Doyle, Kara.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 38 (2016): 275-85.
Focuses on quire xix of Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20, showing how John Shirley connects Chaucer's Anel with the female-voiced French lyric tradition of skepticism about male courtly rhetoric.
Attempts a revaluation of LGW by viewing it as a stage--both a creative result and an important influence--in the tradition of female tragedy. Highlights the contribution of the new classicizing to a new presentation of women.
As knight, sheriff, and "contour" (I.359), the Franklin is the quintessential late medieval county "bureaucrat," whose duties provided incentives both to disclose and to hide the financial information to which he was privy. From its "dramatic irony"…
Erzgräber, Willi.
Gerd Wolfgang Weber, ed. Idee, Gestalt, Geschichte: Festschrift Klaus von See. Studien zur Europaischen Kulturtradition (Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1988.), pp. 117-35.
Discusses Chaucer's use of the concepts "kynde" and "nature." Although Chaucer uses the two interchangeably at times, "kynde" represents absolute moral standards, indicating power and reason. The "lex naturalis" of antiquity also includes these…
Dulick, Michael George.
Dissertation Abstracts International 40 (1980): 5852A.
Chaucer and Rojas shared common sources and concerns, and their works are most alike in their use of sophisticated dialogue, but Rojas' vision is more destructive. Troilus and Calistro are both "courtly" lovers, but Calistro is a debased version of…
Pearcy, Roy J.
Leeds Studies in English 20 (1989): 119-41.
Surveys the tradition of the "prayer of the greatest peril" from Old French "chansons de geste" to Middle English adaptations of "romans d'aventure," arguing that the tradition underlies one of the prayers of Custance in MLT and several of the…
Rumble, Patrick Allen.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1993): 2581A.
Discusses Pasolini's trilogy of films adapted from Boccaccio's "Decameron," Chaucer's CT, and "The Arabian Nights." Looking at the trilogy in the contexts of film and of literature, Rumble investigates the cultural and ideological implications of…
Strohm, Paul.
Robert R. Edwards, ed. Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 163-76.
The language and imagery with which the Cook denounces Perkyn's revelry in CkT evoke the rhetoric with which contemporary writers denounced the so-called Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Perkyn's revelry may seem "innocuous" to readers today, but "the…
Kellogg, Judith L.
Allegorica 9 (1987-88): 221-48.
We do not understand how the Franklin views the concept of "gentilesse" that informs his moral vision. Kellogg compares the Franklin's use of key chivalric terminology to its uses in Middle English romance, thereby illuminating the Franklin, FranT,…
Gray, Douglas.
Richard Firth Green and Linne R. Mooney, eds. Interstices: Studies in Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A. G. Rigg (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 122-36.
Gray comments on the cultural value and functions of proverbs and their kin (adages, aphorisms, etc.), focusing on two "clusters" of proverbs: the "proverb war" of WBP and the complex and intricate uses of proverbs by Pandarus, Criseyde, and the…
Fein, Susanna Greer.
Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 73-104.
Chaucer utilizes the medieval icons of the wheel, the stream, and the vessel to represent the life cycle, the passing of time, and an individual's "fluid allocation of vital spirits that gradually dries from cradle to grave." In RvP, the Reeve's…
By asking her question, the queen in WBT forces the knight to think about what he has done and to realize that what women definitely do not want is to be raped. To educate the knight (and the audience?) is more important than simply to execute him.
Ward Mather, Lisa Jeanette.
Dissertation Abstracts International 64 (2004): 2503A.
Discussing MilPT, ShT, WBP, and SumT, Ward Mather argues that "Chaucer engages with the medieval genre of fabliau" to "develop a new theory of identity and social order."
Di Rocco, Emilia.
Michelangelo Picone, ed. La letteratura cavalleresca dalle "Chansons de Geste" alla "Gerusalemme Liberata." Atti del II Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Certaldo Alto, Giugno 21-23, 2007 (Pisa: Pacini, 2008), pp. 191-205.
Di Rocco explores the role of Chaucer's works in the development of romance in England, commenting on the poet's fusion of classical material and romance in KnT and TC, the concern with gentilesse and trouthe in WBT and FranT, and the reference to…
Ginsberg, Warren Stuart.
Dissertation Abstracts International 36 (1975): 2843A-44A.
Study of KnT and ClT in light of their sources reveals the significance Chaucer was able to impart to his "translations". Study of PardT, and rhyme-royal tales demonstrates the poet's combination of observation drawn from life with that draw from…
Rust, Martha Dana.
Cindy L. Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. New Perspectives on Criseyde (Fairview, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004), pp. 111-38.
Rust describes medieval epistolary protocol and assesses three features of TC in Bodleian Library Manuscript Arch. Selden. B.24: an appended colophon, a female figure dressed in black drawn inside the first letter of the poem, and the scribal…
Critiques Roy Vance Ramey's defense of the Manly-Rickert text of CT and castigates Ramsey's own methods and practices. The Manly-Rickert edition is valuable for its demonstration that "recension" cannot be used to construct a reliable text of CT, and…
Gransden, K. W.
David West and Tony Woodman, eds. Creative Imitation and Latin Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 157-71.
The "aubade" of Troilus shows its indebtedness to Ovid's "Amores" (I, 13) in both references and tone, but the effect is transformed by the poet's playing off of medieval complaint and Ovidian satire. Donne makes a similar combination but transforms…
Knutson, Karla.
Studies in Medievalism 20 (2011): 79-97.
Defining Neomedievalism(s) II
Haweis's book (1876) included edited versions of six of the CT and four shorter poems, in Middle English and translation. Addressing mainly an audience of boys, Haweis placed special emphasis on the theme of friendship, both in the poetry and in…
Allen, Elizabeth Gage.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1997): 1699A.
Examines how late-medieval changes in audience and breadth of subject transformed responses to exemplary literature, exploring "Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry," Caxton's translation of it, and works of Gower, Chaucer (PhyT, PardT,and TC), and…
The varying senses of "lewed" in Chaucer's works point out the myopia of the received view of the word's history as an easy progression from "lay" to "lascivious."
Zholudeva, Liubov.
J. Martin Arista, et al., eds. Convergent Approaches to Medieval English Language and Literature (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), pp. 159-75.
Comparative analysis of "Li livres de confort" and Bo, and study of French linguistic influence on English, with special focus on prepositions. The comparison shows a prevailing tendency to reproduce the structures and usages of French, though only…
