Van Boheemen-Saaf, Christine.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987.
Expanded version of the author's dissertation (Rice University, 1987). Using the model of Levi-Strauss, she analyzes the function of plot in the novel and the mythic structure underlying its mimetic adaptation in Chaucer's KnT, Fielding's "Tom…
Hayward, Rebecca.
Cindy L. Carlson and Angela Jane Weisl, eds. Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), pp. 221-43.
Assesses Criseyde in TC and other widowed protagonists in medieval romances (Roman de Thèbes, Chértien's Yvain), exploring how "necessity of possession and ideals of chastity" are the prevailing stereotypes of the literary tradition. Unlike…
TC is a thoroughly Christian poem in which characters of a pagan past bring about through their actions the contrary of their expectations, whereas the narrator achieves his purpose exactly, despite his seemingly varied tones. Thus the palinode…
Popescu, Dan Nicolae.
Messages, Sages, and Ages: The Bukovinian Journal of Cultural Studies 3.2 (2016): 31-35.
Maintains that Chaucer uses parody to critique discrepancies between Christian ideals and human realities, exploring ways that sexual activities and descriptions in MilT, an earthy fabliau, parody the courtly ideals of KnT, an idealized romance.…
Smith, Peter J.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.
In "Turning the Other Cheek: Scatology and Its Discontents in The Miller's Tale and The Summoner's Tale," pp. 12-59, Smith uses farting in MilT and SumT to explore Chaucer's complex and refined "scatological rhetoric," a trope that has been obscured…
Defines meta-humanistic criticism, offers an extended critique of "basic fallacies" in Chaucer criticism, and assesses KnT, particularly its major characters. Dissertation completed in 1971.
One of the stumbling blocks to an unbiased reading of Chaucer is the prevalence of "humanistic" criticism, which is "intra-literary" and a kind of "anti-literature." The necessary corrective is "'meta'-humanistic" criticism, which strives "not to…
Pearsall, Derek.
Marlene Villalobos Hennessy, ed. Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott. English Medieval Manuscripts: Readers, Makers and Illuminators (London: Harvey Miller, 2009), pp. 197-220.
Distinguishes between the modern "expressive" function of book illustration and various medieval practices. Modern practice is evident in W. Russell Flint's 1928 illustrations to CT, while the Ellesmere illustrations evince efforts to "restore social…
Chang, Tuan Jung.
Open access Ph.D. dissertation. University of Georgia, 2018.
Available at https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/chang_tuan-jung_201812_phd.pdf
Accessed February 5, 2021.
Treats Boccaccio's "Famous Women," LGW, and Christine de Pizan's "The Book of the City of Ladies," reading Chaucer's "faithful women" in LGW "as metaphors [of] the relationship between authorship and readership, trying to define his own position [as]…
Surveys representations of sexual violence as both gender oppression and means to self-awareness between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in England, discussing WBPT and Mel, among other texts.
Aers, David.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015.
Provides close reading and interpretation of "Piers Plowman," and observes how Chaucer and Langland often share similar political and religious views of medieval society. Refers to SumT, WBPT, GP, KnT, ParsT, RvT, and PF.
A nationalistic fantasy of legal sovereignty underlies MLT and its depiction of England in relation to Rome through the figure of Constance. Anxiously embracing the geographic and forensic marginality of England, "Chaucer's lawyer exhibits a version…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Kathy Lavezzo. Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature, and English Community, 1000-1534 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 93-113.
Revised version of an essay of the same title in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 24 (2002): 149-80.
Dumitescu, Irina.
Times Literary Supplement February 11, 2022, p. 27.
Comments on Criseyde in TC and the protagonists of LGW as evidence of Chaucer's effort "to articulate the problem of writing about women: in the public eye, no female character is entitled to a full personality."
The ending of CT is intentionally ambiguous,leaving the choice of a final meaning--if there "is" one--to the reader. The most characteristically "Chaucerian" reading of the ending is also the most modern: to choose not to make a choice is to make…
Kendrick, Laura.
Bulletin des Anglicistes Medievistes 49 (1996): 7-37
Challenges assumptions underlying traditional studies of sources and relative chronology, suggesting that similarities between Deschamps's work and Chaucer's are evidence of late-fourteenth-century literary style and common "mentalites". Compares…
Notes that the visual imagery of falling rocks and millstones Pandarus uses to convince Troilus of his future success is associated with death and destruction in the Bible, which actually undermines Pandarus's argument in TC.
Curtis, Carl C. III.
Christianity & Literature 57 (2008): 207-22.
Biblical analogies embedded in KnT constitute an implied critique of the pre-Christian setting: Palamon and Arcite's first sight of Emelye accords with David's first sight of Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:2); loving Emelye reorganizes Arcite's psyche and…
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,…
