Smith, Sarah Stanbury.
Centerpoint 4 (1981): 95-102.
Implications of clear-sighted love in the Middle Ages lead one to view Cupid in Chaucer's LGW as a symbol of marital, generative love. But because this Cupid is indiscriminate in love (being in favor of it, without regard to circumstances), it is…
Smith, Sheri.
Dissertation Abstracts International C75.01 (2016): n.p.
Examines answers to prayer in BD, HF, KnT, FranT, "hagiographic tales" (SNT, PrT, MLT, and ClT), and TC, arguing that Chaucer engages significant "theological and philosophical issues."
Smith, Sueanna.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 8 (2011): 16-30.
Argues that MilT and RvT "revise the image of masculine chivalry constructed in" KnT, the first offering a model of "physical 'cherl' masculinity," the second "an image of masculinity that prizes internal desire over physical bravado." Through their…
Smith, Susan L.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
Examines visual and verbal representations of the sexual power of women as "a topos of exemplification within the theory and practice of ancient and medieval rhetoric," especially as it developed in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. Focuses…
Discusses garden imagery in "The Phoenix," "Roman de la Rose," "Pearl," and MerT, focusing in the latter on the theme of lust and its relation to the ideal of spiritual salvation.
Smith, Valerie.
J. A. Jowitt and R. K. S. Taylor, eds. Self and Society in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure. Bradford Centre Occasional Papers, no. 4 (Bradford: University of Leeds Department of Adult and Continuing Education, 1982), pp. 61-79.
Smith assesses characterizations of Criseyde, focusing on Chaucer's, Henryson's, and Shakespeare's characterizations but commenting on others. She argues that the character must be understood in light of contemporaneous attitudes toward, for example,…
Though he probably knew nothing of the theatre, Chaucer displays the essence of dramatic technique--the ability to create the persons of his characters objectively in CT.
Explores the factors involved in assessing Chaucer's rank among literary greats, summarizing parts of CT, describing difficulties of teaching the poem, suggesting the use of Nevill Coghill's translation, and offering other pedagogical comments.
Smith, Warren S.
Chaucer Review 32 (1997): 129-45.
In WBP, the Wife takes not an extremist position on marriage but rather a centralist one, often adhering to the doctrine of Augustine. By burning Jankin's book and by according husbands bliss after she attains "mastery," Alisoun refutes the…
Smith, Warren S.
Chaucer Review 36 : 374-90, 2002.
Far from being rambling, hasty, or incoherent, Dorigen's lament on faithful and faithless wives is a careful working out of the solution to her own dilemma. Starting with stories from Jerome's "Against Jovinian," she develops a favorable, Augustinian…
Smith, Warren S.
Warren S. Smith, ed. Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage from Plautus to Chaucer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), pp. 243-69.
In WBP and FranT, the uses of Jerome's antifeminist treatise "Adversus Jovinianum" as source material are ironic. WBP presents a more centrist Augustinian tradition than does her acerbic predecessor, and Dorigen's lament prefigures the gentle…
Verse-drama adaptation/translation of WBPT and Ret in decasyllabic rhyming couplets and north London dialect, with Jamaican patois, and multiple actors. WBP is set in a contemporary London pub; WBT, in eighteenth-century Maroon Town, Jamaica, under…
Smoot, Maxine Bixby.
Dissertation Abstracts International 35 (1975): 6735A
Chaucer artfully uses meter to support meaning. The tensions between meter and speech rhythm, enjambment and run-on lines, rhyme and alliteration, and denotation and onomatopoeia all display his technical virtuosity.
Studies Chaucer's uses of "gan" and "do" with infinitive forms, tracing the history of the usage in English and providing statistics about Chaucer's uses and their relative chronologies. In Chaucer's works, "gan" is generally periphrastic and used…
Reconstructs the layout and functions of the rooms and gardens of the households in TC, drawing on details in the poem and evidence from fourteenth-century English architecture, with connections to correlative structures and scenes elsewhere in…
Contrasts Chaucer's familiarity with and uses of astronomy and astrology with those of other Middle English authors, particularly John Gower. Indicates that 1380 is a turning point in Chaucer's uses of astral sciences, suggesting that he accepted the…
Troilus ultimately travels to the ninth--not the eighth--sphere at the end of TC, a place ripe with "symbolic valence," reinforcing Chaucer's narrative focus on constant change and the ambiguity that comes with it.
Discusses temporality and "cultural imaginings" of time in Lydgate, Hoccleve, and Chaucer. Refers to Chaucer's use of narrative and seasonal time and memory in CT, BD, PF, HF, and Astr.
Examines how the Jailer's Daughter of Shakespeare and Fletcher's play, a character not found in KnT, reflects a complex form of influence derived not only from KnT, but from MilT and RvT as well. Considers water imagery and liquidity, and "madness,…
Snell, William.
Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature 10 (1995): 1-16.
Assesses PardT in light of contemporary literature about pestilence, arguing that Chaucer both distances PardT from his audience and critiques Flemings.
Snell, William.
Hiyoshi Review of English Studies (Keio University) 37: 117-36, 2000.
Argues that critical interpretations of Chaucer's Physician as a quack have been based on the moral outrage and stock literary character of a later age.
Snell, William.
Hiyoshi Review of English Studies 44 (2004): 157-72
Explores why Samuel Johnson did not carry out his publicized intention to produce an annotated edition of Chaucer's works. If he had relied on Urry's edition, the annotated edition would have proved a sorry rival to Tyrwhitt's.
