Hubertis M. Commings' dissertation (1914) denying that Chaucer knew the "Decameron" and an influential article by Willard Farnham (1924) positing that the work was not known in England until 1566 both are speciously reasoned. Chaucerian echoes of…
Burger, Douglas A.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 103-10.
May's final answer is the culmination of "an incongruence between words and truth that is manifest throughout the entire poem." The preamble of antifeminist material is glossed by an old man's fantasy. The Merchant's "inability" to gloss allows him…
Hartung, Albert E.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 111-28.
The argument by John M. Manly (1926) that "Pars Secunda" of CYT was not originally part of CTY at all but was an earlier tale intended for a separate occasion and a special audience is plausible in view of internal, textual, and historical evidence.
Though Mary Giffin suggests a connection between SNT and Cardinal Adam Easton, the more important connection is between SNT and the schism in the church during his time. ManT relates thematically to SNT by providing a counter-point to the Second Nun…
Keiser, George R.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 147-61.
Characters in ShT use imprecise language such as swearing to obscure the meaning of their actions. The narrator, who uses similar language, and fails to notice the implications of his tale, resembles the pilgrim of uncertain identity in the Endlink…
Lepley, Douglas L.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 162-70.
Despite recent arguments to the contrary, parallels (such as the depiction of Fortune) between MkT and Books II-IV of "The Consolation of Philosophy" show that the Monk's tragedies are philosophically sound in Boethian terms.
The manipulation of narrative techniques in TC (as, for example, in the five-book structure or the epilogue) is one way in which the story reveals its value system and subtly encourages us to adopt that system.
Steinmetz, David C.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 38-54.
Griselda's career, when seen in light of the nominalist doctrine of justification known in fourteenth-century Oxford, parallels the pilgrimage of the faithful toward the Heavenly Jerusalem.
Bachman, W. Bryant,Jr.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 55-67.
Contrary to prevailing criticism, Dorigien's rash promise is based on the reality of the experiential world. The tension arises when this reality appears an illusion, according to the Boethian concept of reality. When the world is neither real nor…
Besserman, Lawrence L.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 68-73.
Chaucer uses wordplay as a device for establishing the Nun's Priest's resentment of his subordination to the Prioress. The Priest disassociates himself from the anti-feminist sentiment of the tale with his final claim "I kan noon harm of no womman…
Establishes that the "Breton" lay is a British lay composed by ancient Britons, not by minstrels of Brittany. The MED gives a British origin for most of its citations of "Britoun" and "Britaine." The validity of the sources for the other citations…
Contrary to Kittredge's view that FrT and SumT are "merely comic interludes" in the marriage group, the Prologues and Tales of the Wife, Friar, and Summoner share a common concern, the debate on "experience" vs. "auctoritee." In questions of…
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 90-102.
Chaucer's unprecedented use of the woman baring her buttocks to the lover's kiss significantly emphasizes both the active potential of the woman, the rejection of courtly traditions,and the association of food with sex. The addition of her fart…
Sands, Donald B.
Chaucer Review 12 (1978): 171-82.
The Wife of Bath is neither a comic figure as Donaldson and others see her, nor a tragic figure as several other critics see her. Instead she is, as Beryl Rowland suggests, a neurotic and a misfit.
Keiser, George R.
Chaucer Review 12 (1978): 191-201.
The arrangement of CT proposed by Henry Bradshaw a century ago solves the problems of geography and the Endlink to MLT which are present in the Ellesmere arrangement. Recent arguments against the Bradshaw shift offer no real evidence to reject it.
In Jungian terms, the experiences of the knight in WBT express a psychic interaction with the mother archetype, leading to the ultimate goal of finding the anima.
D. W. Robertson has already demonstrated the relationship between the Samaritan Woman (Matt. 4:4) and the Wife of Bath. But the similarities are even deeper, extending to an ironic typology of the harlot saved, including Mary Magdalene.
In Mel Chaucer's idiomatic translation from the French of Renaud de Louens skillfully imitates and elaborates the "style clergial," especially in its use of introductory phrases, doublets, subordinate clauses, and trailing sentence structures.
Chaucer freely coins derivations, such as the Summoner's "preambulacion" from "preamble" (D837), for the sake of rhyme, rhythm, economy, and forcefulness.
Morris Halle and Samuel J. Keyser, through careful computer analysis, seem to have put down the myth of the hundred-year-hibernation of Chaucer's decasyllabic line. By studying the stresses and their positions in the line, Halle and Keyser have…
Loschiavo, Linda Ann.
Chaucer Review 13 (1978): 128-32.
Argues for the later date on two counts. First, discrepancies in the records allow only the conclusion that in 1361 Blanche was at least 14 years of age. Second, the custom of early marriage makes plausible that Blanche was only 12 when married in…
Knapp, Peggy Ann.
Chaucer Review 13 (1978): 133-40.
Criseyde's characterization and role in Chaucer's fiction define the way Nature herself looks and functions in the world. Troilus and Pandarus as "priests of Nature" cannot reconcile their image of her with a nature that is "slyding of corage."
Brown, Emerson, Jr.
Chaucer Review 13 (1978): 141-56.
MerT is not just a merry fabliau, uncomplicated by a fictional narrator. Through evidence included in the prologue, most of the first hundred and fifty lines, and various other passages in the work, we see that Chaucer may have consciously tried to…
