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…
Glosses to the early manuscripts of CT may be read as important commentaries on the text. In particular glosses to WBT point out the wife's misquotations and, ultimately, her spiritual deafness to the New Law and the deeper meaning of marriage.
Luengo, Anthony E.
Chaucer Review 11 (1976): 1-10.
The form and style of the Pardoner's sermon are affected by its two audiences. The moral tale is related for the benefit of the Pilgrims; the "ensamples" (the brief Biblical stories against various sins) are for the "lewed people" in his rustic…
Chaucer self-consciously makes the reader aware of the achievement of the writer, of the reader as reader, and of the intelligent response he is asking the reader to make. All three point to Chaucer's fascination with the power of language as a key…
The French narrative poems of Machaut and Froissart reveal the source of the voice in Chaucer's early poems. Even though BD imitates the conventions of its French models, it shows how Chaucer adapted the conventions to his own use.
The germ of Chaucer's phrase "and by the reyne hire hente" is found in Benoit's "Roman de Troie." Benoit uses a similar phrase four times. This is further evidence that Chaucer was conflating Boccaccio and Benoit.
