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.
Johnson, William C.,Jr.
South Atlantic Bulletin 40.2 (1975): 53-62.
The dreamer discovers the inner urgency of a love that sought to transcend death; the knight, the external actuality of death. Chaucer's consolation lies in the recognition of the emotional (and not doctrinal) ineffability that art is. Grief is not…
Frazier, J. Terry.
South Atlantic Bulletin 43.1 (1978): 75-85.
The marriage agreement in FranT and the Franklin's comment on "maistrie" are not functional parts of the tale, but digressive answers to the Wife, Clerk, and Merchant while obeying the Host's command to "telle on thy tale."
Fisher, John H.
South Atlantic Bulletin 43.4 (1978): 75-84.
The marriage of Richard II to Isabel in 1396 explains the revision of LGW prologue; Chaucer's likely understanding of and distantly prudent attitude toward Richard accounts for the new tone.
Stavrou, C. N.
South Atlantic Quarterly 55 (1957): 454-61.
Rejects Matthew Arnold's claim that Chaucer lacked "high seriousness," commenting on the "close interrelationship between the ironist and moralist" in the older poet's works, and suggesting that, though genial in his acceptance of human variety and…
Fisher, John H.
South Atlantic Quarterly 60 (1961): 71-79.
Explores Chaucer's stylistic virtuosity in his references to horses and riding, commenting on appropriateness, suggestive naming and coloring, metaphoric and imagistic implications, and comic effects. Includes comments on horses in TC, LGW, and CT.
Penninger, F. Elaine.
South Atlantic Quarterly 63 (1964): 398-405.
Argues that by "idealizing" reality "into unreality" KnT opens the "question of appearance and reality," a recurrent concern throughout CT which is resolved only in ParsT.
Bentley, Joseph.
South Atlantic Quarterly 64 (1965): 247-53.
Maintains that the details and description of astrology in MilT along with its foreshadowing imagery establish a theme of Boethian determinism in the Tale. Accordingly, the character of each of the three male actors determines his unforeseen fate and…
Moorman, Charles.
South Atlantic Quarterly 64 (1965): 87-99. Reprinted in A Knyght There Was: The Evolution of the Knight in Literature (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967), pp. 76-95.
Contrasts the conventionalized courtly characterization of the knight in BD with the relatively individualized courtly characterization of Troilus in TC, and goes on to assess the Knight and Theseus of KnT as a new kind of figure found only "at the…
Patterson, Lee.
South Atlantic Quarterly 86 (1987): 457-95.
Although Chaucer was associated with the aristocratic seigniorial and mercantile classes, in the first eight tales he vigorously asserts the aggressive voice of peasant protest--fully in MilT but reverting to a somewhat more traditional and…
Hanna, Ralph, III.
South Atlantic Quarterly 91 (1992): 793-812.
The "peasant voice" of Chaucer's Miller resembles the voices of John Shirley and Wat Tyler as represented in aristocratic accounts of the times. Chaucer's narrator criticizes the Miller's narrative voice, reinforcing chroniclers' depictions of…
Kendrick, Laura.
South Atlantic Quarterly 91 (1992): 835-64
Writing fixes texts, inviting marginal explication and commentary. Dante, Boccaccio, Deschamps, Langland, Gower, and Chaucer annotate their own texts to "authorize" them, although modern scholarship has been reluctant to accept glosses as…
Boyd, David Lorenzo.
South Atlantic Quarterly 91 (1992): 945-64.
The placement of Chaucer's PF in MS Bodley 638, MS Laud Misc. 416, and MS Digby 181 suggests that the poem can be interpreted, respectively, as suggesting the value of courtly love, stressing the importance of "proper governance," and illustrating an…
Smith, D. Vance.
South Atlantic Quarterly 98: 367-414, 1999.
Like Freud and Boethius, Chaucer views tragedy as the temporal transformation of a literal or figurative space. Integral to this understanding of tragedy is the notion of memory as a function of death, a relationship apparent in BD, MkT, and HF.…
Fradenburg, Louise O.
South Atlantic Quarterly 98: 563-92, 1999.
Using Freudian and Lacanian analysis, examines BD, ultimately "suggest[ing] that Chaucer used courtly love and the figure of Fortune to develop a poetics of tragic interiority that was decisive for the artificing of 'life' in subsequent periods."
Haymes, Edward R.
South Atlantic Review 37.04 (1972): 35-43.
Affirms Chaucer's familiarity with native English romances by identifying a number of formulaic phrases (some of them oral remnants) that recur in native romances and in a variety of Chaucer's works. Includes comments on Thop as evidence of Chaucer's…
Manning, Stephen.
South Atlantic Review 52 (1987): 3-16.
With all its verbal activity or "jangling," NPT functions as a "metonymy for the nature of poetry itself." Chauntecleer and the Narrator struggle with rhetoric and meaning; the Poet "sees beyond the jangling," transforming apparent absurdity into "a…
Cox, Catherine S.
South Atlantic Review 61 (1996): 1-21.
As a character "capable of saying one thing but meaning quite another," the Manciple ridicules the "wisdom of the mother" at the end of ManT. The crow suffers for the "feminine behavior" of talking too much, and the Manciple talks "as if a woman" to…
Hall, Kathryn A.
South Atlantic Review 72.4 (2007): 59-71.
Encourages pairing Margery Kempe and WBT in British literature surveys, noting that Kempe was "a good deal more vulnerable than the fictitious Wife of Bath."
Werthmuller, Gyongyi.
South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015): 6-19.
Tabulates evidence of the greater regularity of stress in Gower's verse than in Chaucer's, particularly in nouns and adjectives that feature the apocope of final unstressed -e. Attributes this regularity to the influence of Gower having written…
Burt, Kathleen.
South Atlantic Review 86, no. 1 (2021): 58-76.
Anatomizes the theme and structures of failure in CYPT, contrasting the Canon's Yeoman and Chaucer-pilgrim as narrators, and tallying ways that failure dominates the narrative: failed science, failed rhetoric, failed comedy, failed moralizing, and…
Drury Hall, Anne.
South Bend, Ind.: Saint Augustine's Press, 2023.
Reflects on reading and responding to "Great Books," offering appreciative descriptions of samples from Plato, Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Melville, and asserting their success in conveying moral philosophy artfully, despite the…
Heyworth, Gregory.
South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.
Six studies on literature ranging from Marie de France to Milton. In the chapter on Chaucer, Heyworth examines medieval cultural values and suggests that Chaucer complicates those values, particularly marriage. KnT and FranT depict the social…
Baker, Donald C.
South Central Bulletin 21.4 (1961): 33-36.
Suggests that "traditions of witchcraft" are "the source of some of the language and . . . part of the motivation of the dispute" between the Friar and the Summoner, adducing late-medieval associations of friars and sorcery and the Summoner's diction…
