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…
Boldrini, Lucia.
Gerald Gillespie and Haun Saussey, eds. Intersections, Interferences, Interdisciplines: Literature with Other Arts (Brussels: P. I. E. Peter Lang, 2014), pp. 35–46.
Describes the "Night Lesson" chapter of James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" and argues that it shares a number of features with Astr.
Haresnape, Geoffrey.
English Academy Review 32.2 (2015): 152-59.
Translates ABC into modern English verse, retaining Chaucer's original meter, stanza form, and rhyme scheme. Includes brief introductory description of the poem and a biographical eulogy for Professor John van der Westhuizen, to whom the translation…
Steadman, John M.
Notes and Queries 207 (1962): 6.
Suggests that the Miller's tuft of hairs in GP 1.555 may associate him with a folklore tradition about honesty and might be read "he was honest, as millers go."
Argues that the right use of anger in proper, hierarchical social relationships in SumT affirms aristocratic authority while undermining the pretenses of Friar John and Jankyn the clerk.
Considers why the tale of the Mongol Empire is allocated to the young Squire. Points out the Squire's idealistic representation of the royal family of the Empire and discusses Chaucer's possible attitude toward SqT, taking fourteenth-century…
Ruszkiewicz, Dominika.
Barbara Marczuk and Iwona Piechnik, eds. Discours religieux: Langages, textes, traductions (Kraków: Biblioteka Jagiellonska, 2020), pp. 305-17.
Argues that Chaucer's alterations to Boccaccio's "Filostrato" in TC, I.22–49, were influenced by liturgical "bidding prayers," and that the God-centered Boethianism of the passage works with the ending of Chaucer's poem to "frame" its recurrent…
Explores what we know about Chaucer's earliest audiences, and how his work was used and discussed in his lifetime. Considers use of manuscripts by Hoccleve and Chaucer's named addressees, Bukton, Scogan, and de la Vache. Lists contemporary references…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
Isabel Davis and Catherine Nall, eds. Chaucer and Fame: Reputation and Reception (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), pp. 57-74.
Reviews the presence of Statius's "Thebaid" in TC, exploring in detail the juxtaposition of Statian and Ovidian material in Cassandra's explanations of Troilus's dream of the boar, explaining Chaucer's elision of Boccaccio from his poem as Chaucer's…
Stone, Charles Russell.
Review of English Studies 64, no. 266 (2013): 564-73.
Considers Chaucer's attention to the city of Troy in TC, focusing on the Palladium festival in Book 1 and Troilus's ride through the city in Book 5, arguing that the scenes reflect the influence of Virgil's "Aeneid" and associate the fall of Troy…
Examines the parallels between Cresseid and the narrator showing Cresseid's eventual transformation while the narrator fails to understand the moral point. Includes comments on Chaucer's narrator in TC.
Star, Sarah.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 115, no. 4 (2016): 442-62.
Connects the shapeless mass of flesh, which Christian baptism miraculously reforms into a baby in the Middle English romance "The King of Tars," with a bloodless mass described by Chaucer's contemporary Henry Daniel as an "elvysch cake." Claims that…
Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, Melissa Mayus, and Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 494-526.
Reassesses "anti-clericalism," reframing what has been "a concept useful within very real limits" as a kind of inter-clerical polemic, as most of these examples of so-called anti-clericalism are clerically authored. Treats MkT and PardT as examples…
Schanzer, Ernest.
Notes and Queries 205 (1960): 335-36.
Argues that the Cleopatra legend in LGW is the source of details in Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra." Also argues that Chaucer derived information about Cleopatra's marriage to her brother(s) from Vincent of Beauvais' "Speculum Historiale," not…
Chance, Jane.
Jane Chance. Tolkien, Self and Other: "This Queer Creature" (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 133-76.
Considers the roles of apartheid and linguistic queerness in the class-based characterizations of various hobbits in Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," suggesting that Tolkien's scholarly study of Chaucer's literary dialects and his glossary for the…
Brady, Lindy, and Andrew Rabin.
Notes and Queries 263 (2018): 174-77.
Demonstrates that in his remarks on distilling mercury, the Canon's Yeoman draws from Arnald Villanova's "De secretis" rather than from the "Rosarium," as the Yeoman claims (CYT 8.1028-29). Claims that Chaucer's misidentification plausibly springs…
Coats, Kaitlin.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 11 (2014): 90-99.
Considers the ambivalent role of magic in FranT, arguing that vacillation "between belief and skepticism, truth and illusion, nature and sorcery" help Chaucer to create "a divide between perception and reality" and undermine the "purported moral…
Langdon, Alison.
Enarratio: Journal of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 17 (2010): 61-76.
Assesses ClT in comparison with its sources to argue that Chaucer's version critiques Griselda's complete submission of her will to Walter's, disclosing its ethical invalidity as lacking right reason.
Griffiths, Jane.
Philip Knox, Jonathan Morton, and Daniel Reeve, eds. Medieval Thought Experiments: Poetry, Hypothesis, and Experience in the European Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 121-39.
Interprets HF as 'an experiment in the exercise of poetic memory and poetic composition" that "suggests that memory's anarchic associations cannot fully be controlled," in part because of differences between "the memory of things and the memory of…
Considine, John.
Notes and Queries 256 (2011): 490-91.
Shows that "rake" in the proverbial simile "thin as a rake/rail" (first attested in English in the GP description of the Clerk's horse, I.288) means a fodder crib.
Candeloro, Antonio.
1616: Anuario de la Sociedad Espanola de Literatura General y Comparada 5 (2015): 163-87.
Analyzes Chaucer and Shakespeare in Javier Marıas's novel, "Ası empieza lo malo." Chaucer's concepts of "fame" and "rumor," as described in HF, are central to Marias's depiction of contemporary men and their incapacity to face rumor and establish the…
