Swan, Richard.
Deddington, Oxfordshire: Philip Allan Updates, 2005.
Student guide to MilPT and the GP description of the Miller (text included for GP selection only), with general information about CT and reading Chaucer, and more specific discussion of plot, characters, themes, genre, and techniques of MilT.…
Swanson, R. N., ed.
Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2006.
Twelve essays by various authors and an introduction by the editor. General commentary on the theology of indulgences and more focused studies of the history and literary depiction of indulgences in European nations/institutions in the late Middle…
Swanson, Robert N.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 13 (1991): 41-80.
Assesses the Parson in the context of historical records and medieval handbooks for priests, showing him to be a success of the system of patronage, education, and benefice. Identifies the social and economic advantages of his status and summarizes…
"The Plowman's Tale," first appearing in Chaucer's "Works" in 1542, and the "Pilgrim's Tale," printed not earlier than 1536, both clearly based on earlier material, could be clever forgeries or retouched, but substantially genuine, medieval poems. …
Admires the structural patterns of GP--seven groupings, significant juxtapositions, alterations of detail and generalization, etc.--suggesting that they produce "a poetic realization of plenitude and diversity," underpinned by a concern with "degree"…
Sweany, Erin E.
In Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, eds. Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2918), pp. 119-44.
Reads the Cook's ulcer as potential leprosy in an effort to show how such signs on the skin act as points of uncertainty that impact the relationships among the pilgrims.
Sweeney, Michelle.
Dublin : Four Courts Press, 2000.
Magic enables discussion of contemporary political and social issues and timeless questions of faith, love, loyalty, fate, and destiny. The concluding chapter shows how magic in FranT enables discussion of free will and challenges the Franklin's…
Sweeney, Michelle.
Essays in Medieval Studies 30 (2015): 165-78.
Examines how "knights are reformed" and some are "even saved by the women who tempt them" in several medieval romances, including Chretien's "Knight of the Cart"; Marie de France's "Lanval"; "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"; and FranT, where Dorigen…
Sweet, W. H. E.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 28-45.
Sweet examines works by William Dunbar and Robert Henryson as well as lesser-known texts to argue that, like Chaucer, Lydgate had significant influence on the development of literature in Scotland.
Sweet, W. H. E.
Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh, eds. After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 343-59.
Assesses the use of secular and sacred topics in Lydgate's corpus, arguing that his expressions in his late poems of regret for writing secular verse in mid-career are sincere. Contrasts Lydgate's "retractions" of his poetry in "Testament" and…
Sweeten, David W.
Open access Ph.D. dissertation (Ohio State University, 2016). Available at https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=osu1468414544&disposition=inline (accessed April 4, 2020).
Explores "economic terms and metaphor" in Middle English literature "to determine what such treatment indicates about the shifting social relations of marriage in late medieval England." Discusses how, in WBP, the Wife "appropriate[s] economic…
Swenson, Haylie.
Will Rogers and Christopher Michael Roman, eds. Medieval Futurity: Essays for the Future of a Queer Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2020), pp. 189-96.
Reassesses the role and value of the falcon and the mechanical horse in SqT. Demonstrates through these depictions that SqT creates "interspecies and intrasexual relationships of care outside of the gendered human norms of chivalric romance."
A frame-tale collection of stories that adapts aspects of CT, told while travelers are trapped on a stalled subway car. Written in rhymed couplets, with a General Prologue and nineteen tales without prologues.
Comic novel cast as the first-person memoir of British academic who identifies with Shakespeare's Hamlet (p. 7) and alludes to Chaucer at least once, citing his own feelings as being similar to those of the "ghost of Troilus at the end of Chaucer's…
Swinford, Dean.
Blake Hobby, ed. The Trickster. Bloom's Literary Themes (New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2010), pp. 229-39.
Explores how WBT "ironizes the quest motif at the heart" of the romance genre and assesses the extent to which the loathly lady, the knight, and the Wife of Bath may be considered to be tricksters.
Swinford, Dean.
Modern Philology 111 (2013): 1–22.
Focuses on HF, 584–92, clarifying the meaning and implications of "stellifye," arguing that the narrator's fear of stellification reflects Chaucer's concerns about social and poetic ascent, and describing how the allusion to Ganymede evokes a…
Study guide that describes Chaucer's life and historical context, and surveys the characters, plots, themes, and literary devices of CT. Designed for young adult readers; includes suggestions for essays and excerpts from critical studies.
Swortzell, Lowell.
Plays: The Drama Magazine for Young People 74.5 (2015): 23-28, 64.
One-act play for eight child actors adapted from PardT, with Chaucer speaking directly to the Pardoner at the opening and closing of the plot. Production notes indicate a running time of approximately 20 minutes.
Sydorenko, Sergiy.
Babel: Revue internationale de la traduction/International Journal of Translation 65, no. 2 (2019): 200-221.
Reviews translations of MilT from the eighteenth century forward, and offers a "translatological analysis" of four twentieth-and twenty-first-century versions, focusing on the sexual attitudes and activities in the plot and on the lexicons used by…
Sylla, Edith Dudley.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 456-71.
Traces the work and influence of the "Oxford Calculators" (William Heytesbury, Thomas Bradwardine, Walter Burley, Richard Kilvington, Roger and Richard Swineshead, and John Dumbleton), demonstrating how Chaucer "might have picked up some of their…
Sylvester, Louise M.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Investigates how medieval romances have shaped heterosexual gender roles, studying the role of language in constructing sexuality. In close readings of TC, MilT, and MerT, Sylvester analyzes "transitivity" and maps dialogue between male and female…
