Bowers, Bege K., and Mark Allen, eds.
Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.
More than 3,200 annotated entries, compiled and edited from the annual bibliographies published in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, newly arranged and cross-listed in topical categories. Includes author and subject indexes.
Bowers, John M.
Medieval Perspectives 6 (1991): 135-43.
Thomas Chaucer continued the lease on his father's house in the garden at Westminster Abbey to provide a repository for Geoffrey Chaucer's literary remains. His motive was to help form a Lancastrian poetic canon committed to social stability and…
Medical and psychological insights confirm alcoholism as the Pardoner's root problem. Heavy long-term indulgence has left him unable to function without drink; he is alienated, impotent, resentful, and eloquent in preaching yet mute under attack. …
Bowers, John M.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 7 (1985): 23-50.
Explores the literary nature of these two continuations of CT and their importance as early readings, which assume that the pilgrimage is round trip rather than one way.
Bowers, John M.
Nathaniel B. Smith and Joseph T. Snow, eds. The Expansion and Transformation of Courtly Literature (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), pp. 141-55.
The visual image of Troilus on his horse, which Criseyde sees from her window, is connected to the earlier image of Troilus as a horse. The horse image, with its suggestions of lust and pride, is associated with both Troilus and Criseyde.
Bowers, John M.
Pacific Coast Philology 30 (1995): 15-26.
Chaucer exposes the Ricardian practice of chaste marriage "for what perhaps it really was: sexual hypocrisy posing as virtuous Christian abstinence." The false romantic passion and comic fusion of the clerkly and courtly in male characters such as…
Bowers, John M.
Chaucer Yearbook 5 (1998): 91-115.
Treats "Thebes" and the Prologue to "Beryn" (here called "The Canterbury Interlude") as "efforts to write what Chaucer had left unwritten" and to confront contemporary controversies. Lydgate's work rebukes those who would critique monasticism and…
Bowers, John M.
Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline, eds. Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp. 13-44.
Argues that Chaucer chose not to develop the characters of his Yeoman, Plowman, Guildsmen, and Cook because of political concerns. Richard II's reliance on Cheshire yeomen, increased concern about farm laborers and Lollardy, and reaction against the…
Bowers, John M.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 53-66.
Reads CT as a "decolonizing project" and a "narrative of nationhood" whereby Chaucer resisted Richard II's renewed attachment to French culture and took steps to invent English society. Assesses how several issues in CT reflect English postcolonial…
Bowers, John M.
Denise N. Baker, ed. Inscribing the Hundred Years' War in French and English Cultures (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), pp. 91-125.
Using postcolonial theory, events of the 100 Years' War, and speculations about Chaucer's war experiences, Bowers analyzes Chaucer's literary productions--from his early translations from French through LGW--as a reaction against French literary…
"Pearl" reflects the political and social turmoil of Richard's reign and is a product of the rich visual and verbal culture of his Cheshire coterie. Political and social allusions in the poem engage Lollardy, labor laws, court magnificence,…
Bowers, John M.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 301-24.
Examines the "same-sex union of adoptive brotherhood" between the Summoner and the Pardoner and assesses the economic underpinnings of sworn brotherhood in FrT and SumT. Chaucer's alignment of homosexual and heterosexual issues in the Marriage Group…
Assesses why Hoccleve, the first person who attempted to establish Chaucer as the Father of English poetry, failed to "claim his own position as direct lineal heir in this literary genealogy."
Bowers, John M.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26: 113-46, 2004
Bowers describes the habits and activities of the two scribes, assessing what such factors can tell us about the scribes' careers and early fifteenth-century book production. Scribe D reflects "commercial opportunism" in producing works by prestige…
Bowers, John M.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34 (2004): 279-307.
Three variants of KnT--Sir John Clanvowe's reading of the story of Palamon and Arcite, Chaucer's KnT, and "The Kingis Quair" of James I--provide insight into the shifting ideologies of chivalric performance and the establishment of Chaucer as a…
Bowers, John M.
Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press , 2007.
Chaucer's preeminence over Langland is an effect of historical and social forces and must be revised, because tradition is a conflicted notion that helps construct understanding of past, present, and future. Chaucer was a medium of this process, "the…
