For Chaucer, Rome is an ancient imperial capital, a goal of medieval pilgrimage, and a center of trade--trade in devotions, indulgences, and pardons that allies mercantilism and religion. Such a Roman transaction also involves relics or monuments,…
Norman, Arthur.
E. Bagby Atwood and Archibald A. Hill, eds. Studies in Language, Literature, and Culture of the Middle Ages and Later (Austin: University of Texas, 1969), pp. 312-23.
Describes the episodic symmetrical structure of MLT; comments on the characterization of Constance; identifies the rhetorical uses of occupatio and elaboration in the Tale; and (in footnote 1) summarizes its concern with astrology, fate, and Boethian…
Furrow, Melissa M.
Chaucer Review 24 (1990): 223-35.
The tale of Custance is related to medieval lives of sainted women but is opposed to them in its concentration on the secular relations of an ordinary woman. Through this tale, the Man of Law seeks to reconcile the conflicting claims of the divine…
Finnegan, Robert Emmett.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 77 (1976): 227-40.
The Man of Law, in the telling of his tale, wants to present himself as a fount of knowledge. In Part I he frequently interrupts the narrative to voice his own comments. In Part II, as the power of God manifests itself in the trial scene,the…
Contrasts the moral seriousness of MLT with the comic mode of MLP and MLE, arguing that they combine to present the Man of Law as Chaucer's "ironic portrait" of pedantic, dogmatic, or moralistic readers and critics (perhaps John Gower) who would…
Theiner, Paul.
Studies in Medieval Culture 5 (1975): 173-79.
In MLT Chaucer does not change the events found in Trevet, but, rather, transforms their telling so as to alter our perceptions of them. His purposeful complicating expresses the Man of Law's narrative technique.
Examines the related topoi of the man in foul clothing and the wedding guest with no robe as they are depicted in "Cleanness," "St. Erkenwald," Langland's "Piers Plowman," Julian of Norwich's "The Showings," and CYPT, arguing that the texts confront…
French, W. H.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56 (1957): 231-41.
Reconsiders characterizations of the Dreamer of BD from George Lyman Kittredge (1915) forward, focusing on the Dreamer's reception of the Man in Black's song (475-86). Compares aspects of BD--especially the song--with sources and analogues from the…
Anderson, J. J.
English Studies 73 (1992): 417-30.
Unlike Machaut's knight, Chaucer's Black Knight, when describing his lady, shifts his attention from her outward appearance to her inner nature, as if he gradually comes to realize her value to him--a realization that helps him cope with her death.
Briggs, Keith.
Notes and Queries 264 (2019): 201-2
Challenges the traditional "misleading" explanation of a Chaucer life-record, particularly the uses of the name Malin/a, reopening "the question of the Malin branch of Chaucer's ancestry." Observes that the name is used in RvT
Ross, Trevor Thornton.
Montreal and Buffalo : McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998.
Describes development of the English literary canon in light of two parallel developments or "epistemological shifts": the development from a "rhetorical" to a "modern 'objectivist' culture" and the shift from an idea of "canonicity based on…
Matthews, David.
Minneapolis and London : University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Assesses the roots and development of Middle English studies as a reflection of antiquarian and nationalistic impulses. Traces the growth of English medievalism from Bishop Thomas Percy to Frederick Furnivall and focuses on the impact of individual…
Cannon, Christopher David.
Dissertation Abstracts International 54 (1994): 4100A.
Though hailed as an innovator by his successors and subsequent critics, Chaucer adapted existing traditions in innovative ways. "Colloquial" and "aureate" styles had already been developed in English, but he juxtaposed them. He was less the…
Cannon, Christopher.
Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Historical analysis of Chaucer's complete lexicon, arguing that his English is traditional rather than innovative. Chaucer naturalizes French and Latin words in ways similar to those of his English predecessors, often fusing foreign and native forms.…
McKenna, Isobel
Revue de l'Universite d'Ottawa 45 (1975): 244-62.
Investigates the relations between the sketch of the Sergeant of the Law in GP and historical evidence of contemporary members of the "Order of the Coif." Surveys the nature, activities, garb, and affiliations of fourteenth-century legal sergeants,…
Coffin, Charles M., and Gerrit Hubbard Roselofs, eds.
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969.
Begins with a selection from Chaucer (pp. [i], 1-23) which includes Truth, Gent, GP 1-34 and 1.118-62 (Prioress), and NPT, accompanied by notes and glosses, and preceded by advice on Chaucer's English. Originally edited by Coffin in 1954.
Todd, Robert E.
Literature and Psychology 15 (1965): 32-40.
Investigates the "Great Mother" archetype in PardT 6.729-31, helping to explain the "primal force" of the Old Man in the Tale, his womb / tomb affiliations with the young tavern boy, and the "Tale's central image of the tree" as "ambivalent mother."
Braswell surveys the mechanical devices in late-medieval culture and traces their origins in Continental and Arabic lands. She asserts that Chaucer was knowledgeable about machinery and its prevalence and that the magic tricks in FranT correspond to…
Kimmelman, Burt.
In R. Barton Palmer and Burt Kimmelman, eds. Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), pp. 89-138.
Studies the development of "poetic self-assertions" and "authorship poetics" in late medieval poetry, concentrating on Guillaume de Machaut's influence on Chaucer in LGWP and on Christine de Pizan. Comments on the legacies of Dante, Petrarch, and…
Examines the lyrics embedded in BD, LGWP, PF, and TC, considering their functions in context and the extent to which textual and codicological evidence can clarify the process of their incorporation. Contrasts these lyrics with French models in…
Robbins, Rossell Hope.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 380-402.
Chaucer's lyrics, usually written in imitation of the current French forms of ballades and rondels, were, in fact, his most influential legacy to the fifteenth-century Chaucerians. Chaucer may have written his early poetry (now lost or unattributed)…
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Chaucer Review 31 (1996): 164-72.
The multiple voices in "Complaint of Mars" mask the identity of the real lyric subject. An examination of these voices reveals that the real lyric subject is the reader, who discovers that he or she is not, like Mars, an autonomous self.
