Listings of references to Chaucer and his work published 1475-1640, updating Caroline Spurgeon's "Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion, 1357-1900."
Analyzes MerT, MilT, ShT, and FranT in light of the two-fold nature of the English medieval marriage contract: personal duties and business responsibilities.
The "byjaped fol," to whom Chaucer refers in TC 1.526-32, is not a specific person but rather a mistranslation of Boccaccio's word "musorno," which Chaucer took to refer to a well-known person--a particular "fool"--rather than to the foolish quality…
In MilT, the coulter was chosen by Chaucer for its etymological and judicial significance and because it parallels a scene from "Tristan and Iseult"--the trial by ordeal.
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 29 (1995): 416-33.
The concept of prudence was well known in the Middle Ages and was often seen as a specifically feminine virtue in medieval French texts. Drawing from those texts, Chaucer also underscores the feminine, making Mel a story for "real women living…
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 29 (1995): 434-39.
The "Rip Van Winkle" epigraph on keeping one's word until one dies (meaning that one will "not" keep one's word) is taken from a passage spoken by an old man to a widow in search of a husband in Cartwright's comedy, "The Ordinary."
Durham, Lonnie J.
Chaucer Review 3.1 (1968): 1-11.
Explores the imagery of nature and death in TC, arguing that Criseyde is "representative of a principle of life" and "best understood in terms of her cyclical or seasonal progression through the poem." Pandarus is associated with mutability, and…
Describes three groups of equestrians among the Canterbury pilgrims: those who ride proud horses, those who "ride either poor or at least un-caparisoned horses," and "those whose characters seem compromised by their 'inefficiency' as horsemen."…
Toole, William B.
Chaucer Review 3.1 (1968): 37-43.
Describes how the "tavern vices" of PardT (gluttony, blasphemy, gambling) "delineate the characters" of the three revelers and reveal their stupid and immoral inability to recognize the literal and the figurative meanings of death, properly…
Harrington, David V.
Chaucer Review 3.1 (1968): 50-59.
Rejects attempts to read PardT as an example of psychological realism and reads it instead as a "rapidly progressing discourse" that results from "special use of rhetorical devices for the impression of speed." The Tale conveys to its audience a…
Von Kreisler, Nicolai.
Chaucer Review 3.1 (1968): 60-64.
Adduces several passages from "thirteenth century 'De Arte Venandi cum Avibus' of Frederick of Hohenstaufen" to argue that in the setting and details of his bird parliament in PF Chaucer "may have been concerned as much with authentic bird lore as…
Observes legal implications in the Clerk's reference to the Wife of Bath's "secte" (oath-helpers or compurgators), and suggests that the reference "functions to interanimate" the Wife's, Clerk's, and Merchant's shared views of female mastery.
Treats the Old Man of PardT as the "total opposite" of the three revelers: he "embodies or manifests . . . in some manner Christian goodness." He first offers to the revelers a merciful "way to salvation," but when they "flatly reject" it, he justly…
Benson, C. David.
Chaucer Review 3.2 (1968): 107-23.
Describes the "basic historical method" of KnT as consistent with the "contemporary aristocratic chronicle," showing how Chaucer uses Statius's "Thebaid" to archaize the plot drawn from Boccaccio's "Teseida" and create a world "believable" for his…
Shows how Dryden altered KnT from romance to epic in order to make his adaptation, "Palamon and Arcite," exemplify "what a heroic poem should be, and by what means it should affect the reader." Also offers "reasons why the change from romance to epic…
Explores the thematic implications of several verbal ambiguities or double meanings in KnT: "array" (dress and predicament), "hert" (heart and hart), "wele" (joy and wheel), nuances of "turne," "boone" (reward and bone), and "righte way" in…
Hatton, Thomas J.
Chaucer Review 3.2 (1968): 77-87.
Argues that the GP description of "Chaucer's perfect Knight . . . seems carefully constructed to accord with the aims" of a "unified crusade" that was articulated by Philip de Mézières in his proposal to organize an Order of the Passion of Jesus…
Foster, Edward E.
Chaucer Review 3.2 (1968): 88-94.
Examines several bawdy puns, "incongruous situations," and other humorous ironies in KnT, suggesting that they are unintended by the Knight yet consistent with Chaucer's depiction of him as "a romantic, caught by reality but aspiring to the ideal"…
Identifies five structural units in the narrative of the KnT and reads them as a unified, seriatim manifestation of a world that is "tyrannized by mutability," resistant to individual and corporate efforts to find or impose order, and sensible only…
Friedman, John Block.
Chaucer Review 3.3 (1969): 145-162.
More than merely consolation for John of Gaunt, BD conveys the "more universal theme" of "personal loss and its effects on man's physical and psychic condition." Traditionally associated in various sources with leading, with healing, and with…
Considers evidence from ParsP (10.42-44), KnT (1.2605-16), and LGW (635-58) that Chaucer may have been familiar with Middle English alliterative romances, arguing that the proposition is unlikely. While he may have known alliterative religious…
