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,…
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'…
Griffith, Dudley David.
Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1955.
Comprehensive bibliography of Chaucer studies published between 1908-1953; some entries include brief indications of content and/or lists of book reviews. Arranged in topical categories such as Chaucer's life, works, modernizations and translations,…
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,…
