Donaldson, E. T[albot], ed.
New York: Ronald, 1958.
Edits the majority of Chaucer's verse (no prose included) in normalized spelling and modern punctuation, with bottom-of-page glosses and occasional brief notes. Omits Book 3 of HF, the legends of LGW (but LGWP-G included), several lyrics, and…
Dunn, Charles W.
In Frank N. Magill, ed. Cyclopedia of World Literature (New York: Harper, 1958), pp. 204-06.
Lists Chaucer's works in chronological order, summarizes his career as a civil servant and poet, and offers a brief list of bibliographical references.
Emerson, Francis Willard.
Notes and Queries 203 (1958): 284-86.
Shows that in his "Cambus Khan" Leigh Hunt is indebted to Edmund Spenser (and others who followed him) in modernizing Part I of SqT "almost as much as he is to Chaucer."
Emerson, Katherine T.
Explicator 16 (1958): item 51.
Explains the Host's reference to "gentil Roger" in GP 1.4353 as a possible play on "Roger Knyght de Ware, Cook," found by Edith Rickert in a 1384-85 plea of debt and reported in the "Times Literary Supplement," October 20, 1932, p. 761.
Faulkner, Nancy.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958.
Historical novel for juvenile readers, set in London in 1381. Follows the growing romantic friendship between Kate, serving maid to Chaucer in his Aldgate residence, and a young commoner, Adam, who chooses to remain in London after the Uprising…
Galway, Margaret.
Times Literary Supplement, April 4, 1958, p. 183.
Argues from the evidence of life-records that Chaucer might well have accompanied Prince Lionel to Milan in 1368 when the latter wedded Violanta Visconti. Presents this in support of Ethel Seaton's discussion of PF (Medium Aevum 25.3 [1956]: 168-74)…
Jordan, Robert. M.
ELH: English Literary History 25.4 (1958): 237-57.
Analyzes the narrator of TC as a "dramatic" character—one who is known "by what he says rather than what is said about him"--whose shifting perspectives in the poem inflect readers' opinions of the other characters and their actions. The shifts also…
Kovetz, Gene H.
Notes and Queries 203 (1958): 236-37.
Observes an inconsistency in Emily's address to Diana in KnT 1.2349-52 that results from Chaucer's change in the sequence of the three protagonists' addresses to deities, altering his source in Boccaccio's "Teseida." Suggests that Chaucer was…
Kreuzer, James R.
Modern Language Notes 73.2 (1958): 81.
Shows that evidence from a twelfth-century bestiary may indicate that the comparison of Alison to a swallow in MilT 1.3257-58 ironically anticipates later events of the plot--her "departure" from John and his fall from the roof beam.
Describes the fabliau features of ShT, comments on its likely (though unknown) source, observes that its "personal generalizations" are unusual in the genre, and assesses its treatment of women and its stylistic features as evidence that its original…
Coghill, Nevill.
Herbert Davies, and Helen Gardner, eds. Elizabethan and Jacobean Studies: Presented to Percy Wilson in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), pp. 86-99.
Tallies a number of images, expressions, and "notional similarities" that evince Chaucer's influence on Shakespeare, reviewing previous scholarship, adding several examples, and arguing that the influence is strongest when Shakespeare was about…
Argues that the "key fact" in Chaucer's satiric GP description of the Monk is that he is an "outrider," allowing leeway for suggestive details about diet, hunting, and other worldly concerns. Fabricates a fictional dialogue between the Monk and the…
Benjamin, Edwin B.
Philological Quarterly 38 (1959): 119-24.
Attributes the disruption of order in the plot of FranT to Dorigen's pride and "indecisiveness" and to Aurelius's "moral flaw" and use of "unlawful" magic. Order is reinstated by means of seriatim "self-sacrifice" triggered by the "manly firmness" of…
Traces developments in Chaucer's "attitude to love" as reflected in his narrative personae in BD, LGWP, PF, HF, and TC, assessing this attitude in light of the courtly, Chartrian, and neo-Platonic standards of works by Alain de Lille, Jean de Meun,…
Explicates GP 1.673 (not 1.163, as in title), adding depth to the multiple, generally sexual innuendoes of the "stif burdoun" borne by the Summoner to accompany the Pardoner's song.
Reads FrT as "one of Chaucer's more carefully worked and closely unified poems, and, . . . one of his most dramatic." Focuses on the poem's "Faustian situation," its '"unusual withholding of the denouement," and "its moral implication," exploring…
Birney, Earle.
Notes and Queries 204 (1959): 345-47.
Clarifies the Franklin's "morning dish" of a "wine-sop," suggesting dietary or medicinal implications necessary to compensate for his culinary excesses.
Identifies an early modern allusion to Chaucer and CYT (by Hugh Platt) and one on dreams and, possibly, NPT (by William Vaughan), neither previously noted.
Creekmore, Hubert, ed.
New York: Grove Press, 1959.
Anthologizes samples of Greek, Latin, Provençal, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Welsh, Irish, Norse, Danish, Dutch, German, and Old and Middle English verse--generally in modern English translation--from the fifth to the fifteenth century. The…
Dent, A. A.
Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society 9 (1959): 1-12.
Investigates the "equestrian vocabulary" used by Chaucer, with particular attention to GP, but including his other references to horses, their tackle, colors, names, conditions, movements, etc., clarifying the denotations of the terminology. Includes…
Dunn, Charles W., reader.
New York: Folkways, 1959.
Includes various readings by Dunn that illustrate changes in the English language and English literary style, among them, a reading of Book III.m9 of Bo (Side 1, band 9; 41 sec.). Text from F. N. Robinson's edition of Chaucer complete works (1957).
