Identifies WBP as the inspiration for Harriet Byron's burning of a prayer book in the second act of Jane Austen's play, "Sir Charles Grandison," noting in both works the importance of hyperbole, the manipulation of language, and ironic commentary on…
Gillespie, Alexandra.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 86-103.
Focusing on perspectives evident in Chaucer's Adam (and the career of Adam Pinkhurst) and "Mum and the Sothsegger," Gillespie explores the importance of "the book" as a technology that spans the oral-print divide.
Yeager, R. F.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 51-67.
Yeager summarizes Chaucer's education and career for the purpose of identifying the books, languages, and classical and vernacular literatures with which Chaucer was clearly acquainted. Discusses Chaucer's strategies for keeping literary authority at…
Gillespie, Alexandra.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 81-97.
Reassesses D. S. Brewer’s claim about the relative paucity of the book in the fourteenth century, suggesting instead that "in Chaucer's time, new technologies and new social circumstances were making it easier, faster, and cheaper to produce and…
Crews, Michael Lynn.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017.
Locates a quotation from PardT in Cormac McCarthy's notes for his novel "Blood Meridian"; links McCarthy's penchant for "the stories-within-stories motif" to Chaucer; and identifies echoes of PardT in the old Mennonite episode of "Blood Meridian" and…
Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006.
Studies the cultural, literary, and codicological contexts for English late medieval works of revealed writing - apocalyptic, visionary, mystical, prophetic, etc. - considering the reception of Continental works in England and works composed in…
Otaño Gracia, Nahir I.
English Language Notes 58.2 (2020): 35-49.
Includes the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in conceptualizing the global North Atlantic, and argues that in several places in CT (e.g., GP description of Knight, MLT, Pedro in MkT) Chaucer uses paradigms that are similar to those of "settler…
Watts, Cedric.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 94-103.
Sketches a range of evaluative criteria (moral, social, hedonistic, materialistic, and artistic) to explore how in literature--and in the GP in particular--"moral judgements are largely subverted by artistic judgements," in part the result of the…
Berry, Craig A.
Studies in Philology 91 (1994): 136-66.
Reads two sections of Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene" (the opening lines and Arthur's dream, 1.9) as examples of inscripted biographical details and the poetic anxiety of the work. Considers Spenser's adaptations of PF and, especially, Thop, reading…
Wasserman, Julian N.
Julian N. Wasserman and Lois Roney, eds. Sign, Sentence, Discourse: Language in Medieval Thought and Literature (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989), pp. 194-222.
Treats the "ambiguous relationship between 'aventure' and 'tydynges'" mentioned in HF, or one of Chaucer's most frequent themes: Fortune (or Providence) versus necessity, divine prescience, and free will, as seen in KnT and TC. Discusses the…
Friedman, John Block.
Chaucer Review 54.2 (2019): 119-40.
Focuses on a study of status in MilT and traces the positioning of Nicholas and Alisoun and their displays of their buttocks in the window toward Absolon. Fleshing out the context and history of bottom-kissing as well as the averting of demons by…
Hale, David G.
Shakespeare Quarterly 36 (1985): 219-20.
Documents an additional Chaucerian allusion in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Like the dreamer in BD, Shakespeare's Bottom says his dream cannot be interpreted; it can only be written down.
Finnegan, Robert Emmett.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 93 (1992): 303-12.
The verb "assoillen" and the noun "bulle," two terms that cluster in the prologue and epilogue to PardT, engage in wordplay with "soilen" and "boles" respectively. The Pardoner, who implicity claims to be God, attempts to "soilen" the pilgrims…
Dahood, Roger.
Susan Powell, ed. Saints and Cults in Medieval England: Proceedings of the 2015 Harlaxton Symposium, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 27 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2017), pp. 140–55.
Claims that the clergeon in PrT invokes Hugh of Lincoln, one of a number of Christian boys purportedly crucified by Jews in mockery of Christ's Passion. Addresses why the victims in such stories are boys, not adults as Jesus was when he was…
Woods, Marjorie Curry.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 143-66.
Woods hypothesizes how Chaucer and the male members of his audience may have been affected by their experiences in an "all-male medieval classroom" and how, in turn, their encounters with female literary characters and the rhetorical exercises of…
Neaman, Judith S.
Res Publica Litterarum 3 (1980): 101-13.
The narrator, Alcyone, and the Black Knight suffer from melancholy. Brain functions and anatomy, progress, and treatment of the illness are linked chronologically, and the time shifts are analogous to the order and process of brain physiology as…
Caldwell, Ellen M.
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 235-56.
Loathly lady tales "reveal the consequences" for women of "ungendered" transgressive behavior: the lady "enjoys more power" when she performs roles counter to her biological gender, and she loses the power when she subsides into feminine roles. When…
Laidlaw, Martin.
Marina Gerzic and Aiden Norrie, eds. From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past (New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 52-66.
Assesses the emphases of four modern adaptations of CT: Brian Helgeland's 2001 movie "A Knight’s Tale" (focusing on Chaucer's character as a "PR" man); the 2011–12 Tacit Theatre touring drama "The Canterbury Tales" (bawdy comedy); Pier Paolo…
Simpson, James.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29: 325-55, 1999.
Literary and historical periodization conventionally depends on viewing the lyrics of Wyatt and Surrey (for example) as distinctive and innovative, expressing a characteristically "Renaissance" divided self that is isolated from political and social…
Minnis, Alastair.
Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt, eds. Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Middle English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), pp. 34-47.
Analyzes Brewer's interpretations of the figure of the Knight in GP and KnT.
Noonan, John T.,Jr.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987.
Studies bribery in a "variety of cultures from ancient Egypt to modern America," with short treatments of Chaucer (pp. 287-90, powerfully articulating "the anti-bribery ethic" in FrT, SumT, PardT, ClT, ParsT); Langland (pp. 275-79); and Dante (pp.…
Crawford, Hannah.
Gordon McMullan, Lena Cowen Orlin, and Virginia Mason Vaughan, eds. Women Making Shakespeare: Text, Reception and Performance (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 25-34.
Shows that the list of hard words included in Thomas Speght's 1602 edition of Chaucer's "Werkes" influenced the linguistic inventiveness of Shakespeare and Fletcher's "Two Noble Kinsmen."
Ashton, Gail.
Literature and Theology 16: 235-47, 2002.
Uses Luce Irigaray's notion of the "ethics of alterity" to explore the fusion of masculine and feminine in the depiction of angels in several medieval narratives, including Marian accounts and Chaucer's and Bokenham's stories of St. Cecilia. In SNT…
