Johnson, Eleanor.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Examines fiction's role in shaping readers' ethics: the transformation of the narrator encourages and mirrors the transformation of the reader (protrepsis). Discusses medieval texts that theorize themselves and teach the reader how to read, positing…
Middleton, Anne.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 35 (2013): 29-46.
Documents William Langland's use, in "Piers Plowman," of sudden, irruptive, colloquial, and polysemous language, distinguishing it from so-called "real" speech and assessing its thematic, narratological, and ethical values. Gower found this device of…
Quinn, William A.
Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013.
Recovers clues to Chaucer's own authorial recital by searching for evidence of tonal intentions in TC. Provides a performance-based reading of the poem that begins with "the premise that Chaucer himself once recited TC aloud," thus allowing "evidence…
Petitt, Thomas.
Tatjana Silec, ed. Voix (et Voies) du Désordre au Moyen Âge. Volume Issu du Colloque du Centre d'Études Médiévales Anglaises de Paris-Sorbonne (22-23 Mars 2012). AMAES, no. 34. (Paris: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2013), pp. 5-49.
Refers to Chaucer in connection with rebellion and violence.
Yvernault, Martine.
Tatjana Silec, ed. Voix (et Voies) du Désordre au Moyen Âge. Volume Issu du Colloque du Centre d'Études Médiévales Anglaises de Paris-Sorbonne (22-23 Mars 2012). AMAES, no. 34. (Paris: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2013), pp. 109-24
Explores the ambivalence of the forest in several examples, particularly ones drawn from KnT and BD.
Parsons, Ben.
Tatjana Silec, ed. Voix (et Voies) du Désordre au Moyen Âge. Volume Issu du Colloque du Centre d'Études Médiévales Anglaises de Paris-Sorbonne (22-23 Mars 2012). AMAES, no. 34. (Paris: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2013), pp. 81-108.
Focuses on the popularity of the Pardoner's character and on the connection between Chaucer and the "Beryn"-poet.
Strickland, Deborah Eileen.
DAI A73.10 (2013): n.p.
Examines figures of women writers in the work of male authors from Chaucer to Marlowe, with the goal of recovering the woman writer's significance, even in the absence of female-authored direct texts. Includes discussion of TC and Philomela and Dido…
Bahr, Arthur.
Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013.
In a chapter entitled "Constructing Compilations of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'," considers CT through the lens of Walter Benjamin's historical materialism. Teases out three narrative threads by means of "compilational construction." The…
Meyer-Lee, Robert J.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 35 (2013): 47-83.
Documents how editors' presentation of CT as a sequence of fragments is misguided and encourages that the description be abandoned. The term misrepresents the evidence of the manuscripts, and is misleading because Chaucer's discontinuities are…
Introduction by Steven Justice. Collection of essays on a range of subjects, including Ricardian public poetry, form and authorship, and the role of the modern annotator. Includes three chapters primarily devoted to CT: "Chaucer's 'New Men' and the…
Argues that female bodies in CT represent texts that are unreadable by husbands, and suggests that ultimately, this is symptomatic of an impossibility of "cognitive seeking."
Examines the vice of curiosity, arguing that Chaucer both expands its application from the realm of the intellectual to the realm of the physical, and suggests that poetry may be a cause and a remedy for the desire to inquire into private matters.…
Powell, Jason E. and William T. Rossiter, eds
Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013. ix, 256 pp.
"Examines the duality of the roles of author and ambassador through a study of the connection between the discourses and practices of authority and diplomacy in the literature of the late medieval and early modern periods." Essays "argue that…
Pugh, Tison.
Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2013. xviii, 251 pp.
Includes biographical information, historical context, Chaucer's sources, a pronunciation guide, and glossary of common Middle English words. Chapter 2, "Chaucer's Literature," is a comprehensive guide for beginning readers, and covers Chaucer's…
Looks at "late medieval texts in which writing functions both verbally and pictorially," such as texts of the Passion, in which red ink in the manuscript creates a picture of Christ's blood, mentioned in ABC. TC similarly describes tearful verses,…
Fumo, Jamie C.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 35 (2013): 85-136.
Various associations of sight and death indicate that KnT is a "nightmare vision of vision itself" which, in comparison with Boccaccio's "Teseida," flattens the character of Emelye, intensifies her agency, and indicts chivalry. In KnT the motifs of…
Rigby, S. H.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 35 (2013): 329-71.
Surveys classical and medieval notions of courage ("fortitude") with particular attention to Giles of Rome and chroniclers of the Battle of Agincourt, and recurrent comments on Chaucer's Knight, Squire, and Troilus. Describes the criteria and nuances…
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,…
Addresses how "manipulations of time" affect the narrative structure of KnT, and "recreate instabilities inherent to fourteenth-century chivalric ideas." Views Theseus, Palamon, and Arcite as the "walking dead," since they only "exist in literature…
Walker, Greg.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
Explores the "potential value and pitfalls of reading the literature and drama of this period 'historically.'" Chapter 6 addresses Chaucer and argues that Absolon "defies categorization," but seems to have origins in popular religion and medieval…
Argues that the name "Strother" in RvT is not a place name but a surname, and suggests a connection between the tale's fictional clerks, John and Aleyn, and two junior members of the prominent Strother family of Northumberland.
