Chaucer's Pardoner owes a debt to Jean de Meun's Fals-Semblant ("Roman de la Rose"), whose false-seeming depends on clothing. In PardT, clothing metaphors become symbols for the relationship between body and soul. The Pardoner's reliance on the…
Rossiter, William.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 2-27.
In his courtly verse, Lydgate elevates Chaucer's established topoi and discourse to bolster his own unique reformations and enhancements of Chaucerian style.
Despite the increasing difficulty of retaining the Chaucer "canon" in university curricula of the 1990s, Chaucer-teaching is alive and flourishing, as evidenced in the colloquium on teaching at the 1994 New Chaucer Society meeting and the papers…
Considers how the "professional identity" of the teller informs concerns with justice in MLT. Engagement with mercantile law, common law, natural law, divine intervention, and the "limitations of human justice" pervade MLPT and indicate an uncertain…
Scott, Anne Marie.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1989): 2214A
Unlike Horn and Havelock, who mature into heroism in fulfilling their vows, Chaucer's characters in FranT make promises that govern personal relationships; their "gentilesse" transcends class and gender.
Connolly, Margaret.
Philologie im Netz Supplement 4 (2009): 5-20.
Describes how Mary Haweis's 1877 publication of "Chaucer for Children: A Golden Key" brought Chaucer's stories to the domestic realm of women and children as a tool for organization and education. Connolly suggests that Haweis authored later books…
Chaucer was well aware that he was writing for an audience that read his poems aloud. In his four dream poems, he familiarizes his audience with the subject matter through communication strategies, including conversational interjections such as "that…
Medical and psychological insights confirm alcoholism as the Pardoner's root problem. Heavy long-term indulgence has left him unable to function without drink; he is alienated, impotent, resentful, and eloquent in preaching yet mute under attack. …
Simpson, James.
Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone, eds. The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 15-33.
Reads Lydgate's "Destruction" as a Canterbury tale and a "pre-text" to KnT. Set historically before KnT, Lydgate's poem expands the boundaries of Chaucer's poem but "forecloses" its "limited possibilities for constructive human activity."
Staczek, John J.
Jacek Fisiak, ed. Middle English Miscellany: From Vocabulary to Linguistic Variation (Poznan: Motivex, 1996.), pp. 245-52.
Argues that certain English pronominal forms are "durable over time" when used in instructions. Assesses cookbooks and Astr as Middle English samples and compares their usage with modern American cookbooks.
Serrano Reyes, Jesus L.
Margarita Gimenez Bon and Vickie Olsen, eds. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Dpto. Filologia Inglesa, 1997), pp. 326-37.
Argues that Chaucer visited Catalonia sometime between 1365 and 1366. Exposure to the country's folklore results in Chaucer's description of folk "alle on an hepe" in HF (2149). Serrano Reyes provided contemporary pictures of this type of "human…
Although only seventy years separated Dante's and Chaucer's creative peaks, different philosophies affected their attempts to communicate divine truth through poetry. Reflecting Augustinian philosophy, Dante believed that all things divine could be…
Pask, Kevin.
Kevin Pask. The Emergence of the Author: Scripting the Life ofthe Poet in Early Modern England. Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, no. 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 9-52.
Traces the process by which Chaucer's biography developed through Bale, Leland, Spenser, Speght, Thynne, Dryden, Urry,and Johnson. Topics include laureation, Chaucer in print, nationalistic and humanistic impulses, and Chaucer as a symbol of…
Chaucer's sensitivity to the "cultural survival" of Wales is suggested in three moments in HF: the insinuation that Wales is near the river of forgetfulness through a visual pun on "Cymerie" (73); the citation of an unknown and hence implicitly…
Peitsara, Kristi.
Terttu Nevalainen and Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, eds. To Explain the Present: Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen (Helsinki: Sociłtł Nłophilologique, 1997), pp. 163-83.
Assesses the distribution of the two forms "enough" and "enow," using Chaucer's works in the database. In Chaucer, "enow" is generally a "poetic non-plural variant" useful for rhyme, while "inowe"/"ynowe" is the plural (with exceptions). …
Kooijman, Jacques.
Etudes de langue et de litterature francaises offertes a Andre Lanly (Nancy: Universite Publications, 1980), pp. 173-80.
A literary exchange between Eustache Deschamps and Chaucer probably took place between 1377 and 1380. In ballad 285, Deschamps speaks of the "grant translateur" of "Roman de la Rose."
A study of works featuring the test-of-love motif argues for including FranT among them rather than among narratives employing the motif of the "maiden's rash promise." However, by devising a "test" for Dorigen's suitor that expresses her concern for…
Hiscoe, David Winthrop.
Dissertation Abstracts International 44 (1983): 1447-1448A.
The medieval--especially the Augustinian--concepts of human nature comprises both the prelapsarian and the fallen state. TC and "Confessio Amantis" use this concept as a structuring device.
Treacy, Anne-Marie.
Karl Kügle and Lorenz Welker, eds. Borderline Areas in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Music (Middleton, Wis.: American Institute of Musicology), 2009, pp. 221-29.
Comments on the influence of "Roman de la Rose" and Machaut's "Remede de Fortune" and "Jugement du Roy de Behaigne" on BD, suggesting that Chaucer reinvents the "French fashion for lyric interpolation" to "suit the needs of the grieving Black…
Ethopoeia, Latinized as "adlocutio" and treated by most rhetoricians, classical and medieval, is a subspecies of dramatic character portrayal, as distinct from the formal portrait. TC 5.1054-85 employs it in Criseyde's interior monologue. Other…
McMillan, Ann Hunter.
Dissertation Abstracts International 40 (1980): 5437A.
The labels "antifeminism" and "courtly love" misrepresent the medieval literary treatment of women. Three types--the chaste wife, the "manly" virgin, and the martyr of love--dominate the catalogues through the Middle Ages.
