Describes how visual aids and a trip to a medieval collection in a museum (in this instance the Kress collection in Birmingham, Alabama) can help students confront medieval literature with greater depth and involvement.
Examines the English educational system in Chaucer's time, tracing the paths from parish schools to the universities indicated in the GP portraits of the Clerk and the Parson.
The death of England's Prince Henry sparked a "sense of near-nihilism" and prompted Shakespeare and Fletcher to question chivalry in The Two Noble Kinsmen. This interrogation anticipates modern readings of KnT--the source of the play--as a…
Pelling, Margaret.
Social History of Medicine 8 (1995): 383-401.
Comments on the appropriateness of PhyT to its teller, both in its classical learning and in its "gender-related ambivalences," also found among historical physicians.
Hernández Pérez, María Beatriz.
Sonia Villegas and Beatriz Domínguez, eds. Literature, Gender, Space (Huelva: Universidad de Huelva, 2004), pp. 131-42.
Assesses the hospitality of female characters in LGW, showing that the betrayal suffered by these women is not the result of their fickleness but of a failure of the courtly code.
Bude, Tekla.
Sonic Bodies: Text, Music, and Silence in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), pp. 146-68.
Argues that Chaucer "experiments with the body-disabling power of music as a site of poetic potential," tallying how, in CT, "musical performance nearly always causes narrative tension" and music "prosthetizes disability"--"advental" insofar as it…
Arai, Teruki.
Sophia English Studies 15 (1990): 29-44.
Statistical exploration of words attributed to Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. In the fourth edition of Bailey's dictionary (1728), the classifications "Chaucerian" and "old" are not distinct.
Sugito, Hisashi.
Sophia English Studies 32 (2007): 17-31.
Chaucer uses Wycliffite discourse sympathetically in order to "satirize church corruption which the Pardoner represents," particularly the literal understanding of Scripture and allegories. The Pardoner's treatment of Scripture aligns with the views…
Yamanaka, Toshio.
Sophia English Studies 4 (1979): 11-22.
The keywords to determine Theseus's roles in KnT are "lord," "governour," "conquerour," "hunter," "servant," and "judge." Theseus is analogous to Mars, Venus, and Diana, as "conquerour," "servant," and "hunter," symbolized in his construction of the…
Dutton, Richard.
Sophie Chiari and John Mucciolo, eds. Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 17-34.
Extracts information about Richard Edwards's now-lost play "Palamon and Arcite," from three extant contemporary accounts of the visit of Queen Elizabeth I to Oxford, where she attended a performance of the play in 1566. The accounts--by Miles…
Chaucer's Prioress is said to be a miniature of CT. Just as Madame Eglantine is a religious with fairly secular characters, so CT shows all kinds of people, with their sublime and indecent faces, their beauty, and their ugliness.
The narrator of BD serves a therapeutic role: he helps the Black Knight talk out his grief and in the process purges himself of his own sorrow. In light of recent psychological studies, Chaucer's insights into bereavement are astute. BD warns…
Examines the evolution of the word "humanism" and explores Chaucer's artistic application of fourteenth-century nominalism as it relates to his fusion of medieval ideas of community, tradition, and the emerging figure of the individual. Treats CT,…
Howes explains how walking through landscape ("pedestrian logic") helps to organize many medieval narratives, including "Sir Orfeo," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Chaucer's BD. She illuminates her explanations with comparisons to the layouts…
Lee, Brian S.
South African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 15 (2005): 55-68.
Comments on the upbringing of young people in CT. Mentioned in only three lines, the "mayde child" in ShT exemplifies the late medieval practice of wardship. The words signify the callous immorality of the guardian who, like the governesses…
Kearney, John.
South African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1994): 95-107
In FranT, the seriatim pity of the characters makes it possible for others to move through the worldly truth that it is necessary to suffer in time, toward the greater truth of unchanging stability. The rocks represent the need for worldly…
Toole, William B. III.
South Atlantic Bulletin 35.2 (1970): 3-8.
Mentions that Browning's Fra Lippo Lippi is "perhaps the most Chaucerian of his creations," whose vitality and sensuality "may well remind us" of the Wife of Bath or Shakespeare's Falstaff.
Manning, Stephen.
South Atlantic Bulletin 39.1 (1974): 17-26.
Psychoanalyzes the oral imagery in PardPT (food, drink, swearing, the Eucharist, "taking in," aggressive speech, phallic tongues, kissing), arguing that it indicates the Pardoner's unconscious search for pardon.
