Uhlman, Diana R.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales". (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 180-91.
Surveys the process and business of dyeing in the Middle Ages, commenting on the economic status of the dyers' guild and individual dyers in late-medieval England. Briefly assesses Chaucer's depiction of the Dyer as one of the Guildsmen in GP.
Morgan, Gwendolyn.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales". (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 170-79.
The inclusion of the Weaver among the Guildsmen of GP "is an anomaly" insofar as the typical weaver of the age was "an exploited, usually propertyless laborer." Morgan surveys the history of weavers and their role in the English wool trade.
Wasserman, Julian N.,and Marc Guidry.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales". (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 154-69.
As background to the GP carpenter--one of the Guildsmen--this essay surveys the prospects and activities of medieval carpenters: their organization into guilds and the guild hierarchy, their relations with masons and iron mongers, their techniques…
Stephens, Rebecca.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales". (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 192-98.
Briefly surveys the medieval history of tapestry- or rug-making as background to the portrait of the Tapicer in GP.
A postcolonial meditation on "what is Chaucer in the changing reality that is the context of Australia," which focuses on portions of four texts: a conversation between Meaghan Morris and Stephen Muecke, Ralph Elliott's 1968 comments on the…
Argues that the Host's mention of "half-wey pryme" in RvP 1.3906 refers to the canonical hour of prime rather than "modern clock time" and means 6:30 am, rather than 7:30 as it is often explained. Compares other chronological references in CT…
Klein, Joan Larsen.
Rhoda Schnur, gen. ed.; J. F. Alcina et al., eds. Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Bariensis: Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, Bari, 29 August to 3 September, 1994. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, no. 184 (Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998), pp. 361-69.
ClT is, in some ways, more like Boccaccio's version of the Griselda story than like Petrarch's, and it goes even further than its predecessors in eliciting pity for Griselda and her children.
Shimogasa, Tokuji.
A Collection of Essays in Honour of Professor Hiroshige Yoshida. (Shinozaki Shorin Press, 1980), pp. 30-43.
Chaucer's "-less" words deserve our special consideration. Some ninety percent of all the "less" words occur in verse. Though the total frequency is not so high, they may be said to fulfill an important function seen from a syntactical, stylistical,…
Hopkins, Amanda.
Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton, eds. The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 53-70.
Hopkins explores depictions of sexual frisson, or arousal, in a variety of Middle English romances, focusing on the presentation of clothing, nudity, and partial nudity. She surveys examples in which female ugliness is represented almost as often as…
Withers, Jeremy.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 173-83.
In KnT, warriors are compared to animals, a seemingly desirable condition that would allow warriors to "discharge at will their power and violence." However, several references to shackled, confined, or endangered animals create a contrast between…
Coleman, Joyce.
R. F. Yeager, ed. On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 46. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007, pp. 104-23.
Coleman considers the first recension of Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and the F version of LGWP for evidence of royal patronage, arguing that both were inspired by Anne of Bohemia and by the popularity of the "Flower and Leaf" conventions that Anne…
Norgate, Paul.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 9-17.
Interprets the interplay of literal and symbolic implications in GP, reading pilgrimage as a "metaphor for a society in the act of 'being itself'." The poem "declares its intention to deal less with what 'should be' in society than what is actually…
A series of essays and translations written between 1877 and 1886, Mary Eliza Haweis's work on MilT constitutes a large and uniquely positive chapter in the reception of MilT in Victorian England.
Ireland, Colin A.
Neophilologus 75 (1991): 150-59.
Chaucer's awareness of analogues to WBT and its theme of sovereignty may be indicated by his use of the word "calle," 'head-dress' (WBT 1018), an early borrowing of the Irish "caille," 'veil,' a derivation of which came to mean "old woman" as well as…
Bradbury, Nancy.
John M. Hill, Bonnie Wheeler, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Essays on Aesthetics and Medieval Literature in Honor of Howell Chickering (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2014), pp. 262-90.
Discusses handcrafted production and aesthetic beauty of the Kelmscott Chaucer and responds to the question "What constitutes 'beauty' in medieval poetry?" Provides historical background on the Kelmscott Press, the relationship between William Morris…
Phillips, Helen.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 123-37.
Phillips explores verbal, narrative, and thematic parallels between FrT and Robin Hood tales such as "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisburne." Emphases on "grenewode," archery, disguise, commercialism, ecclesiastical corruption, oppression of the poor, and…
Bowker, Alvin Willington.
DAI 33.09 (1973): 3336A.
Identifies the "dark spirit" in MilT, RvT, FrT, SumT, MerT, and ShT, focusing on their "violence, deception, and sense of continual flux rather than their comedy.
Minnis, Alastair J.
Masahiko Kanno and others, eds. Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of Tadahiro Ikegami (Tokyo: Yushodo, 1997), pp. 31-63.
Demonstrates that Chaucer's "discourse of words and deeds" in GP and his apology for language in MilP are "heavily indebted" to Jean de Meun's comments on language in "Roman de la Rose," tracing lines of influence and emphasis from Jean's sources…
Whalen, David M.
Intercollegiate Review 37.1: 22-30, 2001.
Discussion of how the political functions of literature are framed by broader ethical and moral concerns, drawing examples from Virgil, Cervantes, Robert Frost, and CT, where the pilgrimage frame indicates that social order--the common good--is…
Mehl, Dieter.
Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 237: 133-38, 2000.
Establishes the authenticity of Shakespeare's "A Lover's Complaint" and suggests that the female falcon's complaint in SqT is a possible analogue. Both laments belong to the complaint tradition.
