Shippey, T. A.
Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert, eds. The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance. Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library. (New York: Longman, 2000), pp. 78-96.
Attributes the popularity of "Gamelyn," in part, to its association with CT, arguing that Chaucer intended to adapt "Gamelyn" for telling by the Knight's Yeoman, even though Chaucer "did not like yeomen very much." Also assesses the tension between…
Shippey, Thomas A.
In Heroes and Legends: The Most Influential Characters of Literature. Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses, 2014. Video recording. Disc 1 of 4, Lecture 5.
Video recording of lecture (ca. 30 min.), with illustrations, accompanied by an edited text of the lecture in the Course Guidebook (pp. 31-36). Comments on details of the Wife's character in GP, WBP as an autobiography, the Wife's challenges to…
Shippey, Thomas A.
In Heroes and Legends: The Most Influential Characters of Literature. Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses, 2014. Video recording. Disc 1 of 4, Lecture 6.
Video recording of lecture (ca. 31 min.), with illustrations, accompanied by an edited text of the lecture in the Course Guidebook (pp. 37-42). Describes the plot of TC, emphasizing the ambiguities of Criseyde and contrasting her character with that…
Shippey, Tom.
Jean E. Godsall-Myers, ed. Speaking in the Medieval World (Boston: Brill, 2003), 125-44.
Just as in RvT Chaucer plays on his audience's awareness of dialect geography, in SumT he exploits strong contemporary awareness of linguistic class markers. If Chaucer was in some sense a philologist, he was also an efficient and deliberate…
Shippey, Tom.
Joseph Epstein, ed. Literary Genius: 25 Classic Writers Who Define English & American Literature (Philadelphia, Pa.: Paul Dry Books), 2007, pp. 8-15.
Comments on Chaucer's life and works, focusing on his narrative timing, depth of characterization, and linguistic subtlety as means to express sympathy for human weakness. Includes three glossed passages from CT and two wood engravings by Barry Moser…
Shirley, Charles Garrison.
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1979): 6118A.
Computer-generated concordances and frequency lists help in deciding which part of a character's vocabulary is especially significant. Pandarus' vocabulary emphasizes his expertise in using social and family relationships. Criseyde applies words to…
Shirley, Peggy Faye.
Dissertation Abstracts International 38 (1977): 1417A-18A.
When King Alfred translated Boethius' "Consolation," he changed some of the materials so that it could be understood by his people whereas Chaucer tried to translate as accurately as his Middle English would allow. The two translations are as…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Hugh T. Keenan, ed. Typology and English Medieval Literature (New York: AMS, 1992), pp. 149-68.
Repeated imagery of falconry's mew, derived from typology and folklore, symbolize the poem's vision of mutability in human affairs. Especially as they relate to the character of Troilus, these images represent the Neo-Platonic notion of the soul as…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Bruce Henricksen and Thais E. Morgan, eds. Reorientations: Critical Theories and Pedagogies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990) pp. 77-92.
In medieval studies, which are threatened by pluralism, medievalists can communicate the intent of the originals (now translated) by using literary theory to examine "punning, allusion, quotation, and voice." Examines puns, etc. in TC, Dante's…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Dante and Modern American Criticism, a special issue of Annali d'Italianistica 8 (1990): 384-94.
Explores American fascination with Dante as a way to get "some purchase on Dante," e.g., K. Taylor's contrast of "Dante with Chaucer to erect Chaucer the 'anti-Dante'." Examines the influence of Dante on LGWP and briefly on HF. Shoaf concludes that…
Chaucer explores the "citation and corruption of media" in MLT by having the lawyer tell a tale of "pseudo-circulation" in which Custance remains constant despite her apparent circulation and use. The tale enacts the Man of Law's anxieties about…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Julian N. Wasserman and Lois Roney, eds. Sign, Sentence, Discourse: Language in Medieval Thought and Literature (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989), pp. 9-30.
Treats the anxiety caused by the "instability and arbitrariness" of language as a "transcendental medium...between phenomena and ideas."
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 83-103.
Modern literary theory is concerned with the problem of "how language 'refers' in the critical text that has lost faith in the communion between language and reality." Shoaf observes this faith, which was stronger in the Middle Ages, at work in the…
BD's central theme is that change is necessary and inevitable and must be graciously accepted. Initially the Black Knight avoids change; by the end of BD he is reconciled with, and embraces, change. In BD, Chaucer succeeds in his portrayal of…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 78 (1979): 313-24.
The poet in BD takes the role of confessor and "medicus animae" to the Black Knight, whose shrift and repentance return him to the duties of everyday living. The hunt, which sets the scene, is an allegorical image of the process of confession…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 1 (1979): 55-66.
Fluent in English, French, Latin, and Italian, Chaucer realized the burden of responsibility in translating another poet's work. Also highly aware of the mutability of language, he sought to re-create new meaning in translations which he hoped would…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., ed. Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), pp. 189-203.
Arguing that Chaucer was more deeply influenced by Dante than is generally accepted, Shoaf demonstrates Chaucer's dependence on Dante in MLT.
Shoaf, [Richard] Allen.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2001.
Chaucer's use of metonymy in CT expresses his "anxiety of circulation," which is traced through his references to the fragmented body and bodily functions, infection, magic, rhetoric, and translation. Shoaf examines relationships among tales,…
Shoaf, R. Allen.
Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, eds. Fleshly Things and Spiritual Matters: Studies on the Medieval Body in Honour of Margaret Bridges (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), pp. 193-208.
Explores verbal play with walls and words in Dante's allusion to Pyramus and Thisbe in his "Commedia"; Chaucer's uses of enclosure and openness in TC in light of his own allusion to the love pair (TC 5.1247-48); and Henryson's closing off of…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen], ed., with the assistance of Catherine S. Cox.
Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992
Sixteen essays or portions of longer works, all pertaining to metafictive or metatextual aspects of TC as a self-conscious work of literature. Each includes a synoptic introduction. For the nine essays that are here published for the first time,…
Behind FranT is the "Inferno," cantos 9-10--the cantos of the heretics, especially the Epicureans, and of Medusa. The teller's epicureanism prevents him from probing beneath the letter to the spirit. Likewise, his Dorigen is "astoned" (astonished,…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Jonathan Culler, ed. On Puns: The Foundation of Letters (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 44-61.
Unpacks the meanings and implications of sample puns from Chaucer, Langland's "Piers Plowman," and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," suggesting that they evince a medieval respect for the transcendent potency of language. Chaucerian examples include…
Shoaf, R[ichard]. Allen.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 183-94.
Shoaf comments on male separation anxiety in TC and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," suggesting that the profundity of the poets' realizations underlies their aesthetic power.
