Scheps, Walter.
Leeds Studies in English 9 (1976-77): 19-34.
Although it is uncertain whether Chaucer knew Plutarch's "Life" of Theseus, in KnT the character is a mixture of the two traditions of the interpretation of Theseus: an Apollonian rationalist in Statius (the source in Anel) and a fickle lover in…
Scheps, Walter.
P. E. Szarmach and B. S. Levy, eds. The Fourteenth Century. Acta 4. (Binghampton: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, SUNY Binghampton, 1977), pp. 107-23.
By studying fourteenth-century numismatics and representations of greed, one finds that the Pardoner's extreme avarice is reflected in his knowledge of coins, his identification with horses, and his sterility.
Scheps, Walter.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 11 (1966): 35-43.
Describes and paraphrases Thop, focusing on its style, vocabulary, genre, and adaptation of conventions to show that a tension between "the heroic and the bourgeois" underpins much of the bathos of the Tale and its parodic impact.
The vivid association of the dramatic action of TC with its physical settings reflects a medieval rhetorical technique whereby architectural images ("loci") were employed as aids to organization and memory. The perception of the significance of…
Chaucer defines characters through both natural and conventional theories of etymology. Argyve, related to Argus and foresight, succintly describes the wife of Calchas the visionary. Convention, not inherent association, connects Criseyde with…
Schibanoff, Susan.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 10 (1988): 71-108.
The glosses to the Ellesmere and Egerton manuscripts of WBP and WBT illustrate how differently two readers may respond to a single text. Condemning not only the Wife's sexuality but her "textuality" as well, the Egerton commentator struggles to…
Schibanoff, Susan.
Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, eds. Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 83-106. Reprinted in Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature (Routledge, 1994), pp. 221-45.
Discusses the "well-established 'topos' of manuscript literature that women readers alone are offended by antifeminist texts" and examines Chaucer's defense of himself in portraying Criseyde's guilt. Asserts that Chaucer's Wife of Bath, being…
Schibanoff, Susan.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 76 (1977): 326-33.
Criseyde's "aubes" of TC, III and IV, wherein she swears her constancy to Troilus, ironically recall the "impossibilia" of anti-feminist lying-songs, which warned men not to put trust in women.
Schibanoff, Susan.
Studies in Scottish Literature 13 (1979): 92-99.
Although Pandarus did not appear in literature until Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato," 1336, by 1440 his name had degenerated into a common noun in English. This rapid development argues against the dualism and complexity modern critics find in him. The…
The Man of Law uses the discourses of orientalism and antifeminism to suggest the proximity of Islam to Christianity and of women to men, as well as the necessity of reinscribing Muslims and women as clearly delimited Others. MLT attempts to forge a…
Schibanoff, Susan.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
Schibanoff challenges the notion that Chaucer escaped from the decadent, "unmanly" influence of French verse to achieve his status as "father" of English poetry. In BD, Chaucer adopts the persona of "the weak, puerile, and loveless poet - the 'queer'…
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.
Schieberle, Misty.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 20.2 (2013): 19-40.
Describes a pedagogy for teaching NPT that guides student discussions "beyond basic descriptive understandings . . . into critical arguments," using genre and background material, performative readings, gender concerns, the politics of revolt, and…
Summarizes the discussions of Chaucer in Lynn
Staley's "The Island Garden" (2012), Jamie K. Taylor's
"Fictions of Evidence" (2013), and Jonathan Hsy's "Trading
Tongues" (2013).
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…
Argues that in the Dido account of LGW Chaucer "channels" deep-seated cultural "anxiety about Phoenicians as he asserts his place in a Roman-centered Western tradition." By "removing the story of Dido's diasporic leadership, and misidentifying her…
Schiff, Randy.
John A. Geck, Rosemary O'Neill, and Noelle Phillips, eds. Beer and Brewing in Medieval Culture and Contemporary Medievalism (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), pp. 341-62
Assesses references to ale and wine in PardPT as they reflect the Pardoner's "submerged desire" to bond with the Host and his simultaneous attempt to compete with Harry as leader of the pilgrimage. Argues that "the metaphorical ale-stake associated…
Schildgen, Brenda Deen.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 (1993):111-30.
Chaucer's concern with interpretive variety reflects the concern with open-ended hermeneutics in Jerome's "Prefaces," part of the Wycliffite Bible. Despite Jerome's efforts to restrict exegetical flexibility, and in response to late-medieval…
Schildgen, Brenda Deen.
Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 102-27.
Through authorial intrusions into their texts, Boccaccio and Chaucer defend vernacular fiction as legitimate consolation and a necessary cultural medium. In doing so, both enter into a dialogue with Boethius. Schildgen discusses CT, in particular…
Schildgen, Brenda Deen.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2001.
Applying Habermas's notion of discourse ethics, Schildgen focuses on stories in CT that are "set outside a Christian-dominated world." Individual chapters include discussions of KnT and SqT, MLT, WBT and FranT, PrT and MkT, and SNT. Chaucer's…
Schildgen, Brenda Deen.
Jon Ma. Asgeirsson and Nancy van Deusen, eds. Alexander's Revenge: Hellenistic Culture through the Centuries (Reykjavik: University of Iceland Press, 2002), pp. 209-21.
Compares and contrasts the "treatment of Islam" in MLT and in "Decameron" 1.3 and 10.9, arguing that, unlike Boccaccio, Chaucer "vehemently condemns fraternizing with Islam" and presents Islam "as a dangerous and perfidious opposition to the…
Assesses ambivalence, conventional morality, and the functions of art in CT and in Juan Ruiz's "Libro de Buen Amor," commenting on the role of the narrator in Chaucer and the "staging" of multiple views on "caritas" and "cupiditas" in both works.
Schildgen, Brenda Deen.
Comparative Literature 65.1 (2013): 85-100.
Focuses on the episode of "wood-stripping" that occurs in Statius' :Thebaid" (6.84-117), Boccaccio's "Teseida" (11), and KnT (4.2919-62). While Statius' account is the major model for the others, all versions imply social-political criticism,…
