Hough, Carole.
Richard Dance and Laura Wright, eds. The Use and Development of Middle English (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012), pp. 215-29.
Analyzes the name "Pertelote" in NPT as "beautiful paramour" and "little beauty," and "Colle," "Talbot," and "Gerland" as dog-names. Includes recurrent concern with levels of style in Chaucer's naming and on names that link aspects of CT, e.g.,…
Ashton, Gail, and Daniel T. Kline, eds.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Collection of essays exploring how medievalisms and medieval elements are reclaimed and reconceptualized in contemporary print and digital texts, TV, and film. For an essay pertaining to Chaucer, search for Medieval Afterlives in Popular Culture…
Barrington, Candace
Gail Ashton and Daniel T. Kline, eds. Medieval Afterlives in Popular Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 13-28.
Asserts that PrT "depends upon, and perpetrates, the worst stereotypes of Jews," and assesses thirty-two YouTube dramatizations and adaptations of the tale (posted 2006–11) as evidence of its contemporary reception among high school audiences,…
Alludes to Chaucer in the title of an essay about the poet Barrie Phillip Nichol, "On First Opening Nichol's Chaucer," and briefly characterizes CT as "a long poem that incorporates," playing on the meaning of "corpus" as "body."
Breeze, Andrew.
Housman Society Journal 38 (2012): 89-135.
Explores the sources of several details and attitudes in poems by A. E. Housman, including discussion of the impact of KnT and TC on "A Shropshire Lad," particularly their depictions of love sickness ("amor heroes") and the ennobling effects of…
Doyle, Kara.
Seeta Chaganti, ed. Medieval Poetics and Social Practice: Responding to the Work of Penn R. Szittya (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), pp. 124-42.
Reads the figure of Alceste in LGW as a "fable" of female patronage, and argues that texts such as John Metham's "Amoryus and Cleopes" and an anonymous English translation of a portion of Boccaccio's "De Mulieribus Claris" do not follow Chaucer's (or…
Kim, Jaecheol.
Journal of English Language and Literature (Korea) 58 (2012): 143-61.
Argues that a "pre-modern nationalist discourse" inspired Chaucer to "spawn his own 'nationalist discourse,'" and that Chaucer's reception as the "father" of English poetry "mediates thirteenth century post-colonialism and nineteenth-century…
Leighton, H. Vernon.
Notes on Contemporary Literature 42.1 (2012): 11-12.
Provides evidence that much of John Kennedy Toole's knowledge of Boethius, important to his novel "A Confederacy of Dunces," came through the Chaucer class that he took from Robert Lumiansky.
Lerer, Seth, and Deanne Williams.
Shakespeare 08 (2012): 398-410.
Argues that Shakespeare's reading of Thomas Speght's edition of Chaucer's "Works" (1598) provoked his creative imagination as well as providing source material, looking closely at how Chaucer's depiction of Julius Caesar's death in MkT affected…
Roy, Kari Anne.
David Shields and Matthew Vollmer, eds. Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts (New York: Norton, 2012), pp. 213-14.
Offers a satire of "hipster pilgrims" at a modern music festival, rendered in faux Middle English.
Explores the etymology and pronunciations of "Lithuania" in English, including an explanation of why Chaucer renders it "Lettow" in the GP description of the Knight (CT 1.54).
Sauer, Hans.
Manfred Markus, and others, eds. Middle and Modern English Corpus Linguistics: A Multi-Dimensional Approach (Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2012), pp. 157-75.
Tabulates, describes, and analyzes the interjections used in RvT, summarizing their functions, etymologies, morphologies, and semantics, and using the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse to explore the extent to which the usage in RvT is…
Stadnik, Katarzyna.
Adam Głaz, Hubert Kowalewski, and Anna Weremczuk, eds. What's in a Text? Inquiries into the Textual Cornucopia (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), pp. 126-39.
Explores how speakers' "understanding of their world and their lives" in KnT is "encoded in language," focusing on uses of the auxiliary "moten" and connecting it with the theme of necessity in the tale. Concludes that, in the terms of cognitive…
Surveys the presence and significance of the anus and excrement in medieval culture, particularly the religious thought and literature of the age. Includes brief comments on Chaucer's references to dung, farting, and rear-ends in MilT, MerT, SumP,…
Bowers, John M.
Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2012.
Places the "Gawain"-poet "within the context of Richard II's court and its numerous intrigues" (ix), with chapters on each of his poems (including "Saint Erkenwald"); a life; "A Survey of Sources and Influences"; and a chronology, glossary of…
Hurley, Michael D., and Michael O'Neill.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Introduces the major forms of English poetry from lyric to dramatic monologue to sonnet to ballad and beyond, with recurrent references to Chaucer's role in their development (see index), and a sustained discussion of Chaucer and narrative poetry…
Al-Saleh, Asaad.
Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 45.1 (2012): 35-47.
Describes the idea of the "servant-become-warrior" in the Japanese "Tale of Heike" and in KnT, commenting on the etymological roots of "samurai" and "knight" and exploring how concepts of determinism, service, and Foucauldian disciplinary power…
Laird, Edgar.
Jack P. Cunningham, ed. Robert Grosseteste: His Thought and Its Impact (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), pp. 217-26.
Describes Grosseteste's notion of universals and Wyclif's treatment of it; then argues that KnT and MilT are, respectively, philosophically realist and antirealist, focusing on the First Mover speech in KnT as an example of Grosseteste's…
Jamison, Carol.
Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard, eds. Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins (Woodbridge: The University of York/York Medieval Press, 2012), pp. 239-59.
Uses MLT and Trevet's version of the Constance story to show how Gower "infused" his Constance story in the "Confessio Amantis" with "pastoral rhetoric in order to transform Constance into a representative of Charity" and thereby offer an "'exemplum…
Lewis, Franklin D.
Wali Ahmadi, ed. Converging Zones: Persian Literary Tradition and the Writing of History; Studies in Honor of Amin Banini (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 2012), pp. 200-219.
Translates into modern English verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) the initial tale of Farid Al-Din Attar's story collection "Elahi-Nameh" (Persian, twelfth century), an analogue to MLT.
Higl, Andrew.
Nancy A. Barta-Smith and Danette DiMarco, eds. Inhabited by Stories: Critical Essays on Tales Retold (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), pp. 294-313.
Reads various adaptations of WBPT in light of the time in which each of the individual "iterations" of the Wife was produced, from scribal adjustments in manuscripts, to ballad versions, to John Gay's dramatic adaptation and William Blake's…
McTaggert, Anne.
Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture 19 (2012): 41-67.
Reassesses gender violence in WBPT in terms of René Girard's theory of mimesis that complicates surface oppositions and suggests that we can read the Wife of Bath as parallel to the rapist-knight rather than to the loathly lady. The mirroring of…
O'Byrne, Theresa.
English Studies 93 (2012): 150-68.
Assesses January's praise-of-marriage speech (encomium) as a "classical' thesis' as it appeared in the later Middle Ages." The speech engages the WBP through common source material and follows the topic and structuring of the thesis genre found in…
Reis, Huriye.
Edebiyat fakültesi dergisi (Hacettepe University) 29.2 (2012): 123-35.
Comments on the role and status of women in the fabliau genre, and argues that May of MerT and Alisoun of MilT are "women of resistance . . . concerned with regaining partial control over their own bodies through adultery." The two characters produce…
