Kowalik, Barbara.
Rafal Boryslawski, Anna Czarnowus, and Lukasz Neubauer, eds. Marvels of Reading: Essays in Honour of Professor Andrzej Wicher (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego, 2015), pp. 159–74.
Discusses the idea of the marvelous in the "Gawain"-poet's Arthurian romance and in FranT. Argues that the marvels in FranT are indispensable to the genre, producing the effect described by J. R. R. Tolkien as "eucatastrophe."
Jae-cheol, Kim.
Medieval and early Modern English Studies 23.2 (2015): 25-47.
Investigates the logic of "sovereignty" in PhyT, and how sovereignty is transferred from God, to nature, then to Virginia, and back to the people who "subvert the
entire political order" toward the end of the tale. Sovereignty is directly associated…
Argues for the effectiveness of the Pardoner's speech in light of his use of fables and exempla rather than "officium." PardT affirms the power of literature over that of the Pardoner's own duplicitous nature.
Minnis, Alastair.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015): 3–27.
Traces evidence of anatomical votive offerings, particularly genital renderings, in Roman practice, Reformation commentary, and modern accounts, presenting them as background to reading the Host's commentary on the Pardoner's cullions (PardT,…
Simpson, James.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015): 31-54.
Explores aspects of anagogical reading practices and their relations with social prediction and prophecy. Reformation readers perceived predestinarian and prophetic themes in spurious Chaucerian texts, although Chaucer himself seems to distrust…
Coley, David K.
Chaucer Review 49.4 (2015): 449-73.
Argues that ShT comments on fourteenth-century controversies regarding tithing and examines the connections drawn between international finance and agrarian production.
Epstein, Robert.
Modern Philology 113 (2015) 17-48.
The exchanges of goods and services in ShT are often read following Bourdieu's theory that self-interest motivates all human actions. This essay claims that such analyses do not take into account other motivating factors clearly present in the tale,…
Blurton, Heather, and Hannah Johnson.
Chaucer Review 50.1-2 (2015): 134–58.
Examines manuscript circulation of PrT showing Chaucer's reception as a Marian poet. This tale was not only used in devotional texts but was responded to in this register by Lydgate and Hoccleve.
Invokes the medieval ideal (exemplified by "Ancrene Wisse") of establishing self-identity and authority by memorizing and performing texts. The Prioress does this by "over-identifying" with the clergeon. Briefly considering the anti-Semitism of the…
Carlson, David R.
Review of English Studies 66, no. 274 (2015): 240–57.
Discusses how Skelton persistently mocks Henry's awarding knighthood to Garnesche by likening him to the silliest knights of romance. Claims that this portrayal of knighthood is influenced by Chaucer's mockery of knights in Th.
Barrington, Candace, and Jonathan Hsy.
postmedieval 6.2 (2015): 136-45.
Focuses on the "mirroring structure" of Agbabi's "Unfinished Business," from"Telling Tales" (2015), and Mel. Also reflects on the inherent "problematizing of translation" that accompanies transforming Mel into contemporary poetry.
Parsons, Ben.
Notes and Queries 260 (2015): 525-29.
Although the phrase "Colle oure dogge" (NPT 7.338) has been cited as support for the notion that "collie" derives from a medieval pet name, a review of attestations of "colle" provides no evidence that dogs given that name tended to be members of the…
Ziolkowski, Theodore.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Surveys the figure of the alchemist and the uses of alchemical imagery in western literature, focusing on how satire and trivialization of the subject gave way to more esoteric uses, especially as the practice of alchemy gave way to chemistry.…
Miller, T. S.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 114 (2015): 373-400.
Maintains that in Anel, a poem about the faithless lover Arcite, the poet narrator is also false both in specific details and in reference to his putative sources. Argues that Chaucer emphasizes "the deception inherent in his poetic process" in a…
Wuest, Charles.
Dissertation Abstracts International A76.10 (2015): n.p.
Considers Chaucer's repeated engagement with a passage from Boethius's "Consolation" in Bo, several shorter works, PF, and TC, leading to an argument that Chaucer ultimately suggests that some limits of translation are insurmountable.
Fumo, Jamie Clire.
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015.
Studies the history of interpretation of BD, surveying scholarly commentary, material transmission, and late medieval/early modern creative reception. Emphasizes the (re)making of BD over time, by means of the interrelated textual processes of…
Links BD with Freudian method, arguing that the poem "foreshadows" psychoanalysis through its depiction of how certain uses of language can heal trauma from painful memories
McNamara, Rebecca F.
Literature and Medicine 33.2 (2015): 258-78.
In BD, Chaucer reinvents the "dits amoreux" tropes of Froissart (in "Le paradis d'Amours") and Machaut (in "Le jugement dou roy de Behaingne"), applying Galen's humoral medicine to depictions of the lovelorn knight. Likewise, in KnT, the banished…
Stanbury, Sarah.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015): 133-61.
Contextualizes the bedchamber of BD, exploring its adaptations of French source material, the otherness of France, the social and psychological implications of beds and textiles, and the imagery of black and white. Emphatically English in its…
Davis, Rebecca.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015): 101-32
Argues that motion in HF is "not the antithesis to form but its condition of possibility." Water imagery links Boethian "enclynyng," the littoral "field of sand" that signals transition between Books I and II, and the eel-trap shape of the House of…
Rezunyk, Jessica.
Dissertation Abstracts International A77.06 (2015): n.p.
Uses HF, among other texts, to demonstrate a versatile permeability between "science and the humanities" in the medieval period, in contrast to current more isolated approaches to these disciplines.
Kanai, Noriko.
Baiko Studies in Language and Culture (Society for the Study of International Languages and Cultures of Baiko Gakuin University) 6 (2015): 72-80.
Focuses on the legend of Dido in LGW and compares its representation of Dido in Virgil's "Aeneid," Ovid's "Heroides," and HF. Argues that Dido in LGW desires Aeneas more actively than in other versions and that LGW presents her positively as…
Discusses "the narrator's rhetoric of pity," alluding to Augustine, Aristotle, Cicero, and others, while arguing that both pity and poetry involve "a kind of authentic inauthenticity" that is unstable, paradoxical, and contingent in LGW.
