Pigg, Daniel F.
Albrecht Classen and Connie Scarborough, eds. Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), pp. 347-58.
Argues that PhyT not only addresses changes in the medieval social power structure, but also serves as a "critique of masculine power" within the medieval European court system.
Yeager, R. F.
Esther Cohen, Leona Toker, Manuela Consonni, and Otniel E. Dror, eds. Knowledge and Pain (New York: Rodopi, 2012), pp. 43-62.
Unlike their biblical source, Chaucer's and Gower's allusions to Jephthah's daughter indicate concern with pain and emotional suffering. Also considers the illustration in Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.126 that accompanies Gower's tale of Virginia in…
Hodder, Karen.
Karen Hodder and Brendan O'Connell, eds. Transmission and Generation in Medieval and Renaissance Literature: Essays in Honour of John Scattergood (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012), pp. 141-52.
Discusses Wordsworth's modernization of ManT, which was commissioned for Thomas Powell's "The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer Moderniz'd" (1841) but eventually suppressed by Wordsworth's wife.
Viewed in light of Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation," the Pardoner's relics are simulacra, which allows Chaucer to question their "realness." The textuality of PardT (and CT as a whole) is to be read as a hyperreality.
Posits the centrality of the Pardoner (rather than the marginality assumed by many critics) to CT. The "confidence game" of his narration parallels Chaucer's own rhetorical approach and informs those of his critics. Chaucer illustrates the…
Landy, Joshua.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012
Applies understanding of literary texts, including Chaucer's CT, to ideas of everyday life. Chapter 1, "Chaucer: Ambiguity and Ethics," addresses the benefits of using NPT, in particular, to teach ethics and issues of morality.
Comments on Umberto Eco's, Jacques Derrida's, and Marianne Dekoven's contributions to animal studies, and assesses the Host's references to "jade" and "trede-fowl" in NPP and NPE as "prime examples" of the "human habit of appropriating the animal…
Analyzes the Parson's use of "myrie" in ParsP in terms of the "internal generic matrix" constructed by the Parson in the ParsT. Focuses on Tzvetan Todorov's and Paul Strohm's writings on genre.
Hardie, Philip.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Explores the meaning of Middle English "fama," derived from the Latin, in relation to the spoken word. Chapter 15, "Chaucer's 'House of Fame' and Pope's 'Temple of Fame'," analyzes relations between the spoken and written word in these poems, as well…
Nuttall, Jenni.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Introduction to TC designed for students. Provides scene-by-scene themes, key topics, and commentary, with recurrent attention to Chaucer's debt to Boccaccio's "Il filostrato."
Examines HF and other medieval dream-visions from a stand-point of performance theory, while considering the role of the narrator/dreamer as perceiver and creator of meaning, with ramifications for how narrative may be viewed as process, rather than…
Havely, Nick.
Seeta Chaganti, ed. Medieval Poetics and Social Practice: Responding to the Work of Penn R. Szittya (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), pp. 109-23.
Reads the relationship between the formel and Nature in PF in light of late medieval practices of wardship, informed by attention to "yerde" as an emblem of authority. Comments on the formel's decision not to marry and on parallels between the formel…
Focuses on how the idiomatic phrase "for goddes love" is used in TC as "an expression of power" and how the phrase "appeals to a divine system of mercy and justice" when used by Troilus, Criseyde, and Pandarus.
Suggests Chaucer's portrayal of Criseyde challenges the "traditional 'descriptio' as a restrictive benchmark of feminine beauty." Describes Criseyde's transformations in TC as an "experiential journey through love and war."
Analyzes Criseyde, arguing that Chaucer forces the reader's "active engagement" with the language in Criseyde's soliloquy, which reinforces the ambiguity of her character.
Argues that Criseyde is a "willful agent," who reveals "nominalist intentions" and is guided by her own desires and "misdirected will" in her love of Troilus.
Examines shame as a force in identity construction and a constraint on female agency, focusing on Criseyde in TC and Dido in HF, and briefly mentioning LGW. As an historical force, shame also determines narrative possibilities in these poems.
Collection of essays on classical Persian literature. Includes an article by F. D. Lewis, "One Chaste Muslim Maiden and a Persian in a Pear Tree: Analogues of Boccaccio and Chaucer in Four Earlier Arabic and Persian Tales" that links linking Arabic…
Staley, Lynn.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.
Beginning with Gildas' depiction of England as a beautiful garden, explores metaphorical and physical gardens in medieval English cultural history, arguing that Chaucer indicates "awareness of nation as landscape" in CT. Chapters 2 and 3 emphasize…
Chaganti, Seeta, ed.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.
Essays emphasize the importance of poetry and poetics in the "formation of social structures, actions, and utterances" in this festschrift for Penn R. Szittya. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Medieval Poetics and Social Practice…
Sebastian, John T.
Seeta Chaganti, ed. Medieval Poetics and Social Practice: Responding to the Work of Penn R. Szittya (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), pp. 95-108.
Looks at the public aspect of devotional poetry, referring to Chaucer and PF.
Perkins, Nicholas, and Alison Wiggins.
Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2012.
Examines the use of desire in stories of romances in Dante, Chaucer, and Malory. Traces development of the medieval romance genre in later periods, including novels of J. R. R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling, and films, such as "Star Wars" and "Monty…
