Wilhelm, James J.
Chaucer Review 1.4 (1967): 201-06.
Comments on the tripartite structure of PF, its shifting tone and three styles (religious/philosophical, romantic, realistic), the sad plight of the narrator who is left without love, and the predominance of Nature, the poem's "heroine" who fails to…
Farnham, Anthony E.
Chaucer Review 1.4 (1967): 207-16.
Argues that the opposition between "feyned" worldly love and true heavenly love posed at the end of TC produces "dialectical" irony in which the alternatives "share equally in the truth of experience." Secrecy and deception interact with idealism…
Argues that KnT is a heightened, courtly "particularization" of a fundamental aspect of the human condition: "the disorderly promptings of carnal love and their disastrous effects." Considers the imagery of the poem (Christian, Boethian, fire, and…
Peck. Russell A.
Chaucer Review 1.4 (1967): 253-71.
Suggests that FranT is an exposé of "bourgeois sentimentality," and argues that its "central theme" is the "difficulty of perceiving truth in a world of illusions." Self-deceived, the Franklin mistakes his own desires for reality. He projects a…
Chaucer's catalogues of feminine delights seem totally original, but upon closer scrutiny they reveal techniques employed by many other poets both serious and humorous.
Bradwardine's concept of God's "potentia absoluta" serves to reconcile the literal and allegorical meanings of Walter in ClT. Griselda must accept Walter's actions, though she cannot comprehend them. This parallels man's relationship to God, but,…
Chaucer's statements in the "Thopas-Melibee" link, which critics have interpreted in at least three different ways, are significant only as a continuation of the Pilgrim Chaucer's pose of literary innocence. They serve to indicate a switch from…
The people's and Griselda's agreements with Walter, the agent of testing, are analogous to the Old and New Testament covenants, respectively. The lower-order civil bond, governed by the letter of the law, is weak; the higher-order marriage bond,…
Condren, Edward I.
Chaucer Review 10 (1975): 87-95.
The 1368 date for the death of Blanche of Lancaster in J. J. N. Palmer's article ChauR 8 (1974) is probably correct, but this does not vitiate the 1377 date proposed by Condren ChauR 5 (1971) for the composition of BD.
In TC Chaucer employs a series of circular images--rings, city walls, seasonal cycles, Fortune's wheel, and super-lunar spheres--to reinforce his themes of sexual love, imprisonment, and ephemerality, and to accentuate the differences between earthly…
Internal evidence about Harry Bailly's literary aesthetic suggests that he would have chosen the Nun's Priest as the winner of the "soper" at the Tabard. The priest's "sentence," "solaas," conviviality, and obvious masculinity are the deciding…
Harrington, Norman T.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 187-200.
CT is the last formulation of one of Chaucer's strongest literary preoccupations: the dynamic interaction of experience and art. The links present reality as it is immediately perceived: chaotic but vital. The tales present reality as it is…
In NPT, the thrust of the satire on the relation between foreknowledge and free will is that theories like Bishop Bradwardine's simple necessity, St. Augustine's paradox, and, most notably, Boethius' conditional necessity are too abstract and…
Haines, R. Michael.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 220-35.
That the Fortune-Nature-Grace topos is the unifying theme of Fragment C is supported by Chaucer's additions to its sources and by his probable revision of the link. PhyT shows the gifts of Grace overcoming Fortune and Nature; PardT shows the abuse…
Manly's reordering of the final lines of ParsP in his 1928 edition is contested by manuscript evidence, Chaucer's general usage of pronouns, and the intelligibility and literary excellence of the original version.
Polzella, Marion L.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 279-86.
In Scog and PF, Chaucer creates a vision of the world of love through which he may comment on his own craft. The poet-narrator's being uninitiated to love is a quality ideally suitable to this double focus on poetry and love.
Oberembt, Kenneth J.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 287-302.
The Wife of Bath first weakens the conventional notion of men as reasonable and women as sensual by showing how sensual and unworthy of sovereignty were her five husbands. Then she overthrows this notion when her own feminine-sensual image dissolves…
The WBT and its analogues have in common the archetype of transformation from ugly age to beautiful and fertile youthfulness. The psychic transformation of unconsciousness to consciousness, a phenomenon central to human individual and collective…
PhyT treats appearance and reality, fraud and honesty at the individual, familial, political, and cosmic levels of governance. Virginius' pardon of Claudius can be seen as an act that, on the cosmic level, affirms God's charitable governance and…
Peterson, Joyce E.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 326-36.
Like Vice of morality drama, the Pardoner plays a part calculated to lure his audience toward sin by making them treat wickedness as a joke they can innocently enjoy, but the Host thwarts this gibe. Thus the Pardoner, again like Vice, becomes the…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 337-49.
In SNT, Chaucer works within the theological tradition of Plato, Augustine, and Prudentius to instruct Christians in their proper attitude toward this world: a "thing" perceived by the physical senses, especially sight, is an apparent reality that…
