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The Prioress and the Second Nun
Lewis, Katherine J.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 94-113.
Places the Prioress and the Second Nun in the context of late medieval female monasticism, contrasting the roles of female agency and the "representations of female holiness" of the Prioress and the Second Nun.
Chaucer's Presence in "Songes and Sonettes."
Holton, Amanda.
Stephen Hamrick, ed. Tottel's Songes and Sonettes in Context (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 87-110.
Surveys Chaucer's influence on "Tottel's Miscellany," commenting on various allusions and the inclusion of Chaucer's Truth in the collection (although "deliberately anonymized"), and exploring more thoroughly how he is "strongly resisted," i.e., how…
The Structure of Allegorical Desire
Fineman, Joel.
Stephen J. Greenblatt, ed. Allegory and Representation. Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1979-80, n.s. 05 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 26-60.
Chaucer deals with the ways allegories begin and the ends toward which they tend. The pilgrimage is advanced by the allegory in the tales.
Teaching Chaucer in Middle English
Benson, C. David.
Stephen J. Harris and Bryon L. Grigsby, eds. Misconceptions About the Middle Ages. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture, no. 7 (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 240-53.
Benson advocates teaching Chaucer in Middle English, because the liveliness and vitality of Chaucer's language are lost in translation.
Politics and Chaucer's Poetry
Knight, Stephen.
Stephen Knight and Michael Wilding, eds. The Radical Reader (Sydney: Wild and Wooley, 1977), pp. 169-92.
A Marxist approach to form, structure, and character shows broad dichotomies in Chaucer's art; e.g., between city and country, Gothic and modernist narratives, and worldy and otherworldly philosophies. From the last divergence derives the major…
On Reading Books from a Half-Alien Culture
Medcalf, Stephen.
Stephen Medcalf, ed. The Later Middle Ages (London: Methuen; New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981), pp. 1-55.
Seeks to bridge the intellectual and emotion distance between modern readers and medieval literature, addressing the nature of semantic change and changing ideas about human personality. Includes commentary on a range of medieval works, with extended…
Epilogue: From 'Troilus' to 'Troilus'
Medcalf, Stephen.
Stephen Medcalf, ed. The Later Middle Ages (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981), pp. 291-303.
The word "uncircumscript" near the end of TC suggests Chaucer's Boethianism. Chaucer's TC differs from Boccaccio's "Filostrato" in telling the story of a man who lives by "love's heigh service" in a universe where love holds the world together.
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Jost, Jean E.
Steven H. Gale, ed. Encyclopedia of British Humorists: Geoffrey Chaucer to John Cleese (New York and London: Garland, 1996): vol. 1, pp. 228-43.
Surveys the humor and structural comedy of Chaucer's works, especially CT, examining individual tales and commenting on BD, HF, and PF. Chaucer achieves comic effects through narrative resolution and by manipulating time, place, and circumstances. …
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Brewer, Derek.
Steven R. Serafin and Valerie Grovenor Myer, eds. The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature (New York: Continuum, 2003), pp. 176-78.
Encyclopedia entry that surveys Chaucer's life, language, and works chronologically.
Building a Goddess: Personifications of Fame from Hesiod to Chaucer.
Breen, Katharine.
Steven Rozenski, Joshua Byron Smith, and Claire M. Waters, eds. Mystics, Goddesses, Lovers, and Teachers: Medieval Visions and Their Modern Legacies. Studies in Honour of Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 239-65.
Treats Fame's dual nature as goddess and personification in Hesiod, Aeschines, Virgil, and HF. While Chaucer's character echoes the duality of its predecessors, she is not a goddess--"never characterized as a bride or daughter of the Christian…
"Confessing Authority: Literary Immortality and Authorial Salvation in Chaucer's "Retraction."
Berry, Craig A.
Steven Rozenski, Joshua Byron Smith, and Claire M. Waters, eds. Mystics, Goddesses, Lovers, and Teachers: Medieval Visions and Their Modern Legacies. Studies in Honour of Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 261-76.
Reviews critical approaches to Ret, reading it as both confessional and aesthetic, comparing its duality with those in Purse and the ending of TC, and exploring resonances with ParsT. Assesses Ret as a recantatory formulation that asks its…
'As Thise Clerkes Seyen': Exophoric Reference in Middle English and French Narrative
Burnley, J. D.
Stewart Gregory and D. A. Trotter, eds. De mot en mot: Aspects of Medieval Linguistics. Essays in Honour of William Rothwell (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, with the Modern Humanities Research Association, 1997), pp. 1-15.
The use of "thise" plus a noun (e.g., "thise clerkes," "thise men"), rarely found in Old English, is "particularly common" in Chaucer and Gower; it probably developed in early clerical discourse and, encouraged by some French parallels,spread to…
Chaucer and the Rehearsal of Voices
Justman, Stewart.
