Byrd, David G.
Ball State University Forum 19.3 (1978): 56-64.
Standard modern studies of courtly love do not refer to a term used in French poetry, "blanche fever." A study of this sickness endured by the lovers in TC, "Confessio Amantis," "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," and Caxton's "History of Jason"…
Questions whether BD circulated in the fourteenth century and whether it was commissioned by John of Gaunt as an elegy for his wife. The mid-fifteenth-century manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 16 bears the arms of a court functionary,…
Allen, Valerie.
Juliette Dor, ed. A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck (Liege: University of Liege, 1992), pp. 23-29.
Blaunche's description in BD centers on her eyes, whereas Alisoun's in MilT centers on her bottom. These descriptions show the relationship between each character's essential and physical selves, suggesting that both characters "locate their virtue…
Rowland, Beryl.
[Kent, Ohio]: Kent State University Press, 1971.
Studies various aspects of Chaucer's animal imagery (particularly mammals), describing their traditional associations, and exploring Chaucer's uses of these conventions, drawing on natural history, exegesis, and popular lore as well as the animals'…
Ruud, Jay.
Michelle Sauer, ed. Proceedings of the 11th Annual Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature (Minot, N.D.: Minot State University, 2003), pp. 43-55.
The dawn song in TC (3.1415-1526) stresses "contrast between the mundane love of the two lovers and the heavenly love associated with the dawn and the light in a Christian context."
Hobbs, Kathleen M.
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. 181-98.
Although women and Jews were "equivalent others" in medieval orthodoxy, the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity enabled the Church to sever the "historical ties between Christianity and Judaism" and to "exalt itself as a fixed and timeless…
Looks at "late medieval texts in which writing functions both verbally and pictorially," such as texts of the Passion, in which red ink in the manuscript creates a picture of Christ's blood, mentioned in ABC. TC similarly describes tearful verses,…
Dauby, Hélène.
Le sang au Moyen Âge. Cahiers du CRISIMA, vol. 3, no. 8. (Montpellier: Universit de Montpellier, 1999), pp. 227-35
Although the terms in the title are not the most frequently used in Chaucer's vocabulary, their collocations enable us to explore associations and meanings of colors, the gushing of blood from wounds, the physiology of emotions, devotion to Christ's…
Sauer, Michelle M.
New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2010.
Pedagogical introduction to Chaucer's works, presented as advice for writing college-level essays (written by Sauer with Laurie A. Sterling, with a sample essay on male physiognomy in GP by Timothy Richards) and writing about Chaucer more…
Nyffenegger, Nicole.
In Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, eds. Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2918), pp. 145-65.
Argues that hue or skin tone "makes skin visible in texts that do not explicitly mention it" and serves to act as an indicator of narrative structure, emotional interactions, and generic conventions of romance in TC.
Knapp, Peggy Ann.
Philological Quarterly 56 (1977): 413-17.
Chaucer's treatment of Cassandra in TC illustrates his changes in the tone and import of Boccaccio's "Filostrato." Whereas Boccaccio's portrayal provides interesting psychological study, Chaucer's Cassandra introduces a philosophical context by…
Wright, Herbert G.
London: University of London, Athlone, 1957.
Surveys the influence of Boccaccio's Italian and Latin works on English writers and literary tradition through the nineteenth century, with extensive analyses of Chaucer's uses of the "Teseida" in KnT, "Filostrato" in TC, and "Decameron" in ClT.…
Pisanti, Tommaso.
Gilbert Tournoy, ed. Boccaccio in Europe: Proceedings of the Boccaccio Conference, Louvain, December 1975 (Leuvan: Leuvan University Press, 1977), pp. 196-208.
Surveys the nature and directness of Boccaccio's influence on English literature from Chaucer to the 1611 Authorized Version of the Bible, with emphasis on style.
Mitchell, John D., in collaboration with Donald Berwick and George Drew.
John D. Mitchell and others. Men Stand on Shoulders (Key West, Fla.: Published by Institute for Advanced Studies in the Theatre Arts Press in association with Florida Keys Community College, 1996), pp. 1-71.
A film script which combines "key lines and phrases" from Boccaccio's "Filostrato," TC, and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," interspersed with appearances of the three writers in moments of fictional biography. Re-tells the broad outlines of the…
Hanly, Michael G.
Norman, Okla. : Pilgrim Books, 1990.
Investigates "topics relevant to the central question: Did Chaucer use the 'Roman de Troyle' of Beauvau, Seneschal of Anjou," in the composition of TC? Hanly reviews a number of candidates for authorship of the "Roman" and concludes that Chaucer…
Utley, Francis Lee.
Western Folklore 33 (1974): 181-201.
Comments on the roles and methods of folklore study in literary criticism, arguing that international folktales are as important as elite narratives for understanding and appreciating medieval literature. Discusses plots shared by Boccaccio and…
Hanning, Robert W.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
Close comparative analysis of CT and Boccaccio's "Decameron," arguing that they present "pragmatic prudence" or "expediential calculation" as essential forms of human agency in negotiating limited knowledge, faulty perception, and cultural turmoil.…
Kellogg, Laura Dowell.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 909A.
The narrators of Filostrato and TC, both selfishly motivated, create irony through their misconceptions of Cressida's traditional image. Although Boccaccio's narrator distorts Boethius and Dante, Chaucer's narrator represents Criseyde's flaw as…
Scaglione, Aldo.
David Daiches and Anthony Thorlby, eds. Literature and Western Civilization, II: The Medieval World (London: Aldus, 1973), pp. 579-600.
Sketches the rise of mercantilism in medieval Europe, and details the presence of the "bourgeois spirit" in Boccaccio's "Decameron" and Chaucer's CT, evident in realism, economic motivation, and challenges to aristocratic privilege. Similar in their…
If we recall the Thomistic distinctions among vows, oaths, and promises and if we focus on action rather than on character, the long complaints in FranT can be seen as essential to the structure rather than as excrescences.
Assesses Boccaccio's and Chaucer's attitudes toward their sources by examining the relations of their narrators with Cressida in "Filostrato" and TC. Cressida's legendary status as dishonest and inconstant had been established before Boccaccio and…
