Stock, Lorraine Kochanske.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 85 (1986): 206-21.
Chaucer creates structural, linguistic, and thematic affinities between the Mayings of Emelye and Arcite. Emelye's Maying implicitly presents her as a flower; her wearing of green clothes suggests both carnal Flora and chaste Diana. Arcite's song…
Slefinger, John.
Essays in Medieval Studies 30 (2014): 155–64.
Explores how the Miller might be interacting with the Wife of Bath when he presents Alisoun, whose description "represents an attempt to control and win the Wife of Bath's sexual attention while undercutting any agency or interiority she may have."
Owen, Charles A.
Modern Language Notes 76 (1961): 392-97.
Offers surmises and suggestions about the number of GP pilgrims, professional groupings of them, and a two-stage "development" of GP--an early set of fourteen descriptions written ca. 1387-88 and a later revision, ca. 1396, that reflects plans for…
Farina, Peter M.
USF Language Quarterly 9.3-4 (1971): 29-32.
Critiques prior attempts to resolve the discrepancy between Chaucer's reference to twenty-nine pilgrims (GP 1.24) and the headcount of those actually mentioned. Focusing on the Prioress's entourage (GP 1.163-64), offers a new resolution that depends…
Iersel, Geert van.
Thea Summerfield and Keith Busby, eds. People and Texts: Relationships in Medieval Literature. Studies Presented to Erik Kooper (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 111-22.
Examines concern with land ownership in the Tale of Gamelyn in light of contemporary land values and incomes. The audience of the poem may have considered Sir John's division of his property in the poem both legal and morally justified.
David E. Lampe's thesis that the word "Vache" in "Truth," 22, is an iconographic pun is falsely reasoned on several accounts, the most glaring of which is that "vacca" has several evil connotations in addition to the favorable "worldly renunciation"…
Comments on brief selections from a translation of PardT as evidence that Chaucer accepts the validity of the True Cross even though he rejects the Pardoner's "fraudulent" practice. Discusses how John Calvin "took the matter several steps further"…
Nickell, Joe.
The Science of Miracles: Investigating the Incredible (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2013), pp. 91-99.
Comments briefly on PardT as "a satirical attack on relic mongering," and notes the Host's seemingly earnest reference to St. Helen's finding of the cross (6.951) and the possible implication that Chaucer "accepts the relic . . . as authentic."
Spearing, A. C.
Anne-Katrin Federow and Kay Malcher, eds. Troja Bauen: Vormodernes Erzählen von der Antike in Comparatistischer Sicht (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter,
2021), pp. 187-202.
Identifies internal "traces of uncertainty and changes of mind" in the composition process of TC, aligning them with the poem's theme of the unreliability of Boethian Fortune and challenging ideas about the supposed "planned wholeness" of TC and its…
The "complex" trouthe/routhe rhyme tracks the stages in the lovers' relationship: from its beginnings, when Troilus's trouthe is pledged for Criseyde's routhe; to its consummation, when mutual compassion assures reciprocal honesty and fidelity; to…
Kimmelman, Burt.
Ian Frederick Moulton, ed. Reading and Literacy in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 25-44.
Surveys representations of reading in literature from Abélard and Héloise to Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, including commentary on TC. The "autonomy of the reader" developed in the fourteenth century.
Thompson, Diane P.
Jefferson, N. C. : McFarland, 2004.
Fourteen chapters on the cultural legacy of the Trojan War, from archeology through literary versions to recent popular culture. Includes chapters on Latin and Roman classics (the works of Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Virgil), the medieval…
Holtz, Nancy Ann.
Luanne Franke, ed. Literature and the Occult: Essays in Comparative Literature (Arlington: University of Texas at Arlington, 1977), pp. 159-73.
Despite his comic depictions of star-obsessed humanity, Chaucer respected astrology; but he did not find astrological determinism absolute. In KnT Palamon gains Emily by enduring the tests of Saturn, who is more neutral.
McAlpine, Monica E.
Robert R. Edwards, ed. Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 79-92.
Critical studies of NPT fall primarily into two groups: allegorical, or interpretive readings, versus mock-epic, or "noninterpretive" readings, based on the premise that the poem has "no meaning except its escape from meaning."
Troilus's "double sorrow" is actually a triple sorrow caused by Criseyde's betrayal; the inability of Pandarus, his intercessor, to bring Criseyde back; and the failure of the goddess Venus to reunite him with Criseyde.
Smith, J. J.
J.J. Smith, ed. The English of Chaucer and His Contemporaries: Essays by M.L. Samuels and J.J. Smith (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988), pp. 51-69.
Analyzes the dialectical "Mischsprachen" (linguistic mixture) in Harley 7334 and Corpus Christi, Oxford, 198, and in products of the Gower D-Scribe. Since all three show an "idiosyncratic mixture of West Worcestershire forms and the learnt form,…
Thaisen, Jacob.
Margaret Connolly and Linne R. Mooney, eds. Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England (York: York Medieval Press, 2008), pp. 41-60.
Linguistic analysis of the two copies of CT made by the copyist known as "Scribe D" (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 198, and British Library MS Harley 7334). Thaisen focuses on orthography, especially the distribution of common lemmata, and…
Rothwell, W[illiam].
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 16 (1994): 45-67.
Examines the relations among Latin, French, and English in late-medieval England, using evidence from documents of the twelfth-fourteenth centuries, the "Chaucer Life-Records," and Chaucer's works. Argues that the Latin of the time was often…
Movshovitz, Howard Paul.
Dissertation Abstracts International 38 (1977): 2768A.
The contradictions surrounding the Pardoner are an important thematic element in PardT. The trickster figure found in mythology represents a figure that is supposed to embody contradictions. Viewing the Pardoner as such a trickster figure allows…
Explores how tree climbers have been represented in European and North American literature and art, including discussion of MerT in a section on "questionable gendered attitudes about women climbing trees," traced back to the biblical Garden of Eden.…
