Diller, Hans-Jurgen.
Raimund Borgmeier and Peter Wenzel, eds. Spannung: Studien zur Englischsprachigen Literatur: Fur Ulrich Suerbaum zum 75. Geburtstag (Trier : WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2001), pp. 36-47.
Explores crossing patterns of suspense in TC: the "maximal audience suspense and minimal participants' suspense" of the early books are reversed in Books 4 and 5. Attitudes toward predestination complicate the patterns.
Specht, Henrik.
Raken Ringbom and Matti Pissanen, eds. Proceedings from the Second Nordic Conference for English Studies (Abo: Abo Akademi, 1984), pp. 403-13.
Examines "ethopoeia" and "adlocutio" in characterizations and portraiture.
Hanna, Ralph.
Ralph Hanna, Introducing English Medieval Book History: Manuscripts, Their Producers and Their Readers (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 132-65.
Chapter 5 in Hanna's book-length introduction to the study of English medieval books and manuscripts, revisiting and offering new and revised opinions of the nature, value, and relations between the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts of CT. Includes…
Rushton, Cory James.
Raluca L. Radulescu and Cory James Rushton, eds. A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009), pp. 165-79.
Rushton suggests that Th and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" may be accountable for the lack of sustained academic focus on medieval popular romance. Modern popular fiction, games, and films have, on the other hand, embraced many features of the…
Whitehead, Christiania.
Raluca Radulescu and Sif Rikhardsdottir, eds. The Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature (New York: Routledge, 2022), pp. 332-44.
Examines "Middle English lyric writing before and after Chaucer, assessing its evolving relationship to the Continent" and interactions between sacred and secular within the genre. Analyzes Chaucer's (and his successor's") uses of French lyric formes…
Turner, Marion.
Raluca Radulescu and Sif Rikhardsdottir, eds. The Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature (New York: Routledge, 2022), pp. 278-88.
Shows how Chaucer's life and literature were "embedded in European contexts," even as he "ostentatiously displays the Englishness of his poetry." Comments generally on Continental and English aspects of Chaucer's style and content, and examines how…
Schiff, Randy P.
Randy P. Schiff and Joseph Taylor, eds. The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), pp. 82-103.
Argues that the narrator's comments on poachers and governesses in PhyT are not digressive, but part of a broader "biopolitical" concern that "clearly condemns the parental absolutism that leads to Virginius's murder of his daughter" and aptly…
Boitani, Piero.
Rassegna Europea di Letteratura Italiana 18 (2001): 29-39
Traces the knowledge and recognition of Boccaccio in English literary tradition from his obscured status as "Lollius" in Chaucer's TC to clearer acknowledgment in Lydgate and Dryden.
Minkova, Donka, and Robert P. Stockwell.
Raymond Hickey and Stanislaw Puppel, eds. Language History and Linguistic Modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on His 60th Birthday. 2 vols. (Berlin and New York: Mouton, 1997), 1: 29-57.
Identifies inconsistencies in scholarly descriptions of how to pronounce Chaucerian English, and demonstrates that historical data are inconclusive in many phonemic situations, including long vowels, consonant clusters, final -e, and others. Suggests…
Yonekura, Hiroshi.
Raymond Hickey and Stanislaw Puppel, eds. Language History and Linguistic Modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on His 60th Birthday. 2 Vols. (Berlin and New York: Mouton, 1997), 1:229-48.
Documents that compounding was an active process of word formation in Middle English, tabulating Chaucer's compound words and showing that he favored combinations of two Old English nouns rather than combining a noun with another word form or Old…
Astell, Ann W.
Raymond-Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcik, eds. Old Testament Women in Western Literature (Conway, Ark.: UCA Press, 1991), pp. 92-107.
Gregory's Moralia in Job not only associates Job's wife with Eve as the archetypal temptress but also links her voice to the feminine speaking of poetry, with its imagistic power to move, delight, and (mis)instruct. Chaucer refashions her in CT in…
Examines semantic and syntactic features of infinitive clauses used as nominals in GP and NPT. Makes several diachronic observations: in this stage of the development of English, to was becoming the standard infinitive marker, although there were…
Olivares Merino, Eugenio M.
RCEI 45 : 233-44, 2002.
Reviews scholarship concerning Chaucer's visits to Spain and considers ways he may have encountered Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor, orally and/or in manuscript.
WBPT can be seen as Alison's "therapeutic" attempts to "educate the public at large" about domestic violence and rape. Although she succumbs at times to the rhetoric of "the woman as commodity" and misunderstands herself as "unrapeable," Alison…
The selectivity of oral performance and scribal practice parallels the selectivity of hypertext presentation, raising questions about the order of the tales in CT. In MilP, the narrator enjoins readers to arrange the tales as they wish, adumbrating…
Cross accepts the textual conclusions of Pace, making incorrect assumptions in regard to the poem's connection with Richard II and to Boethius's "De consolatione." One difficulty in Sted stems from a single lexical variation in the verb "envoi."
Traces the medieval legend and cult of Saint Loy the horsesmith, especially from British sources; identifies references to the saint in GP and FrT. Two gazetteers assemble artistic and cultural evidence for the legend in Europe and the British…
A detailed, tabulated comparison of tree-lists in Chaucer (Rom 1379-86, PF 176-82, KnT 2063-65) with those in his sources shows Chaucer becoming more familiar with a technical vocabulary, and more willing to adapt and augment his immediate sources…
Considers January's social status and asks why MerT concerns a knight. Examines portrayal of January's household, finding him well-bred but lacking gentility; MerT is thus more firmly situated in the debate about "gentilesse." Also argues that part…
Clarke, Catherine A. M.
Reading Medieval Studies 29: 19-30, 2003.
Clarke discusses the motif of eavesdropping in TC, KnT, and BD. Overhearing (both deliberate and accidental) places speaker and listener in a dialectic relationship.
Holton argues that Chaucer generally prefers direct naming techniques, but he recurrently uses "pronominatio" (i.e., epithets and related circumlocutions) when relying on Virgil as a source in HF and LGW. Also shows how Chaucer exploits the negative…
