Spence, Timothy L.
Scott D. Troyan, ed. Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 63-90.
The Prioress's prayer to Mary shares characteristics with the "genre of prayer known as 'pura oratio'." Spence identifies features of this genre in rhetorical tradition, shows where they are evident in PrP, and suggests that they extend into PrT,…
Studies the "Boethian dialogue model in literature concerned with courtly love," treating the literature as examples of dialogue rather than dream vision and examining the relationship between the hierarchical, upward-leading erotics of this…
Spencer, Alice.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 228-55.
Explores tensions among the Boethian, Platonic form of Mel as a didactic dialogue, the Tale's practical Aristotelian subject matter, and its status as a compilation of composite proverbs. Reflecting a literate author, Mel modifies its sources and…
Spencer, Alice.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 160-203.
Bokenham repeatedly refers to himself as an "auctor" as a way to extricate himself from the classicizing, conventional, and paternal shadow of Chaucer.
Spencer, Alice.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 204-23.
The anonymous author of "The Assembly of Ladies" counterdefines herself against a clearly Chaucerian courtly tradition by allying herself with a distinctly feminine textuality that is opposed to a traditional masculine hermeneutics.
Social history of late-medieval London produced to accompany an exhibition at the London Museum "concerned with life in London" during Chaucer's time. The text comments on Chaucer's life and on social, political, mercantile, and ecclesiastical…
Spencer, H. L.
Review of English Studies 65, no. 272 (2014): 790 -811.
F. J. Furnivall founded seven literary and publishing societies (including the Chaucer and New Shakespeare Societies). Furnivall describes Wyclif "as the first translator of our Bible and THE FATHER OF ENGLISH PROSE" in an attempt "to foist prose…
Spencer, H. L.
Review of English Studies 66, no. 276 (2015): 601-23
Details Furnivall's founding of the Chaucer Society in 1868, and argues that his greatest contribution was his parallel text edition of CT, a publication that has far-reaching consequences for the later editing of Chaucer. Brief references to Astr,…
Describes the forms, styles, goals, and reception of late-medieval English sermons and sermon collections. Examines attendance at sermons; allegorical and literal aspects of sermons; and relations between sermons and literacy, eduction, and…
Spencer, Jaime.
New Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2011.
Discusses how authors, from Chaucer to C. S. Lewis, are influenced by the "flexible tradition" of religious stories. Chapter 1 analyzes how Chaucer reveals understanding of Christian doctrine in WBT.
Spencer, Matthew, Barbara Bordalejo, Li-San Wang, Adrian C. Barbrook, Linne R. Mooney, Peter Robinson, Tandy Warnow, and Christopher J. Howe
Computers and the Humanities 37 (2003): 97-109.
Construction of a stemma for CT based on gene-order analysis supports the idea that there was no established order when the first manuscripts were written. The resulting stemma shows relationships predicted by earlier scholars, reveals new…
Spencer, Matthew, Barbara Bordalejo, Peter Robinson, and Christopher J. Howe
Literary and Linguistic Computing 18 (2003): 407-22.
Drawing techniques from biology, the authors gauge the reliability of several aspects of textual stemmata: whether separate sections of a given text have separate histories, the quantity of text necessary for a reliable stemma, the levels of…
Spencer, William
Chaucer Review 4.3 (1970): 147-70.
Tallies evidence that the "twelvefold pattern of [zodiacal] signs and planets" of medieval astrology is the "hidden ground plan" of GP, underlying its sequence of characters and some details of their descriptions.
A pantomime adaptation of CT in two acts, with script, song list, properties list, and suggestions for costuming and staging. The characters are drawn from Chaucer's pilgrims, and the plot centers on the pursuit of a "magic story," with motifs,…
Reviews Furnivall-Halliwell correspondence, which is concerned mainly wiht the affairs of the New Shakespeare Society, but also includes accounts of Furnivall's work on Chaucer manuscripts.
Considering such works as "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," and PardPT, the author identifies finitude and nothingness as the roots of despair in late medieval and early modern works, as well as in modern…
Spicer, Paul.
In Paul Spicer. Sir George Dyson: His Life and Music (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), pp. 160-87.
Includes appreciative summary-description of Dyson's 1931 choral arrangement, "The Canterbury Pilgrims," with comments on its reception and relationship with GP.
Spiegel, Harriet.
Dissertation Abstracts International 37 (1976): 2855A.
The romances of Chretien and Chaucer introduced the psychologically self-conscious character into medieval literature. KnT and TC make a distinction between the socially defined male, and the psychologically individualized female.
The "byjaped fol," to whom Chaucer refers in TC 1.526-32, is not a specific person but rather a mistranslation of Boccaccio's word "musorno," which Chaucer took to refer to a well-known person--a particular "fool"--rather than to the foolish quality…
Explicates the Ugolino episode of MkT as an instance of Chaucer's self-consciousness about borrowing from sources, especially Dante. Explores the courtly, Boethian, Boccaccian, and Dantean nuances of "langour" and argues that, as Ugolino passively…
Spisak, James W.
Chaucer Review 18 (1984): 204-10.
In LGW, Chaucer adheres closely to Ovid in the Pyramus and Thisbe legend. By omissions, by shifts in tone and emphasis, and by the frame of LGW, Chaucer emphasizes seeds of comedy in the original.
Spisak, James W.
Chaucerian Shakespeare (Ann Arbor: Michigan Consortium for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 1983), pp. 81-95.
Inspired by the ironic use of the Pyramus and Thisbe myth in LGW Shakespeare employs the myth to parody the young lovers in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," mocking both Chaucer and his courtly poem.
Spivack, Charlotte, and Christine Herold, eds.
Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 2002.
Nine readings by various authors of archetypal patterns in medieval works. Topics include Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, Julian of Norwich, Joan of Arc, Gottfried von Strassburg, Chrétien de Troyes, the Spanish "Shriek of the Sage Merlin,"…
