Tinkle, Theresa.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Mythographic tradition provided Chaucer and his contemporaries a wide variety of significations for the figures of Cupid and Venus. Tinkle surveys this variety from antiquity forward, showing that vernacular representations of Cupid and Venus…
Wallace, David.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Reads Chaucer's works (especially CT) as his responses to and imaginings of the politics of his age, politics he experienced at home, in his journeys to Italy, and in his readings of Italian literature--especially that of Petrarch and Boccaccio but…
Kolve, V. A.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009.
Reprints six of Kolve's essays on visual imagery and iconography in Chaucer and medieval literature and adds two new ones--both on MerT: "Of Calendars and Cuckoldry (1): January and May in The Merchant's Tale" (pp. 93-122) and "Of Calendars and…
Treharne, Elaine, and Claude Willan.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2020.
Introduces the study of text technologies, explaining concepts, providing history, and offering case studies. Among the latter is a brief study of the Kelmscott Chaucer as a text that "was created specifically to have a particular aura" in various…
Holsinger, Bruce W.
Stanfords : Stanford University Press, 2001.
In a wide-ranging study of the corporeality of medieval musical culture, Holsinger assesses the "polyphonic perversity" of Chaucer's Pardoner, i.e., the performances that highlight the Pardoner's rhetorical adeptness and distinguish his musical body…
Klassen, Norm
Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs, eds. Resurrection (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 264-74.
In BD, CT (especially the opening of GP and ParsT), and LGWP, flower imagery evokes the "muted presence" of the "motif of resurrection," which Chaucer presents in a characteristic "collocation of Christian theology and authorial self-reflexivity."
Frank, Robert Worth, Jr.
Stanley Weintraub and Philip Young, eds. Directions in Literary Criticism: Contemporary Approaches to Literature (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1973), pp. 53-69.
Reads RvP as a "confession of old age" and RvT as a "tribute" to unrestrained passion and an extension of the concern with love in KnT and MilT. Compares RvT with its analogues, and comments on its characterizations, the straightforwardness of its…
Fradenburg, L. O. Aranye.
Staying Alive: A Survival Manual for the Liberal Arts (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Punctum, 2013), pp. 223-61.
Contemplates and appreciates the "indisputable fact of our common aliveness," exploring various topics for evidence of cognitive and aesthetic similarities: biosemiotics, real estate advertising, human natal development, communal grooming, and the…
Brewer, Derek.
Stefan Horlacher and Marion Islinger, eds. Expedition nach der Wahrheit: Poems, Essays, and Papers in Honour of Theo Stemmler (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1996), pp. 513-24.
Critiques approaches to TC that separate the narrator of the poem from Chaucer, briefly tracing modern ideas of character and irony from Kittredge to Donaldson and Muscatine, and on to deconstruction and feminism. New Critics and their descendants…
Clogan, Paul M.
Stella P. Revard, ed. Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Wolfenbutel (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1987), pp. 25-32.
Known to Boccaccio and possibly Chaucer, Lactantius Placidus's commentary is one of the earliest on the classics that deeply influenced the tradition of medieval mythography. Composed in the fifth or sixth century, it circulated widely in the early…
Meecham-Jones, Simon.
Stephanie Downes, Andrew Lynch, and Katrina O'Loughlin, eds. Emotions and War: Medieval to Romantic Literature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 77–97.
Considers the concept of "manhod" (3.428) in TC in relation to critical discussions of Troilus's masculinity, reading Troilus's emotions in light of late medieval literary and social conventions and arguing that Chaucer's experiment in emotion is…
Nall, Catherine.
Stephanie Downes, Andrew Lynch, and Katrina O'Loughlin, eds. Writing War in Britain and France, 1370–1854: A History of Emotions (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 73-88.
Explores the theme of knightly and royal pity (and related concepts, such as mercy, compassion, and resulting actions) in literary representations of war in a range of late medieval English texts, with particular attention to the Alliterative "Morte…
Siewers, Alfred K.
Stephanie LeMenager, Teresa Shewry, and Ken Hiltner, eds. Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 105-20.
Views "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Malory's "Morte Darthur," and CT through the lens of ecopoetics, contending that they all rely upon the interdependence of author, text, and audience; employ metonyms rather more than metaphors; play with…
Newman, Barbara.
Stephen A. Barney, ed. Chaucer's Troilus: Essays in Criticism (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1980), pp. 257-75.
The dichotomy between "trouthe" (fidelity) and truth (actuality) marks TC from the outset. "Trouthe" in love is linked to "routhe" and "kyndenesse," and on every level is compromised by the characters' feigning.
Taylor, Karla.
Stephen A. Barney, ed. Chaucer's Troilus: Essays in Criticism (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1980), pp. 277-96.
In conflating love and poetics in TC, Chaucer uses proverbs both to validate truth and to express the limitations of traditional language. The attempt to secure stability through this language and the failure of the attempt are part of Chaucer's…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Stephen A. Barney, ed. Chaucer's Troilus: Essays in Criticism (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1980), pp. 297-317.
Chaucer is concerned with showing the consequences of the consummation of the love of Troilus and Criseyde as it concerns both characters and narrator. The events following this consummation scene also broadly parallel those in Dante's "Purgatorio"…
Kao, Wan-Chuan.
Stephen Ahern, ed. Affect Theory and Literary Critical Practice: A Feel for the Text (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 25-43.
Describes "premodern theories of affect rooted in humoral theory and faculty psychology," and explores the affects of wonder and shame in FranT as well as its queered futurity, focusing on Aurelius's brother, who occupies "the position of the…
Partridge, Stephen.
Stephen B. Partridge and Erik Kwakkel, eds. Author, Reader, Book: Medieval Authorship in Theory and Practice (Toronton: University of Toronto Press, 2012), pp. 106-53..
Argues that Ret elevates Chaucer's status as author, and creates the "illusion of Chaucer's presence and agency" for the reader of CT. Connects Chaucer's use of Ret to French literary culture, which helped define Chaucer's own sense of authorship.
Obermeier, Anita.
Stephen B. Partridge and Erik Kwakkel, eds. Author, Reader, Book: Medieval Authorship in Theory and Practice (Toronton: University of Toronto Press, 2012), pp. 80-105.
Describes Gower's and Chaucer's "metaphorical and historical connections to Richard II," as reflected in ManT.
Edwards, A. S. G.
Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 53-67.
Examines various aspects of late-medieval manuscript compilation in light of Selden B.24, a "transitional collection" that extends the Chaucerian canon and connects with the emerging print culture.
Boffey, Julia.
Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 69-82.
Discusses whether British Library MS Harley 116 and Cambridge University Library MS Hh 4.12 were meant to be anthologies or whether the quire signatures indicate discrete works that came together by accident.
Hanna, Ralph,III.
Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Whole Book:Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 37-51.
Using Winchester College MS 33 as a touchstone for examining the difficulties of apprehending medieval texts, Hanna attributes the miscellaneous nature of collections of vernacular works in manuscripts to the difficulties of textual supply rather…
Kerr, John.
Stephen Gersh and Bert Roest, eds. Medieval and Renaissance Humanism: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reform (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 185-202.
In HF, Chaucer poses "epistemological instability" as a condition of the sublunar realm, which he characterizes as hellish through associations with Proserpina in her triple manifestation, references to Claudian, and allusions to Virgil and Dante.
Rigby, Stephen H.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed. A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 497-520.
Rigby explores how a variety of Middle English texts reflect and reinforce the normative ideologies of class and gender in late medieval England. Contempt for the world helped to assert social hierarchies, justify inequalities, and quell tensions.…
