Scanlon, Larry.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Late-medieval English exempla and exemplum collections have political and ideological significance. Vernacular exempla are "narrative enactment(s) of cultural authority" that appropriate the authority of exemplary sermons and imitate the political…
Scanlon, Larry.
Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds. The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 220-56.
Scanlon considers contemporary ideas of vernacular literature and its potential for "subversiveness" through incompleteness, focusing on the concept of "poet laureate" as introduced into English by Chaucer in ClT and on the interdependence of…
Scanlon, Larry.
New Medieval Literatures 6 (2003): 129-65
Scanlon reads ClT against a historical tension between aristocratic arranged marriage and canonist marriage of consent, focusing on the espousal scene, the papal letter forged by Walter, and the conclusion and Envoy of the Tale.
Scanlon, Larry.
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 165-78.
Scanlon introduces Chaucer as the "most monumental of English poets," summarizes Chaucer's biography, surveys his works and their reception, and comments on the difficulties of dealing with his legacy: especially in CT, Chaucer is "eager to disavow"…
Scanlon, Larry.
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh, eds. Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the "Canterbury Tales" (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), pp. 45-55.
Suggests that modernity's insistence on a repressive break with the past helps to explain the paucity of screen adaptations of Chaucer's works, commenting on similarities between Chaucer's desert in HF and the "desert of the [R]eal" of Jean…
Scanlon, Larry.
Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 156-82.
Argues that "alone of the three 'fathers of English poesy [Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate],' Gower openly grapples with an acute awareness of the cultural centrality of a concept that extends from a betrayal of love's intimacy to social, political, and…
Scarry, Elaine.
Elaine Scarry, ed. Fins de Siècle: English Poetry in 1590, 1690, 1790, 1890, 1990 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 1-36.
Explores why the world is "newly alert to its need for poetry" at the end of each century, including comments on Chaucer's writing of CT at the end of the fourteenth.
Scase, Wendy.
Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 1989.
The anticlericalism of "Piers Plowman" and its time period is not traditional, as has been assumed, but new and requires fresh examination. It transforms and unifies traditional attacks on monastics, friars, and secular clergy into an attack on all…
Encourages more thorough integration of Chaucer studies and Middle English studies, exemplifying the potential by examining the "pragmatic dimension" of "curteisly" in RvT (1.3997) and suggesting that John and Aleyn's use of low-prestige dialect may…
Scase, Wendy.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Studies the "impact of judicial complaint on the formation of literary practice" in late medieval England, describing the "emergence and development" of the "literature of clamour" and exploring the influence of this literature on the rise of English…
Scase, Wendy.
Michael O'Neill, ed. The Cambridge History of English Poetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 43-62.
Scase summarizes the Latin, French, and English traditions of poetry in late medieval England, describing how major poets of the era engaged these traditions and created a new legacy. Chaucer engaged tradition by posing as an "inadequate" poet, by…
Scattergood, John,and Julia Boffey,eds.
Dublin: Four Courts, 1997.
Ten essays initially presented at the first three conferences of the Early Book Society: Durham, 1989; Trinity College, Dublin, 1991; and Sheffield, 1993. The essays consider texts and books produced between the late fourteenth and early sixteenth…
Explains the different strands in Scog partly through elements taken from Cicero's De amicitia and partly through its nature as a begging poem for Michaelmas, when annuities were renewed.
Scattergood, John.
Keith Busby and Erik Kooper, eds. "Courtly Liberature: Culture and Context" (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1990), pp. 499-508.
Much of the scholarship on Chaucer's "Adam" has focused on identification. But "many of Chaucer's shorter poems are genre pieces in which personal statement emerges by way of a treatment of conventional matters; a traditional type of poem is…
Scattergood, John.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 122-38.
"The Garlande of Laurell" is Skelton's considered statement about poetry, the nature of poetic tradition, and his own role in it. But "the most substantial earlier treatment of the subject of "The Garlande of Laurell" in English poetry was Chaucer's…
Scattergood, John.
Essays in Criticism 37 (1987): 110-20.
Chaucer adapts the conventional dawn-song contrast between work and love as activities appropriate to day and night, respectively, in TC and the fabliaux, where "bisynesse" is used to connote lovemaking as the proper work of the night.
Scattergood, John.
Myra Stokes and T. L. Burton, eds. Medieval Literature and Antiquities: Studies in Honour of Basil Cottle (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987), pp. 145-62.
Set in "a sort of suburban underworld," SNT and CYT treat "subtle threats" to the established values and ideologies of the city. For Chaucer, "the potential for growth and change...lay beyond the comfortably reassuring town walls in the suburban…
Chaucer works with a poetic genre; within it, however, he directs his attention to a specific occasion, probably Richard II's difficulties with royal prerogative in 1387.
Scattergood, John.
Essays in Criticism 44 (1994): 171-89.
John Shirley's comments about the relationship of Ven to court scandal have been misconstrued, disguising the poem's connection to Otto de Graunson's "Cinq ballades." Chaucer used five ballades to realize Graunson's "curiosite" (intricate…
Proposes a reading for PF 215-16: "and with a harde file / She couched hem." "Couched" comes from French "cocher," meaning "to cut a notch or groove," a necessary step in arrow-making.
Scattergood, John.
Notes and Queries 51.3 (2004): 233-34.
Argues for the adoption of "thy selven" instead of "they shynen" (line 1015) as the "lectio difficilior: and as the reading supported by Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 16, the copy-text for most editions of HF.
