The Pardoner's self-revelation "heightens the challenge" of deceiving the pilgrims at the end of the sermon and does not preclude it. Chaucer uses the Host's response to the Pardoner's invitation to point to the pilgrims' spiritual weakness--even if…
The Pardoner threatens to lead the pilgrims astray to venerate his dubious relics, not to seek Saint Thomas. PardT mirrors this aberrancy. Thus the Host, as acknowledged leader, must be the one to snub him violently before order can be restored.
Storm, Melvin.
Modern Language Quarterly 42 (1981): 219-26.
The deafness of the Wife of Bath is viewed as an iconographic reflection of her unbalanced intellectual and spiritual position. Hearing as she does with only one ear, the Wife's views are skewed to improper attention to the present--to the things of…
Though Chaucer obliquely refers to the positive interpretation of the Mars-Venus-Vulcan myth (in the gift by Vulcan to Harmonia of a brooch), he stresses the negative--that the martial man is best advised to avoid the temptations of love. The…
Storm, Melvin.
English Language Notes 14 (1977): 172-74.
Various medieval sources establish the image of the tiger as a figure of hypocrisy. Chaucer's description of the tercelet as a "tiger, full of doublenesse" (5.543) is no accident.
Storm, Melvin.
Studies in Scottish Literature 28 (1993): 105-22.
Chaucer's moral judgment of Troilus may be uncertain, and his judgment of Criseyde is definitely uncertain. Readers have attempted to clarify these judgments by appeals outside the text to law and theology; however, reading Henryson's "Testament" as…
Storm, William M.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Thinks about Thopas "in the context of medieval maps," and considers the Tale's pointers and misdirections in plot and genre, assessing them in light of the traditional Chaucer-Pilgrim / Chaucer-Poet distinction. Designed for pedagogical use,…
Offers evidence (rhymes and phonetic patterns in English and French) to indicate "Chaucer having pronounced 'iu' in French loanwords, with the stress on the first element of the diphthong." Further this "'iu' coalesced with earlier 'ew', 'iw', and,…
Storms, G.
Handelingen van het drieendertigste Nederlands Filologencongress: Gehouden te Nijmegen op woensdag 17, donderlag 18, en vrijdag 19 april 1974. (Amsterdam: Holland University Press, 1974) pp. 1-12.
Intended for an upper-class public, MilT has high literary value owing to its structure, motivation, style, and place in CT (especially the contrast with the preceding KnT), consistency with the Miller's personality, and also characterization,…
Stouck, Mary-Ann.
American Benedictine Review 33 (1982): 276-91.
The innovative material in the first three books of Capgrave's "Life" is indebted to the fifteenth century's interest in Chaucer's "elevated" and pious passages, especially those in TC. Stylistically, however, Capgrave's attempt to emulate his…
Argues that the characterizations in Willa Cather's "Death Comes for the Archbishop" were influenced by Chaucer's GP descriptions, particularly those of his ecclesiastical characters. The two authors also share a tendency to avoid rigid schemata of…
Strain, David Michael.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1993): 3901A.
HF, PF, and LGW are examples of "play" in Huizinga's sense. At once occasional poems and investigations of poetic theory, they act together to permit Chaucer to depart, in CT, from traditional poetics and perhaps politics.
Straker, Scott-Morgan.
Martin Gosman, Arjo Vanderjagt, and Jan Veenstra, eds. The Growth of Authority in the Medieval West: Selected Proceedings of the International Conference, Groningen, 6-9 November 1997 (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1999), pp. 285-306.
Assesses Lydgate's responses to authority in "Troy Book": his rhetorical additions to Guido delle Colonne's "Historia destructionis Troiae" (his source), his freeing himself from the influence of TC (his model) by transforming Chaucer into an…
Straker, Scott-Morgan.
Review of English Studies 52: 1-21, 2001.
Lydgate appropriates Chaucer not so much to pay tribute as to distance himself from anticlericalism, to redeem the narrative and monastic voice, and to assert its freedom from authority, as represented by Harry Bailly. Lydgate's apparent compliance…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
Isabel Davis and Catherine Nall, eds. Chaucer and Fame: Reputation and Reception (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), pp. 57-74.
Reviews the presence of Statius's "Thebaid" in TC, exploring in detail the juxtaposition of Statian and Ovidian material in Cassandra's explanations of Troilus's dream of the boar, explaining Chaucer's elision of Boccaccio from his poem as Chaucer's…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
Emily Steiner and Lynn Ransom, eds. Taxonomies of Knowledge: Information and Order in Medieval Manuscripts (Philadelphia: The Schoenberg
Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, 2015), pp. 7-36.
Considers the appearance of the "mysterious inscription 'Ch'" beside several poems in MS Codex 902 in the University of Pennsylvania Libraries collection. Scholars have assumed that the "Ch" stands for Chaucer, but Strakhov argues that the poems are…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
Medium Aevum 85.2 (2016): 236-58.
Contends that Deschamps's "Ballade to Chaucer" alludes to a poetic debate between Philippe de Vitry and Jean de le Mote, to Ovidian exile, and to a poet's oeuvre as a garden. Claims that Deschamps's emphasis on translation and use of French and…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
In R. Barton Palmer and Burt Kimmelman, eds. Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), pp. 139-64.
Considers Machaut's and Chaucer's uses of blue and green symbolism in relation to late medieval "armorial bearings disputes" to investigate the poets' concern with "issues surrounding the legibility of identity." Comments on color symbolism in SqT,…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
In Jamie C. Fumo, ed. Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess": Contexts and Interpretations (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 157-75.
Argues that the differing treatments of Morpheus in BD and Machaut's "Fonteinne amoureuse" "reflect on the advantages and limitations of 'imitatio' as a tool for authorial self-promotion." Underlying this reflection are contrasting strategies for…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 289-313.
Identifies food-chain predation and ecosystemic competition as formal elements of animal fables; then examines these dynamics in NPT, the Rat Parliament of Langland's "Piers Plowman," and their respective allusions to the Uprising of 1381 and to the…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
New Literary History 50 (2019): 467-71.
Describes the treatment of the rondel in manuscripts of PF as a form of code-switching, identifies resonances of PF and SqT in Charles d'Orléans's Valentine's Day poetry, and explores the implications of describing love-talk or bird-talk as a form…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2022.
Studies uses in late medieval England of French lyric models (formes fixes) as "reparative" translation of francophone culture, and response to linguistic and political trends and tensions of the Hundred Years War. Includes discussion of Chaucer's…
