Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 3.4 (1969): 275-79.
Compares the plots and characters of FranT and PhyT, arguing that they share parallels that are "significant" and "quite possibly intentional." Focuses on Dorigen and Virginia.
Considers evidence from ParsP (10.42-44), KnT (1.2605-16), and LGW (635-58) that Chaucer may have been familiar with Middle English alliterative romances, arguing that the proposition is unlikely. While he may have known alliterative religious…
Brown, Emerson Jr.
Chaucer Review 4.1 (1969): 31-40.
Explores the sources of Chaucer's allusions to Priapus and to Pyramus and Thisbe in MerT (4.2034-37 and 4.2125-31) and argues that the allusions deepen the bitter cynicism of the Tale by suggesting sexual fruitlessness and frustration in the pear…
Identifies exegetical details in the characterization of Absolon in MilT, helping to identify the clerk with the sins of avarice, lechery, and pride and showing how he is a parody of Robyn the Miller "in the Miller's own tale."
Argues that "as a better joke," "worly" is preferable to "worthy" in Tho (7.917). The latter appears to be "scribal normalization" of Chaucer's mocking of a "well-worn native" word.
Reads Scog as a playful, comic version of a "moral ballade" or "balade of bon conseyl" that shares similarities with French models, portions of TC, and several of Chaucer's other lyrics. Comments on the unity of the poem, its possible occasion or…
Friedman, John Block.
Chaucer Review 3.3 (1969): 145-162.
More than merely consolation for John of Gaunt, BD conveys the "more universal theme" of "personal loss and its effects on man's physical and psychic condition." Traditionally associated in various sources with leading, with healing, and with…
Gaylord, Alan T.
Chaucer Review 3.4 (1969): 239-264.
Argues that friendship in TC "is an idea that matters very much," both as a "value" and an "element in the plot." Throughout the poem, Chaucer depicts various friendship relations (support, protection, counsel), strengthening those found in…
Golden, Samuel L.
Chaucer Review 4.1 (1969): 49-54.
Demonstrates that Chaucer's works are a significant source of John Minsheu's multilingual dictionary, "Guide into the Tongues" ["Ductor in Linquas"] (1617).
Kauffman, Corrine E.
Chaucer Review 4.1 (1969): 41-48.
Uses late-medieval and Renaissance herbals to show that the ingredients for a remedy that Pertelote recommends to Chanticleer in NPT are all "quite wrong for her patient" and his condition: some unavailable, some inappropriate, and some deadly. The…
Kinneavy, Gerald B.
Chaucer Review 3.4 (1969): 280-303.
Reads Gavin Douglas's poem as an examination of how poetry can lead to honor, focusing on the originality of the poem but noting its dependencies as well, including the influence of the eagle from HF.
Assesses the styles and rhetorical devices of FranT. Matching rhetoric to meaning, Chaucer's "modulation of style" in FranT helps to characterize the narrator and the major characters of the Tale and to guide readers' understanding of the variable…
Levy, Bernard S.
Chaucer Review 4.2 (1969): 106-22.
Argues that the discussion of gentility by the Loathly Lady in WBP effects a change in the knight's moral vision, with no physical change in the Lady. Imagery and allusions to Baptism reinforce the point and run parallel to similar concerns in WBP,…
Mogan, Joseph J., Jr.
Chaucer Review 4.2 (1969): 123-41.
Studies the "theology of marital relations" in MilT, WBP, and MerT, using ParsT as a partial statement of orthodoxy, surveying views from Augustine to Wyclif of the roles of procreation and pleasure in sexual relations between married partners, and…
Mogan, Joseph J., Jr.
American Notes and Queries 8 (1969): 19.
Observes that carpenter John's sense of worldly instability in MilT is established in 1.3423-30 and 1.3449-50, anticipating his ready acceptance of Nicholas's prediction of the Flood later in the Tale.
North, J. D.
Review of English Studies 20 (1969): 129-54, 257-83, 418-44.
Shows that Chaucer's references to "planetary, solar, and lunar configurations, " though usually "veiled," add complex dimensions to his plots and may help us to establish dates for several of his works; discusses Mars, TC, PF, LGW (Hypermnestra),…
Treats the Host of CT as a psychological character whose recurrent levity disguises neither his pride nor the fact that he is "hen-pecked" by his wife, Goodelief. Essentially comic and naturalistic, Harry participates significantly in the marriage…
Describes similarities and differences "between fourteenth-century and modern biography" and argues that medieval writers of verse fiction were interested in characters "as individuals." A "sense of abundant life" is generated by the ironies and…
Raizis, M. Byron.
Comparative Literature Studies 6 (1969): 141-47.
Establishes Nikos Kazantzakis's familiarity with Chaucer, evident in his discussion in "England: A Travel Journal" (1941) of a passage from SumT; then suggests that the Tale may have influenced Kazantakis's depiction of a monk in his novel "The…
Rand, George I.
American Notes and Queries 7 (1979): 149-50.
Observes that Chaunticleer's mistaken reference to Macrobius as the author of the "Somnium Scipionis" (7.3124) may suggest that NPT predates PF (i.e., "no later than 1386"), where Macrobius is accurately identified as the author of the "Commentary"…
Discusses references to five saints in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and comments briefly on Chaucer's uses of four of them (Peter, John, Julian, and Mary).
