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A Lady Philosophy or a Concealed Wife of Bath: Geoffrey Chaucer's Prudence in the "Tale of Melibee."
Yıldız, Nazan.
RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 28 (2022): 498-507.
Traces "similarities between Boethius's Lady Philosophy and Chaucer''s Prudence" in Mel regarding "the authority of women over men as the source of knowledge and wisdom." Comments on female empowerment and Prudence as a "Wife of Bath in disguise."…
The Phallic Leek
Jones, Lowanne E.
Rupert T. Pickens, ed. Studies in Honor of Hans-Erich Keller: Medieval French and Occitan Literature and Romance Linguistics (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1993), pp. 419-26.
Jones explores the use of the leek as a phallic symbol in works by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Boccaccio, and Rabelais.
Philomela Accuses.
Rushton, Cory.
Rushton, Cory, ed. Disability and Medieval Law: History, Literature, Society (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013), pp. 157-73.
Investigates several motifs in the LGW account of Philomela: victimhood, "inappropriate sovereignty," muteness, orality and legal witnessing, "tapestry-as-prosthesis," rape as a property crime, and lack of legal remedy, arguing that Chaucer's tale…
The Pardoner's Tale.
Hearst, Katherine, illus. and trans.
Russ Kick, ed. The Graphic Canon of Crime & Mystery. Vol. 2, From "Salome" to Edgar Allan Poe to "Silence of the Lambs" (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2021), pp. 134-46.
Graphic version of PardT, newly adapted and illustrated in ink and watercolor, with a calligraphic, abbreviated text in modern verse.
Gower, Lydgate, and Incest.
Scanlon, Larry.
Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 156-82.
Argues that "alone of the three 'fathers of English poesy [Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate],' Gower openly grapples with an acute awareness of the cultural centrality of a concept that extends from a betrayal of love's intimacy to social, political, and…
Reading Faces in Gower and Chaucer.
Taylor, Karla.
Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 73-90.
Argues that ClT, using "distinctively Gowerian terms" such as "corage" and "visage," is Chaucer's response to Gower's perceived challenge at the conclusion of the "Confessio Amantis" for Chaucer "to drop his well-known political reticence and take a…
The Ends of Storytelling.
Cooper, Helen.
Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and The Self (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 91-107.
Finds "ideas of mortality, the end of life, and the end of storytelling . . . closely linked" in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Argues that the work leads the narrator, the poet, and the audience to a conclusion in which all "can share in his hope of…
The Virgin's Tale
Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn.
Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 165-94.
The early Middle English "Letter on Virginity" and the "Katherine Group" saints' lives critique male desire and the violation of female will, challenging conventions of courtly love. In WBP, SNT, and PhyT, Chaucer's use of "virginity material"…
Reincarnations of Griselda: Contexts for the 'Clerk's Tale'
Johnson, Lesley.
Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 195-220.
Literary and historical contexts modify the presentation of the Griselda story in its many versions, reflecting a broad range of views on women and marriage. Chaucer's version raises questions about the exemplary value of Griselda in religious and…
Afterword to "The Wife of Bath and the Painting of Lions"
Carruthers, Mary (J.)
Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 39-44.
Comments on the rhetorical ontology of the Wife of Bath. The character is a figure of power who "continues to bother" because she is not silenced in the text, compelling readers to wish to respond.
Engendering Pity in the 'Franklin's Tale'
Riddy, Felicity.
Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 54-71.
Examines the sexual politics of FranT, arguing that its fundamental ideas of "gentilesse" and "pitee" reflect an aristocratic, masculinist hierarchy. The courtly setting entails this hierarchy, which dominates the tale, but Dorigen's complaint and…
'A gay yeman, under a forest side': 'The Friar's Tale' and the Robin Hood Tradition
Phillips, Helen.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 123-37.
Phillips explores verbal, narrative, and thematic parallels between FrT and Robin Hood tales such as "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisburne." Emphases on "grenewode," archery, disguise, commercialism, ecclesiastical corruption, oppression of the poor, and…
Cheapside in the Age of Chaucer
Fulton, Helen.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 138-51.
