Chaucer Bibliography Online

The Chaucer Codex: A Literary Mystery.

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A Study on Chaucer's Description of Nature in "Troilus and Criseyde" from the Perspective of Adjectives.

Analyzes nature-related adjectives in TC. Key findings include Chaucer's enhancement of Venus's role, symbolic natural imagery reflecting Criseyde's betrayal, and a sympathetic tone toward her in descriptions of animals and plants.

"Al for some conclusioun": Trinitarian Structure and the Final Stanza of Chaucer's "Troilus"

Examines the last stanza of TC, the first three lines of which are translated almost verbatim from Dante''s "Paradiso" (14.28-30), and argues that the ending not only affirms Chaucer's debt to Dante, but is crucial for an understanding of the poem.…

Textually Transmitted Diseases: Narrative Contact Tracing in Depictions of Ancient Troy.

Argues that the "use of ill bodies in storytelling acts as a virus" so that, when familiar narratives are retold, "the image of ailing bodies will spread to future versions," often mutating. Links lovesickness in TC to leprosy in Henryson's…

Crisis and Ambivalent Futures in Middle English Romance.

Explores relations among "crisis, ambivalence, and futurity," focusing on TC and "Amis and Amiloun," "assessing Criseyde''s ambivalence about returning to Troy as "an affective correlative of crisis" and Amis's ambivalence about the sacrificial…

"Ther was som epistel hem bitwene": Love Letters and Love Lyrics in "Troilus and Criseyde," and "The Canterbury Tales."

Focuses on Troilus's love letters in TC, and on Absolon''sin MilT and Damyan's in MerT, reading them in light of courtly conventions and placing them "in dialogue with the impact of love missives as recorded in manuscripts that circulated in the…

No Future, Perhaps.

Points to Chaucer's coinage of the English word "future" in his translation of Boethius in Bo, and considers Criseyde's use of it in TC (5.746) and her concern with her future reputation (5.1058–64). Aligns the poem's themes of "human futurity" and…

Student Retellings: Adapting Middle English Literature in Singapore.

Introduces a cross-cultural classroom "assignment in which students make their own adaptations of Middle English texts," discussing three samples of undergraduate student projects as examples--on "Sir Orfeo," "Sir Gowther," and TC respectively. The…

Haunting at Troy: Troy Narratives, Trauma, and Desire for the Past in Late Medieval English Literature.

Identifies a "dichotomy of fascination and revulsion towards Troy" in several Middle English narratives, and argues that in TC and Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," Criseyde "signifies the repeated theme of loss and treachery inherent in the…

Troïlus and Criseyde.

Middle English text and French translation of TC, with introduction and commentary in French. Includes a chronology of Chaucer's life; a bibliography; and indices of names, places, and works.

Beyond the Lines: Materiality and Non-Linear Time in Medieval English Literature.

Uses "mostly . . . a phenomenological approach" to explore "how objects in Medieval English Literature disrupt individual linear time." Addresses various texts and, in a chapter on TC, argues that "Criseyde is representative of Freudian melancholia"…

Sir Francis Kynaston Translating Chaucer: The Untimely "Troilus."

Argues that Kynaston's Latin translation of Books I and II of TC, published in 1635, exemplifies "heterochrony"--a "temporal counter-site located in the present and indicative of alternative modernities." Addresses the "perceived outdatedness of…

"Good Traders in the Flesh": Pandarus and the Audience.

Focuses on the scene of "intimacy" between Pandarus and Criseyde in TC and its excision from Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," arguing that Chaucer's expansion/embellishment of the original in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" compels the audience to…

Chaucer's Mythology of the Daisy and the Remigian .

Centers on LGW, 212-18, where Alceste, the Queen of Love, has an appearance similar to a daisy, and suggests that a source for this could be Remigius of Auxerre's "Commentum in Martianum Capellam."

Reading Suffering between the Lines: Trauma and Witnessing in Old and Middle English Literature.

Applies modern trauma theory to medieval English texts: "Beowulf," "Dream of the Rood," "Pearl," and LGW. Addresses sexual abuse and the witnessing of such abuse in LGW, focusing on "tropes of indirection, silence, and repetition."

Charismatic Heroines in Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women."

Argues that the female protagonists of LGW are heroic in their combinations of strength and suffering, and, "adapting a notion of charisma from Joseph Roach," characterizes their heroism as "charismatic.""The "extraordinary virtues and qualities" of…

Do Al Andalus a Dante Alighieri: A Receção do "Livro da Escada de Maomé," de Afonso X, na Europa [From Al Andalus to Dante Alighieri: The Reception of the "Book of the Ladder of Muhammad," by Alfonso X, in Europe].

Surveys "the wide influence exerted by the Islamic eschatological narrative known as 'Mohamme's Ladder' on European literary production until the 17th century." Discusses the possibility that Chaucer knew the work, and assesses correspondences…

Writing with the Grain: Form, Flow, and the Environment in Late Medieval Poetry.

Argues that "late medieval poets envisioned the environment as a participant in the production of poetry," reading HF for the ways that it represents "creativity born within the whirl of the Aristotelian world of fluctuation." Also assesses…

Retrospective Prophecy and Medieval English Authorship.

Examines how Langland, Gower, and Chaucer--who approached Ricardian prophetic discourse in different ways--were later co-opted as prophets of various events and outlooks: Langland foretelling the English Reformation, Gower predicting the deposition…

Words of the Wounded: Traumatic Grief and Narrative Therapy in Middle English Dream Visions.

Uses "the frameworks of illness narrative, narrative medicine, and trauma theory" along with the model found in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" to "examine the doctor–patient relationship" in BD, Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and "Pearl,"…

Driving the Night Away: Early Chapters in the History of Reading.

Discusses the history of silent reading and commercial manuscript production for private reading, starting with Chaucer's BD and including considerations of the Auchinleck manuscript and British Library, MS Harley 978, to suggest that meditative…

Hinged, Bound, Covered: The Signifying Potential of the Material Codex.

Explores how the material book is a "metaphorically rich signifier" in contemporary culture and in a selection of English narratives, including BD and PF--where the narrators' books, serving as portals to the dream experience, result in "poetic…

Death and Betrayal in "The Book of the Duchess."

Questions claims that BD is a poem of consolation, arguing that it is instead a "renewal of grief," focusing its three units of "reading, dreaming, [and] remembering," attending to source materials, and suggesting that the Black Knight may have been…

The Forest in Chaucer's "The Book of the Duchess," Ll. 416-426: Echoes of the Nave and Tower of Old St Paul's Cathedral."

Argues that the forest described in BD, 416-26, is "both topographical and ekphrastic," comparing details of the forest with aspects of Wenceslas Hollar's engravings of the nave of Old St. Paul's Cathedral, reproduced in William Dugdale's history of…

Mourning Becomes the Duchess: Chaucer, Text, Tomb.

Reads Chaucer's BD in the context of the material and ritual aspects of Blanche's death, using Freud's concept of the work of mourning to address the public, political, social, and economic work of John of Gaunt's mourning. A revised version of an…