Braswell, Mary Flowers.
Austin Sarat, Cathrine O. Frank, and Matthew Anderson, eds. Teaching Law and Literature (New York: Modern Language Association, 2011), pp. 155-61.
Offers a pedagogical unit in which advanced students explore similarities between CT (especially GP) and manor court records, capitalizing on Chaucer's familiarity with legal proceedings. Suggests that the "manor court seems to have influenced…
Dobyns, Ann.
Kathleen Dubs and Janka Kaśčáková, eds. Does It Really Mean That? Interpreting the Literary Ambiguous (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), pp. 226-42.
Explores similarities between ambiguity and rhetorical invention in rhetorical tradition from Plato to the twenty-first century. Then discusses three examples of "conscious exploitation of the potential of ambiguity": "Sir Gawain and the Green…
Describes and assesses the presence of the comic mode in English literature, including a discussion (pp. 42-51) of portions of CT (especially MilT, RvT, and WBP) that explores how Chaucer achieves comedy without negating the "seriousness of the…
Siewers, Alfred K.
Stephanie LeMenager, Teresa Shewry, and Ken Hiltner, eds. Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 105-20.
Views "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Malory's "Morte Darthur," and CT through the lens of ecopoetics, contending that they all rely upon the interdependence of author, text, and audience; employ metonyms rather more than metaphors; play with…
Guidry, Marc, and Charles Jones, eds.
Nacogdoches, Tex.: Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2011.
An art-edition of KnT, with wood-cut style illustrations accompanying the text, followed by a summary of the tale, and comments on its sources, date, genre, structure, themes, style, prosody, historical context, and previous illustrations in…
Argues that "two medieval methods of memorializing" are in tension in KnT: "celebration" of chivalric loss, and Boethian remembrance. Theseus's admonitions to remember Arcite "leave little room" for "healthy" mourning and reveal the limits of…
Describes the cultural landscape that underlies John's exhortation to Nicholas in MilT to "Awak, and thenk on Cristes passioun!" (1.3478 ff.), showing that John's extended and naïve address resonates with the "affective piety" encouraged in the…
Smith, Sueanna.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 8 (2011): 16-30.
Argues that MilT and RvT "revise the image of masculine chivalry constructed in" KnT, the first offering a model of "physical 'cherl' masculinity," the second "an image of masculinity that prizes internal desire over physical bravado." Through their…
Reads the rape motif of WBT against the background, context, and language of the Statute of Rapes (1382), arguing that the tale uses "narrative strategies made possible in late-medieval regulation of 'raptus'" to present "the realities of gendered…
Compares and contrasts attitudes toward age and aging in WBT, Gower's tale of Florent, and "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle," considering these attitudes in light of late medieval social perspectives on age and marriage that were affected…
Bart, Patricia R.
Donald Prudlo, ed. The Origin, Development, and Refinement of Medieval Religious Mendicancies (Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2011), pp. 307-34.
Comments on the presence and treatments of friars in three Middle English writers, including discussion of Chaucer's depictions of friars and the Friar in CT and his uses of anti-mendicant literature as source material.
Considers the protagonists of ClT and Lars von Trier's film "Breaking the Waves," exploring how the audience's experiences of the "weird realism" of Griselda and Bess may be seen to induce a "heightened mode of encounter with the traces of a…
Yoo, Inchol.
Journal of English Language and Literature (Korea) 57 (2011): 1173-98.
Considers the "politics of translation" in ClT, arguing that the tale is primarily concerned with how Walter "draws out the willing submission of his subjects," manifest in the "analogical relation between Walter and Griselda as the translator and…
Modernizes MerPT in iambic pentameter couplets, with brief notes and facing-page text in Middle English. The introduction (pp. vii-xv) emphasizes the bitter tone of the tale and its satire
Bennett, Kristen Abbott.
This Rough Magic 2.2 (2011): 1-24.
Contends that the SqT explores "rhetorical imitation" as a means to confront the postlapsarian "fallen" nature of language, "multiplying the rhetorical conventions 'imitatio,' inexpressibility, and 'translatio'" in order to "probe the idea of poetic…
Explores the medieval concept of "mounted knighthood" in "conception and practice," considering how it resonates with "postmodern models of the cyborg, distributed consciousness and the inherently prosthetic self." Assesses "chivalry's intersections…
Argues that Edmund Spenser's adaptations of SqT and "Amis and Amiloun" in Book IV of "The Faerie Queene" "[embody] his theory of friendship," both in the relations and interactions among the characters and in the ways that he asserts his own place in…
Pettibon, Robin.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 8 (2011): 121-28.
Uses details of the Pardoner's description in the GP and his interactions with other pilgrims to support the hypothesis that Chaucer depicts him as a castrato and satirize an aspect of corruption in the medieval Church.
Reads PrT and its concern with usury in light of medieval architectural construction and its dependence upon financing through lending, arguing that although the Tale demonizes Jewish lenders and exalts Christians through associations with,…
Heffernan, Carol F.
Leeds Studies in English 42 (2011): 43-52.
Reconsiders questions of the number of Canterbury pilgrims, focusing on GP, 1.164 and the ecclesiastical pilgrims. Suggests that the Nun's Priest and the Clerk may be identical or, at least, kindred spirits, and considers what NPT and ClT may reveal…
Linden, Stanton J.
Wayne H. Finke and Barry J. Luby, eds. A Confluence of Words: Studies in Honor of Robert Lima (Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta, 2011), pp. 227-62.
Traces the influence of CYPT on the "writings of late medieval alchemical works," focusing on George Ripley's "Compound of Alchemy" and discussing a variety of motifs, from alchemists' attire and associations, to the jargon and dangers of alchemy,…
McKinley, Kathryn.
Nino Zchomelidse and Giovanni Freni, eds. Meaning in Motion: The Semantics of Movement in Medieval Art (Princeton, N.J.: Department of Art and Archeology, Princeton University, 2011), pp. 215-32.
Reads the description of the temple of Venus in HF in light of its literary sources and late medieval church ambulation, investigating how ideas of physical, aesthetic, and spiritual motion underlie the narrator's moving gaze. Includes five b&w…
Schieberle, Misty Yvonne.
Dissertation Abstracts International A72.03 (2011): n.p.
Examines "the role of women in literary texts as counselors to kings" in late medieval England, assessing works by Chaucer (LGW and Mel), John Gower, and Stephen Scrope.
Schrock, Chad.
Studies in Philology 108 (2011): 27-43.
Assesses how the invocation to the "yevere of the formes" (2228ff.) that opens the "Legend of Philomela" in LGW contributes to the "primary rhetorical effect" of the legend, i.e.,"secondary pathos." As an appeal to an absent god, the invocation, like…
Caie, Graham D.
Päivi Pahta and Andreas H. Jucker, eds. Communicating Early English Manuscripts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 149-61.
Presents evidence that William Thynne used MS Hunter 409 as his source when preparing Rom for his 1532 edition of Chaucer's Workes," "resorting to the French original when in doubt," and recurrently archaizing the text by adding the y-prefix to…
