Besserman, Lawrence [L.]
Hugh T. Keenan, ed. Typology and English Medieval Literature (New York: AMS, 1992), pp. 183-205.
Chaucer uses biblical exegesis and typology for thematic purposes. In ClT, Griselda is portrayed as "pharmakos," a "figura Christi," through Chaucer's addition of biblical colorings and the typological juxtaposition of her character and actions with…
Peck, Russell A.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 143-70.
A reworking of the author's "Saint Paul and the 'Canterbury Tales'" (Mediaevalia 07 (1981): 91-131). Saint Paul is invoked in NPT to justify use of fables; in ParsT, to reject them. Chaucer's own attitude is the Nun's Priest's. Pauline ideas…
Levy, Bernard S.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 11 (1966): 45-60.
Contributes to discussions of the effectiveness of SumT by describing its "pattern of biblical parody" centered on Pentecost, arguing that the Summoner uses the pattern to attack the claim that friars, like the apostles, "have a special divine…
Reiss, Edmund.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 47-61.
The 700 biblical quotations and allusions in Chaucer are used to support arguments, to suggest "a plethora of significances," to evoke, to echo; or, alternatively, to alter, pervert, or misapply biblical themes, exposing human folly, as in MilT,…
Turner, W, Arthur.
English Language Notes 3.2 (1965): 92-95.
Observes similarities in the parallel lists of Biblical women in MerT 4.1362-74 and Mel 7.1098-1101, and argues that their presence is "ironical" in the former but not the latter: "by the time" Chaucer wrote MerT he saw "both sides to the characters…
Chaucer insists through the Merchant that we keep in mind the treachery as well as the virtue of the Old Testament heroines Rebecca, Judith, Abigail, and Esther. We are forced to maintain a multileveled viewpoint on them, on their function in the…
Reid, Lindsay Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International A74.08 (2014): n.p.
Assesses how "mythological heroines from Ovid‘s "Heroides" and "Metamorphoses" were catalogued, conflated, reconceived, and recontextualized in vernacular literature," particularly as they reflect his "interest in textual revision and his…
Dane, Joseph A.
Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 78 (1996): 47-61.
Assesses Francis Thynne's references to the "Plowman's Tale" and the "Pilgrim's Tale" in the "Animadversions" on Speght's edition of Chaucer, concluding that no sixteenth-century printer tried to pass off the latter as Chaucer's. Although the…
Sammut, Alfonso.
[Valletta] : University of Malta, 1997.
Enumerative bibliography of Italian influence on English literature, arranged by English authors, Italian authors, and selected topics; 4022 items (about 400 pertaining to Chaucer), some with very brief annotations. Includes an index of scholars'…
Crawford, William R.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967.
Lists items of Chaucer scholarship published between 1954 and 1963, some lightly described, arranged in categories that include Chaucer's Life, individual works, manuscripts, style, various social and intellectual backgrounds, relations with other…
Raybin, David.
David Raybin and Linda Tarte Holley, eds. Closure in The Canterbury Tales: The Role of The Parson's Tale (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000), pp. 209-52.
A "full" bibliography of scholarly work on The Parson's Tale; includes 175 annotated entries, each with a bibliographic citation and a description.
Argues that Chaucer (like Michel Foucault) understands power to be, at times, in the control of the "traditionally powerless" (e.g., servants and women), largely because they have subversive knowledge of their subjugators' private behavior. In ClT,…
Osselton, N. E.
Jan van Dorsten, ed. Ten Studies in Anglo-Dutch Relations (Leiden: The University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 231-45.
Comments on translations of four of Chaucer's works (one spurious) by Willem Bilderdijk, the "first Dutch translator of Chaucer": Lydgate's "Balade de Bon Consail," WBT (mediated by Dryden's version and, in turn, Voltaire's), the tale of Phyllis from…
Shippey, Tom.
Jean E. Godsall-Myers, ed. Speaking in the Medieval World (Boston: Brill, 2003), 125-44.
Just as in RvT Chaucer plays on his audience's awareness of dialect geography, in SumT he exploits strong contemporary awareness of linguistic class markers. If Chaucer was in some sense a philologist, he was also an efficient and deliberate…
Von Kreisler, Nicolai.
Chaucer Review 3.1 (1968): 60-64.
Adduces several passages from "thirteenth century 'De Arte Venandi cum Avibus' of Frederick of Hohenstaufen" to argue that in the setting and details of his bird parliament in PF Chaucer "may have been concerned as much with authentic bird lore as…
Davenport, W. A.
Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen, eds. Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry. King's College London Medieval Studies, no. 5 (London: King's College Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1991), pp. 66-83.
Davenport's survey articulates formal, thematic, and verbal influences of PF and HF on a wide variety of late-medieval English bird poems, also mentioning those in which Chaucer's influence is not apparent.
Halbrooks, John.
Essays in Medieval Studies 33 (2018): 1-9.
Argues that the birdsong of GP, line 9, and the silencing of the crow in ManT indicate "the permeable animal/human boundary" in CT, evidence of a mutual "soundscape" or a shared "acoustic community." Includes comments on avian and human communication…
Comparative analysis of the "correspondences" and the "disparities of ideas" in these works while revealing their "individual intentions." Originally presented as Baeten’s Ph.D. dissertation, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, 2019.
Bahr, Arthur.
In Thomas A. Prendergast and Jessica Rosenfeld, eds. Chaucer and the Subversion of Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 165-81.
Traces allusions to BD and PF in Gower's "Cinkante balades" as preserved in the Trentham manuscript. The "intertextual play" and "interpretive challenges" activated by these allusions contribute to Lancastrian legitimization at the same time that…
Krier, Theresa M.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Treats Chaucer's topoi of bird song, maternal goddess Nature, voice, mother tongue, and biblical gardens in PF. Argues that the movement from aggressive plot to lyric in the poem and its male protagonist's oblique approach to the maternal draw the…
