Surveys Middle English references to Spanish people, places, and things, concluding that, among Middle English authors, Chaucer "reflects the greatest and the most diverse knowledge" of Spain. He was familiar with Spanish geography, "hispano-Arabic…
Shaw, Patricia.
Purificacion Fernandez Nistal and Jose Ma Bravo Gazalo, eds. Proceedings of the VIth International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1995), pp. 31-40.
Compares the roles and functions of Criseyde and the Wife of Bath as two of the most outstanding female characters in Middle English literature.
Shaw, Priscilla D.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1982): 3169A.
Besides Brooke's "Tragicall Historye," TC seems a significant source for Shakespeare's play. Although verbal parallels are scanty, speeches comparable in rhetoric, imagery, and theme appear in greater density than could be mere conventions of…
A murder mystery set in medieval London, told by Geoffrey Chaucer recounting events in the first person. Includes various historical persons and provides chapter notes at the end of the narrative.
Reader-response analysis of various dramatic monologues. Shaw focuses on the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning and other Victorians but clarifies the functions of deception, self-deception, casuistry, irony, double irony, and Sartre's concept of…
Shawver, Gary W., ed.
Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 2002.
Critical edition of Usk's Testament, with introduction, commentary, and apparatus, including the source of Book 3--Anselm of Canterbury's treatise on divine foreknowledge and human free will. The introduction and commentary document the author's life…
Shawver, Gary Wayne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 3655A, 1999.
Computer-assisted analysis of "storie" and "tale" in context indicates that Chaucer uses them differently. "Storie" typically appears in relation to the historical, courtly, and clerical, associated with public memory and authority. "Tale" refers to…
In her poem "The Author's Dreame," Lanyer uses the medieval dream vision, allusions to Chaucer (HF) and other poets, and Renaissance and biblical tropes to criticize as well as praise her patrons; however, her authority is threatened by the use of…
Treats Pandarus as a figure or personification of lust in TC, counterpointing courtly love as manifested in Troilus. Examines Pandarus's rhetoric, along with Troilus's and Criseyde's interpretations of it, arguing that Chaucer's use of allegory is…
Reads LGW as a "double palinode" in which Chaucer explores the "variety and complexity of the feminine psyche" as expressed in his sources, Ovid and Boccaccio, and his own TC. Compares LGWP-F and LGWP-G to show that Chaucer increases the comedy and…
Assesses Chaucer's presentation of women in TC, LGW, and CT (especially MLT) for the various ways that he invigorates them as characters to give them voice and dimension.
Sheehan, Michael M.
Medievalia et Humanistica 13 (1985): 23-42.
Discusses the legal status of homogenous groups of medieval women--the landed class under common law, free townswomen, peasants under manorial custom, townswomen of lowly estate, and the religious--under headings birth, childhood, girlhood, majority,…
Offers pedagogical advice for developing interactive games, concentrating on character development, narrative structure, and technique. Invokes CT at several junctures, commending Chaucer's innovative techniques as background to developments in…
When Chaucer notes in GP that the Pardoner could "wel affile his tongue," he is referring to the tongue as a weapon, a source of "slander and destruction," as noted in Psalms 56 and 63. Critics who have translated "affile" as "polish" have misread…
Shenk, Robert.
Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 2 (1981): 69-77.
Assesses "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" with recurrent glances at its analogues, Gower's "Tale of Florent" and Chaucer's WBT. The life question in the "Wedding" and in WBT "speak directly to a perennial feminine plight" (69), and in…
In a section exploring "epic masculinity" in the age of Marlowe, suggests that Chaucer's depiction of Aeneas in LGW and HF anticipates humanist "rethinking" about the hero, that Chaucer "greatly influenced" Marlowe's depiction of him in "Dido, Queen…
Shepherd, G. T.
D. S. Brewer, ed. Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature (University: University of Alabama Press; London: Nelson, 1966), pp. 65-87.
Reads TC as a "romance in the tragic mode" that reflects the "mood of many Englishmen in the late fourteenth century." Focuses on the role of the narrator and the rhetorical strategies (with reference to the "Ad Herennium") that Chaucer uses to…
Shepherd, Geoffrey T.
Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, eds. J. R. R. Tolkien: Essays in Memoriam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 204-20.
Chaucer questions the nature of storytelling and the possibility of writing "truth" in imaginative literature. Two words express the divergence of the problem in the Middle Ages: "sooth," which is axiomatic truth (often expressed proverbially);…
Shepherd, Geoffrey.
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 262-89.
Surveys the range of religious and philosophical concerns and attitudes of late fourteenth-century England, and gauges Chaucer's investment in them. More moral than dogmatic, Chaucer "never discloses his commitment in religion" and "offers few…
Includes a chapter entitled "Chaucer's Westminster" (pp. 83-89) that comments on the effects of the plague in Westminster, Chaucer's knowledge of architect Henry Yevele and carpenter Hugh Herland, and the buildings in Westminster that survive from…
Shepherd, Stephen H. A.
Jennifer Fellows, Rosalind Field, Gillian Rogers, and Judith Weiss, eds. Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Literature Presented to Maldwyn Mills (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), pp. 112-28.
"The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" recalls WBP and WBT "in a spirit of creative adaptation and emulation," as part of a conscious travesty of this and other sources.
Sherbo, Arthur.
Studies in Bibliography 35 (1982): 154-55.
Antiquary Samuel Pegge, writing in "Gentlemen's Magazine" of June, 1758, quotes LGW MS in his possession. The text is close to that in British Library Additional MS 9832, but Pegge's was probably a different, now lost, MS.
Lot 1543 is "Chaucer (black letter): printed by Wyllyam Bonham, at the sign of the Reed [sic] Lyon," given to Rogers (1763 - 1855) by his friend Horne Tooke.
Sheridan explores ways that language is like money in acts of interpretation, examining the role of the Host in CT, readers' valuations of various tales, patronage and interpretive control, and the "mercantile" strategies of May (MerT) and the Wife…
