridicules and condemns courtly love. The difference between TC and "Il Filostrato" is that Chaucer's narrator is unmasked at the end and earthly love must be rejected in favor of love of Christ whereas in IF the young narrator…
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
American Imago 40 (1983): 103-13.
Several passages in TC indicate a covert incestuous strain between Criseyde and Pandarus, the "senex amans" who uses Troilus to fulfill vicariously his own sexual fantasies.
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Annuale Mediaevale 21 (1981): 111-20.
The idea of sex as hard work and the portrait of January as lover draws on Augustinian theories of pre- and postlapsarian sexuality, also important in WBT and MkT; nevertheless, bawdy treatments of Christian theories are "harmoniously absorbed by the…
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
CEA Critic 45 (1982): 16-22.
Sexual frustration during Arveragus's absence motivates Dorigen's verbal infidelity. Aurelius, however, can neither accept her from her husband nor pay the magician with whom the squire has lowered himself to deal.
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire 54 (1976): 823-36.
The imitation in GP's opening of Virgil's Second "Georgic" suggests a sexual motivation for the pilgrimage and some of the stories. This allusive effect is seen in MerT but it affects other tales and portraits, e.g. the Prioress's. Similarly Horace…
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Explicator 35, iv (1977): 25-26.
The botanical-physical sense of May's appraisal of January's sexual "playing" as "nat...worth a bene" (E 1854) indicates that January has not impregnated May. May's expectancy of impregnation by Damian is frustrated when January interrupts…
A close reading of selected tales and passages of CT, concentrating on the interpenetration of sexual nuances and theological resonances as a source of unity. Reads the tales "palimsestically," i.e., as a series of intratextual allusions and images…
Chaucer satirizes the anti-Semitism and sexual restrictiveness of the medieval church by presenting the serpent-Satan as a representation of Judaic reproduction denied the celibate Prioress. Rudat suggests the Prioress terminated an earlier unwanted…
A "palimpsestic" reading of MerT reveals the irony with which the Merchant treats January and with which Chaucer treats the Merchant, enriching and complicating the "Tale's" identification between the Merchant and January.
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
CEA Critic 58.2 (1996): 35-47.
Allusive echoes among the GP description of the Prioress, WBP, and the biblical Proverbs suggest that Chaucer subtly condemns the Prioress for sexual excess.
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Classical and Modern Literature 3.2 (1983): 89-98.
Explores the allusion to Virgil's "Georgics" in "Faerie Queene" 1.1.50-53, arguing that Spenser "desexualizes the Vergilian model by removing [its] generative principle" (90) and thereby re-makes the Classical/Christian topos that underlies Chaucer's…
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Renascence 35.3 (1983): 167-82.
Reads the allusions to Chaucer's GP, Virgil's "Aeneid," and, most extensively, Pope's "Rape of the Lock" in Eliot's "The Waste Land" as signals to his rejection of the "Classical/Christian tradition."
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.,and Patricia Lee Youngue.
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 55 (1981): 19-43.
The Virgilian "Iuppiter descendens" in CT combines the sacred and the profane. Sexual motivation governs the behavior and storytelling of some of the pilgrims. Medieval man was able to integrate the serious with the comical because he possessed a…
Rudd, Gillian.
London and New York : Routledge, 2001.
A discursive handbook to Chaucer's life and its context, his works, and criticism of his works. The biographical portion provides basic information and notes the variety of Chaucers constructed over the years. Rudd discusses the works chronologically…
Rudd, Gillian.
New York: Manchester University Press, 2007.
Explores relationships between humankind and natural landscapes through critical readings that combine ecological emphases with literary analysis. In a chapter titled "Trees," Rudd suggests that the eventual fate of the forest in KnT illuminates the…
Rudd, Gillian.
John Parham, ed. The Environmental Tradition in English Literature (Burlington, Vt.: 2002), pp.117-29.
Analyzes interactions between humans and nature (animals and environment) "through the lens of ecocriticism," exploring animal metaphors and the treatment of trees in KnT and representations of the sea and rocks in FranT. In KnT humans render nature…