Stewart Justman. The Springs of Liberty: The Satiric Tradition and Freedom of Speech (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1999), pp. 22-33.
Bakhtinian analysis of Chaucer's polyphonic satiric techniques in CT, especially GP and MilT, emphasizing their place in the development of English satire and the rise of realism and journalistic claims of accurate reportage. Treats Chaucer's…
The Significance of the Glosses in the Earliest Manuscripts of 'The Canterbury Tales'
Caie, Graham D.
Stig Johansson and Bjorn Tysdahl, eds. Papers from the First Nordic Conference for English Studies. Oslo, 17-19 September, 1980 (Oslo: University of Oslo, Institute of English Studies, 1981), pp. 25-34.
CT glosses often act as commentary and provide source of quotation; they are not mere insertions by scribes or mere source reference.
Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Scottish Language and Literature (Medieval and Renaissance). University of Stirling 2-7 July 1981
Lyall, Roderick J.,and Felicity Riddy,eds.
Stirling/Glasgow: Department of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow, 1981.
Twenty-eight essays by various authors on Scottish language and literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Scottish Language and Literature…
Den oavslutade litteraturen: En essä om allt som inte blev klart.
Leandoer, Kristoffer.
Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 2023.
Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this volume, concerned with unfinished literature, includes discussion of CT, along with Virgil's "Aeneid," Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls," Robert Musil's "Man without a Soul," and other works. In Swedish.
Actes du 2e Colloque de langue et de litterature ecossaises (moyen age et renaissance)
Blanchot, Jean-Jacques, and Claude Graf, eds.
Strassburg: Universite de Strasbourg, 1978.
Search for the title of this volume under Alternative Title for individual essays that pertain to Chaucer.
'Truth' and 'Woman' in Chaucer's Franklin's Tale
Straus, Barrie Ruth.
Straus, Barrie Ruth, ed. Skirting the Texts: Feminisms' Re-Readings of Medieval and Renaissance Texts. Special Issue of Exemplaria 4 (1992): 135-68.
Examines the interrelations of "truth," "freedom," and "woman" as these terms are constructed in FranT. The Franklin's masculinist discourse posits distinctions between truth and fiction, appearance and reality, plain speaking and rhetoric, although…
Anatomy of the Resisting Reader: The Implications of Resistence to Sexual Wordplay in Medieval Literature
Delany, Sheila.
Straus, Barrie Ruth, ed. Skirting the Texts: Feminisms' Re-Readings of Medieval and Renaissance Texts. Special Issue of Exemplaria 4 (1992): 7-34.
Critics' resistence to sexual wordplay in medieval texts such as Chaucer's TC and CT stems not only from a radical difference between medieval and modern standards of good taste, but also from the critics' desire to repress unsettling textual…
Chaucer's Pardoner in Slovenian and the Significance of Paratext in Making Meaning.
Zavrl, Andrej.
Stridon: Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting 3 (2023): 29-49; 2 color illus.
Compares and contrasts Marjan Strojan's presentations of the Pardoner's sexual identity in his 1974 and 2012 Slovenian translations of the GP description of the Pardoner; WBP, 161-87; and PardPT; examining variations and omissions in the texts and…
Paronomasia e Mito : La Nuclearit Genealogica come Discorso di Origine
Monti, Alessandro.
Strumenti Critici 14: 129-42. , 1999.
Argues that Rudyard Kipling's story "The Wish House" was influenced by WBP. Key words in Chaucer's text ("daunger," "chep") and connotations of the word "ash" (part of the surname of Kipling's leading character, Ashcroft) reveal that Chaucer's work…
In Defence of Francesca: Human and Divine Love in Dante and Chaucer
Mann, Jill.
Strumenti Critici 28 (2013): 3-26.
Argues that "Inferno" V does not justify dismissing Francesca's love for Paolo as "lust," given the continuity between the "disiato riso" that leads them to kiss and the "santo riso" of Beatrice that draws Dante upward to Paradise. Echoing Dante and…
Chaucer and Other Earlier English Poetry
Mason, Tom.
Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins, eds. The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Volume 3: 1660-1790 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 427-39.
Mason surveys English translations and modernizations of Chaucer's works (and apocrypha) between 1660 and 1795, commenting on Dryden's and Pope's versions and the imitations they inspired. Includes a list of "Chaucer's Translations 1660-1795."
Geoffrey Chaucer
Kelly, Stuart.
Stuart Kelly. The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You Will Never Read (New York: Random House, 2005), pp. 105-09.
Comments on implications of the lists of works in Chaucer's Ret and their relationship to the fragmentary nature of CT.
Lollardy: The English Heresy?
Hudson, Anne.
Stuart Mews, ed. Religion and National Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), pp. 261-83.
Refers to a heresy trial of 1464 in which ownership of a copy of CT was used as evidence of Lollardy.
