Camargo, Martin.
Robert Epstein and William Robins, eds. Sacred and Profane in Chaucer and Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honour of John V. Fleming (Buffalo, N. Y.: University of Toronto Press, 2010), pp. 146-78.
Camargo details how the Pardoner "pointedly rejects every tenet" of moral instruction found in chapter 1 of Waleys's "De modo componendi sermones" and shows how the treatise discloses flaws in the Pardoner's rhetorical techniques. The Pardoner "may…
Abdalla, Laila.
Jennifer C. Vaught, ed. Rhetorics of Bodily Disease and Health in Medieval and Early Modern England. Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 65-84.
Considers PardPT in light of Augustinian semiotic theory. Focus on the body in the Pardoner's materials signals the need to attend to the objects of signs, and the quarrel with the Host "renders impotent" the Pardoner's nominalist "attack on…
Saunders, Corinne.
Laura Ashe, Ivana Djordjević, and Judith Weiss, eds. The Exploitations of Medieval Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 108-24.
The use of magic was exploitative and morally ambiguous; however, with the thirteenth-century rise of universities, attitudes shifted: through natural magic and great learning, one could harness natural powers. The "highly intellectual" FranT…
Lee, B. S.
Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 36 (2010): 47-67.
Lee assesses FranT as a "sequel" to SqT that repudiates its magic, replaces its stasis with moral development in the idea of "gentilesse," and provides a missing Christian subtext--a "Christmas miniature" that precedes the apparent disappearance of…
Reads NPT as a political commentary, with Chauntecleer and Pertelote as Richard and Anne and the fox as Henry Derby (later Henry IV), one of the appellants. Lindeboom comments on May 3, the dreams as Richard's anxieties, dating and astrological…
Grimes, Jodi.
Carmina Philosophiae 19 (2010): 49-68.
MkT reflects Boethian epistemology and demonstrates the limits of human reason. The Monk presents Fortune as in Books 1 and 2 of the "Consolation," but he lacks the faith necessary to understand the divine, while the mocking Knight and Host…
Tani, Akinobu.
Osamu Imahayashi, Yoshiyuki Nakao, and Michiko Ogura, eds. Aspects of the History of the English Language and Literature: Selected Papers Read at SHELL 2009, Hiroshima (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 101-13.
Evidence from variants in manuscripts of Mel indicates that Chaucer's contemporaries accepted his use of doublets in "curial style." The variants reinforce affiliations between Hg and El and between Corpus Christi College 198 and Lansdowne 851,…
Cannon, Christopher.
Textual Practice 24 (2010): 407-34.
Explores medieval definitions and aesthetic responses to proverbs by examining "The Proverbs of Alfred" and Mel, exploring how each depends upon "acts of recognition that are produced by the repetition of well-worn truths." Both works are examples of…
Considers patronage and the developing status of the poet in the role of "court maker" in late medieval England, aligning the change with the influence of Italian culture. In his response to Th, the Host represents a courtly "negative feedback loop,"…
Wallace, David.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 502-23.
Wallace explores "degrees of enclosure" for nuns and surveys representations of nuns in medieval and Renaissance literature and art. Comments on Chaucer's depictions of the Prioress and the Second Nun: Chaucer "tells us much about one of his nuns and…
Assesses the Prioress in light of "A Revelation of Purgatory by an Unknown, Fifteenth-Century Woman Visionary" (1422), arguing that the later work provides evidence that Chaucer's character would have been found "culpable" for her worldliness.
Julius, Anthony.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Julius defines anti-Semitism and describes its history and politics in England. Literary anti-Semitism has "distinct tropes and themes, deployed without respect for genre boundaries." The "master trope" of "a well intentioned Christian place in peril…
McCormack, Frances.
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and John Flood, eds. Heresy and Orthodoxy in Early English Literature, 1350-1680. Dublin Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, no. 3. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), pp. 39-48.
Ambiguous depictions of the Parson and Pardoner reflect contemporary debate regarding false prophets. The Pardoner's negligence, hypocrisy, and language suggest heresy, but he is not accused. The Parson is orthodox, but in his rejection of oaths,…
Phillips explores the proverbial and biblical background to ManT, identifying links between its plot and its teller, an untrustworthy servant. In popular tradition, crows were regarded as unfaithful servants and unreliable messengers, an association…
Jones, Timothy S.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Studies the depiction and reception of historical and literary outlaws in England from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, focusing on how borders of various sorts--legal, ethnic, political, social, and religious--define the outlaw identity. Jones…
Through its "nostalgic" recollection of an idealized "bygone era," CYPT "casts a shadow" on the reformist thinking of SNT. Like many advocates of ecclesiastical reform, the Nun idealizes the primitive Church, but the Canon's Yeoman's performance…
Pangilinan, Maria Cristina Santos.
DAI A70.10 (2010): n.p.
Various Middle English authors succeeded in making London an urban, laicized intellectual center that balanced the clerical legacies of Cambridge and Oxford. These authors explored various academic disciplines (e.g., alchemy for Chaucer) in a manner…
Travis, Peter W.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.
Reads NPT as Chaucer's self-reflexive "ars poetica," a Menippean parody of the complexities of engaging with language and literature. Through subtle play with the traditional liberal arts education, especially the trivium, NPT explores imitation,…
Staley, Lynn.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 113-33.
Explores the trope of England as an idealized garden/island in imagery of homes in various medieval and Renaissance works, including NPT.
Pietka, Rachel.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 7 (2010): 86-95.
Through its "aversion to binary opposites," NPT promulgates "an inclusive perspective that avoids fixed interpretations" of notions of poverty, gender, free will, and authenticity.
Gertz, SunHee Kim.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Gertz reads HF in light of modern semiotic theory (Maria Corti, Umberto Eco, and Roman Jakobson) and medieval traditions of "fürstenspiegel" (mirror of princes), with particular attention to visual signs and codes. Contrasts Chaucer's techniques of…
In HF, Chaucer's depictions of Venus's temple, the desert surrounding it, and the foundation of Fame's palace offer a vision of vernacular poetry that resembles glass. Like glass, such poetry is produced by transformation and translation of…
Cañadas, Ivan.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 18.1 (2010): 57-79.
Chaucer's depiction of the statues of Virgil and Ovid in HF comments ironically on Virgil's political support of Augustus Caesar and on Augustan notions of authority--evidence of Chaucer's skeptical attitude toward literary and political authority.
Comments on HF and TC in chapter 2, "Medieval Literature: Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland" (pp. 47-86). Compares the three buildings that the dreamer visits in HF--the temple in the desert, the palace of Fame, and the twirling house of…
Barr, Jessica.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2010.
In chapter 7, "Discrediting the Vision: The House of Fame" (pp. 184-207), Barr argues that HF portrays an active, unreliable visionary, one who unsuccessfully employs cognitive faculties to try to understand the contents of divinely granted vision.…
