Judkins, Ryan R.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 159-72.
Although anthropocentric, BD emphasizes the similarity of animals and humans under the law of "kynde." They share an "embodied state and an ethical system as a result of their shared creation." The hart, object of the hunt, parallels the Black…
Withers, Jeremy.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 173-83.
In KnT, warriors are compared to animals, a seemingly desirable condition that would allow warriors to "discharge at will their power and violence." However, several references to shackled, confined, or endangered animals create a contrast between…
Steel, Karl.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 185-99.
Form Age shares thematic elements with Alexander legends, including vegetarianism and prohibitions against agriculture. In these poems humans live as, and eat as, animals do, a contrast to the mastery described in Genesis. The life described in these…
Browne, Megan Palmer.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 203-15.
NPT demonstrates the danger of reading "for a single abstract moral" by means of its emphasis on Chauntecleer's humanlike qualities. Among his most human attributes are experiencing and expounding a dream. If "men" refers to both humans and chickens,…
Matlock, Wendy A.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 217-31.
Explores anthropomorphism and the "connaturality" of human and nonhuman animals in PF and Lydgate's "Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep," noting the comments of medieval and modern philosophers on the traditional animal-human binary. Lydgate's…
Elmes, Melissa Ridley.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 233-47.
Compares the birds of PF to birds in medieval scientific texts, in sources or analogues (especially Alan de Lille's "De planctu Naturae"), and in the observable environment. Chaucer fills PF with birds known in England, classifying them by diet but…
Kordecki, Lesley.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 249-60.
Argues that the cuckoo-merlin dialogue in PF deconstructs the traditional human-animal binary by presenting a "fleeting realization of anthropomorphism gone awry." The cuckoo's "brood parasitism . . . resolves itself into a mode of communal profit"…
Freeman, Carol.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 33-47.
Describes the specific appearance of vellum, the types of quills used in creating a medieval manuscript, and animal-inflicted damage to manuscripts by mice, bugs, etc. Intersperses discussion of NPT with regard to Chauntecleer's appearance and…
Feinstein, Sandy, and Neal Woodman.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 49-66.
The Pardoner is compared to a hare, goat, and horse, and PardT refers to smaller animals usually considered vermin. The three gluttonous rioters are appropriately called shrews, and the poison used to kill them is ostensibly bought for rats and a…
Gutmann, Sara.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 69-83.
Although some falconers were female, the activity of training (often female) falcons is highly gendered. The necessity of the falcon to be tamed is paralleled in the need for Emelye in KnT to submit to heterosexual marriage, and for Canacee in SqT to…
Stock, Lorraine Kochanske.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 85-100.
Themes of "trouthe" and "gentillesse," as well as the threat of suicide, in the SqT falcon episode (5.409-631) anticipate major themes of FranT. Because SqT is prior in the narrative sequence, the human language of FranT parodies avian language…
Arboleda Guirao, Immaculada de Jesús, and M. Esther Mediero Durán.
Cartaphilus: Revista de Investigación y Crítica Estética 11 (2013): 8-15.
Spanish version of Arboleda Guirao's essay "Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath's Prologue' in 'The Canterbury Tales.' The Wife's Personality, Language and Life: Revisiting Feminism," published in 2011.
Štrmelj, Lidija.
Časopis za Književnost, Kulturu i Književno Prevođenje / A Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation 12 (2021). 27 pp.
Compares conceptual metaphors in MilT and in its Croatian translation by Luko Paljetak (1986) in order to determine which metaphors are "conventional in both languages and cultures." In Croatian, with an English abstract.
Copeland, Ann.
Cataloging and Classification Quarterly 33.3-4: 161-80, 2002.
Copeland describes the difficulties and potential for confusion in imprecise library cataloging of digital versions of books, focusing on differences between particular works and books and assessing as one example the 1998 Octavo CD-Rom version of…
Williams, Deanne.
Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner, eds. The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 205-26.
Williams considers adaptation of the Consolatio for courtly audiences in a number of works, including HF, WBT, and the "oft overlooked Boethian poems" Form Age, For, Truth, Sted, and Gent. These overlooked poems were particularly popular in…
Lerer, Seth.
Catherine Bates and Patrick Cheney, eds. The Oxford History of English Poetry, Volume 4: Sixteenth-Century British Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 19-33.
Surveys the "brilliantly imaginative, formally experimental, and socially self-aware" poetry of early sixteenth-century English, with emphasis on its transitions from Chaucerian tradition and to Shakespearean tradition, the importance of Ovidian…
Ellis, Roger.
Catherine Batt, ed. Essays on Thomas Hoccleve ([Turnhout, Belgium]: Brepols, 1996), pp. 29-54.
Questions how well Thomas Hoccleve's translation of Christine de Pizan's "Epistre au dieu d'amours" captures the "wit of the original," arguing that the translation was influenced by LGW and by other Chaucerian works and suggesting that Christine's…
Batt, Catherine.
Catherine Batt, ed. Essays on Thomas Hoccleve ([Turnhout, Belgium]: Brepols, 1996), pp. 55-84.
Examines the "defense-of-women" section near the end of Hoccleve's "Regiment" (lines 5090-194) as a meditation on literary influence and the need for the poet to comment on political issues. The defense alludes to the Wife of Bath and to…
Mertens-Fonck, Paule.
Catherine Bel, Pascale Dumont, and Frank Willaert, eds. Contez me tout: Mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales offerts à Herman Braet (Paris: Dudley, 2006), pp. 281-96.
The structure of the Clerk-Knight debates, based on the rivalry between a clerk and a knight, underlies most Tales in CT and can be used to reveal unsuspected meanings.
Rosenfeld, Jessica.
Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner, eds. The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 39- 59.
Rosenfeld concentrates on language of lovers and language of clerks ("erotic and intellectual discourses"), arguing that TC affirms the value of earthly happiness during life, as well as the inevitable instability of earthly matters.
Yeager, R. F.
Catherine Gaullier-Bourgasses and Marylène Possamaï-Pérez, eds. Réécritures et adaptations de l'Ovide Moralisé (xive--xviie siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 51–67
Challenges Conrad Mainzer's evidence that Gower was influenced by the "Ovide moralisé" and/or the "Ovidius moralizatus" of Pierre Bersuire, arguing that closer, more likely parallels exist between Gower's work and BD and LGW.
Sancery, Arlette.
Catherine Royer-Hemet, ed. Canterbury: A Medieval City (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 119-26.
Regards the process of reading as the essential pilgrimage of CT, which obviates the need for an arrival at Canterbury. For previously published version, in French, see "Canterbury, la cathédrale où Chaucer n'arrive jamais . . . Mais est-ce bien…
Yvernault, Martine.
Catherine Royer-Hemet, ed. Canterbury: A Medieval City (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 137-59.
Analysis of Becket reliquaries made in Limoges, including commentary on the role of the city and its cathedral in Becket's experience and in CT (as an elusive destination).
Fulwiler, Lavon.
CCTE [Conference of College Teachers of English] Studies 61 (1996): 93-101.
Fulwiler looks at how "Babe" and NPT use the genre of animal fable and prosopopoeia to create moral tales. Sentence and solaas combine in "Babe," as in Chaucer, to intrigue the audience into deeper exploration of the story. Via structure, setting,…
