Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 19 (1984): 39-45.
Chaucer draws on the symbolic and scriptural traditions of the oak to permit the Pardoner to show off his exemplum-telling skill. Anagogically the exemplum is an allegory of grace offered and refused.
The tradition of anti-Semitism lent itself to three kinds of imagery: murder-sacrifice (especially the Slaughter of the Innocents), economy, and law. Covert references in PrT to a shadowy image of the Old Testament God the Father makes him an evil…
Response to saints' legends is normally sober, but "Legenda Aurea," Chaucer's source for SNT, exhibits flashes of humor. In a reading of SNT that accepts the natural response of laughter, Valerian, Tiburce, and Almachius are seen to play the fool,…
Gower's reputation as "moral" rests on his mid-1380's stance as a reformer, a classicist, and a clear and consistent portrayer of good and evil. By citing him in TC, Chaucer encourages moral interpretation of the hero's attitude at the end of the…
Benson, C. David.
Chaucer Review 19 (1985): 100-09.
Chaucer's Man of Law attacks Gower for stories of Canacee and Apollonius, while defending Chaucer for omission of "swich unkynde abhomynacions" (MLP 77-89). Gower sympathizes with but condemns the characters. In Chaucer we have "a less rigidly…
The energy of WBP derives from the Wife's "awareness of the tension between her centrality as speaker, and her experiential understanding of her marginality as female," since she voices her woman's feelings toward an overwhelming male audience with…
Wilson, Katharina M.
Chaucer Review 19 (1985): 245-51.
Rather than the usually accepted "Adversus Jovinianum," Saint Jerome's letter to Pammachius is the probable source of the Wife's reference to barley (WBP 145). At best the result is an ambiguous vindication of--and at worst an attack on--the martial…
Although courtly love is central to TC, it is parodied or viewed as dangerous in CT. Evidently Chaucer no longer found it a viable way of revealing the human heart.
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 19 (1985): 290-301.
Translations of Chaucer are inadequate and have no place in serious literary scholarship. Reviews of translations are also misleading since they may suggest that modern English versions lift a veil from the opacity of Chaucer's poetry.
Hermann, John P.
Chaucer Review 19 (1985): 302-37.
The theme of dismemberment initially voiced in the metaphor of the "forstraught" hare (line 1295) reverberates throughout the tale, giving rise to secondary themes of exchange of roles and dissemination of vows, underpinned by references to saints'…
Koff, Leonard Michael.
Chaucer Review 19 (1985): 338-51.
In his translation of ManT and comments Wordsworth reveals typical Romantic preoccupations and premises, notably that feelings are inherently moral and unrestrainable.
Locates and assesses a prevailing irony in TC: the narrator and each of the major characters follows the "same pattern" of early knowledge of Fortune's instability, "followed by self-deception, and eventual submission to the facts." Love and truth…
Hoffman, Richard L.
Chaucer Review 2.1 (1967): 20-31.
Analyzes Chaucer's use and adaptation of the allusion to Jephthah and his daughter in PhyT, arguing that it helps to explain why the Physician's study is "but litel on the Bible" (GP 438), why Chaucer placed PhyT after FranT in the order of the CT (a…
Reads Mel as a "moral allegory," identifying where (in relative degrees) Chaucer and his sources encourage peaceable Christian humility and reliance upon on God's aid rather than self-assertive militancy in resisting the world, the flesh, and the…
Friedman, John Block.
Chaucer Review 2.1 (1967): 8-19.
Examines animal, costume, and color imagery in RvT to show that Chaucer adapted his source by increasing and specifying such imagery, lending moral dimension to the fabliau plot and offering an exemplary illustration of the "sins of pride, wrath and…
Garbaty, Thomas Jay.
Chaucer Review 2.2 (1967): 108-134.
Translates "Pamphilus" into modern English prose (lineated as verse) and describes its influence on late medieval literature, including discussion of Chaucer's references to it in Mel and FranT and its role as a secondary source of the first three…
Identifies and transcribes an extended praise of Chaucer as a "pierles poet" (cast as a description of his burial site) found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce MS 290 (90 (Bodl. SC 21864).
Explores various denotations in medieval uses of "phantom," and contends that Chaucer's use of the word in HF (line 493) capitalizes on these meanings and neatly encapsulates the poem's fundamental concern with the difficulties of seeking to…
Overbeck, Pat Trefzger.
Chaucer Review 2.2 (1967): 75-94.
Explores the female protagonists of the legends in LGW and Chaucer's adaptations of his sources in these legends to sketch Chaucer's "psychograph of the Good Woman," emphasizing rejection of authority and active pursuit of love and sex, "a human…
Fleming, John V.
Chaucer Review 2.2 (1967): 95-107.
Traces the iconographical motif of "Maria Misericordia" as it developed from its early roots into the satire of friars found in SumP. Originally found in treatise by Caesarius of Heisterbach, the motif was adapted by Dominican and Franciscan friars…
Lewis, Robert Enzer.
Chaucer Review 2.3 (1968): 139-58.
Analyzes the context, syntax, and lexicon of Chaucer's reference to his now-lost "Of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde" (LGWP-G 414-5) to help establish its nature as a translation of Pope Innocent III's entire "De miseria humane conditionis."…
Provides context for the Parson's image of a she-ape in the "fulle of the moon" (10.424), showing how the image deprecates the "purpose as well as appearance" of the "fashionably-dressed man."
Passon, Richard H.
Chaucer Review 2.3 (1968): 166-71.
Argues that the repetition of the word "entente" in FrT affects the Tale's "characterization, plotting, and pervasive irony," and indicates "one of the fundamental theological dimensions of the piece"--disguised evil.