Processions and spectacles were attempts to contain rivalries between and within the official and unofficial hierarchies of late medieval London (city and crown, wards, crafts, and trades). Recurrently depicting a stable city, Chaucer also depicts…
Chaucer's Knight and the Northern 'Crusades': The Example of Henry Bolingbroke
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 152-65.
Kelly recounts military and political events in Lithuania around 1390-92 involving Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox Christians, and recent converts. Focuses on the involvement of Henry Bolingbroke and on uses of the word "pagan," as backdrop to…
The Pardoner's 'lewed peple': Apes, Japes, and the Pre-history of Mass Culture
Trigg, Stephanie.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 166-78.
Trigg addresses relationships among the reading audience, the pilgrim audience, and the "lewed peple" of PardPT. Set against the GP description of the Parson and his flock, the Pardoner's description of his preaching to the people may indicate their…
Medieval Murder - Modern Crime Fiction
Barnes, Geraldine.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 241-67.
Barnes contrasts the absence of the city of London in medieval fiction (CkT, CYT, and Athelston) with fictionalized descriptions of medieval London in murder mysteries written in the 1980s and 1990s by P.C. Doherty and Kate Sedley.
What Was Medievalism? Medieval Studies, Medievalism, and Cultural Studies
Matthews, David.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 9-22.
Explores historical formulations of "medieval studies" and "medievalism," arguing that they are inseparable, and encouraging awareness of their interdependencies. Draws examples from Tyrwhitt's edition of CT and Helgeland's film, "A Knight's Tale,"…
Canon Law and Chaucer on Licit and Illicit Magic
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye, and E. Ann Matter, eds. Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe. The Middle Ages Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 211-24.
John's incantations to protect Nicholas in MilT would have been considered licit uses of medicinal magic according to strictures of John Peakham, the Archdeacon of Canterbury. Kelly also comments on FranT, SqT, and ParsT.
Gavin Douglas: 'Off Eloquence the Flowand Balmy Strand'
Morse, Ruth.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 107-21.
Chaucer influenced Douglas in many ways: "as a model for diction and register, as a source of phrase and adapter of syntax, as an establisher of the Dream Poem...; Chaucer's "House of Fame" stands as the inspiration for Douglas's own first long…
Skelton's 'Garlande of Laurell' and the Chaucerian Tradition
Scattergood, John.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 122-38.
"The Garlande of Laurell" is Skelton's considered statement about poetry, the nature of poetic tradition, and his own role in it. But "the most substantial earlier treatment of the subject of "The Garlande of Laurell" in English poetry was Chaucer's…
Chaucerian Metre and Early Tudor Songs
Stevens, John.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 139-54.
The "Fayrfax Manuscript" (ca. 1505) is one of the three major song books containing virtually all that survives of English secular songs from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A study of this manuscript's technique of setting English…
Rewriting Romance: Chaucer's and Dryden's 'Wife of Bath's Tale'
Spearing, A. C.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 234-48.
Disliking the unrealistic and the marvelous aspects of romance, Chaucer experimented with the genre in highly original ways in TC, KnT, FranT, SqT, and WBT. Chaucer comments on the romance through the inconsistency between the naturalistic…
Chaucer's Religion and the Chaucer Religion
Muscatine, Charles.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 249-62.
Posits that "different ages or cultures do not so much misread a great text (from a different time or place) as make from it special abstractions, acutely suited to their particular concerns." At midcentury, the twentieth-century reception of…
A List of the Published Writings of Derek Brewer
Takamiya, Toshiyuki.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 263-68.
The list of Derek Brewer's writings that closes this volume reveals the range and energy of his interests: critical interpretation of Chaucer, editing of medieval texts, historical views of Chaucer's life and work, Chaucer as a narrative poet, and…
Chaucer and Lydgate
Pearsall, Derek.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 39-53.
Chaucer gave Lydgate his language, his verse forms, and his poetic style--with the urge to refine and elaborate them into a high medieval art. Lydgate's career is arguably a determined effort to emulate and surpass Chaucer in each of the major…
