Hicks, Michael A.
London: Shepheard-Walwyn; Chicago: St. James, 1991.
Biographical dictionary of some 200 political and cultural people of late-medieval England, "Englishmen" and "Englishwomen," along with "foreigners prominent in English history," arranged chronologically by life-dates, with descriptive and…
Scott, A. F.
London: Elm Tree; New York: Taplinger,1974.
An annotated glossary of personal names, arranged alphabetically within sections. CT is treated separately from BD, HF, LGW, PF and TC. Each of these sections is followed by a list of animal and personal names, with the line references for their…
Moore, Marilyn L. Reppa.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 43-59
Troilus's character should be viewed not in the light of medieval romance but within the context of medieval "devotion," such as that advocated in St. Anselm's "Proslogion." It is more important to realize that Troilus learned to love with constancy…
Howard, H. Wendall.
Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 18.3 (2015): 15-32.
Considers the historicity of St. Cecilia, her association with music, and various accounts of her life and legend, including the "Passio Caeciliae," SNT, an opera by Licinio Refice and Emidio Mucci, John Dryden's "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day,"…
Trigg, Stephanie.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 250-54.
Traces the problem of compensation and the rationale for dedicating funds to the study of Chaucer. Offers a case study of how a previous attempt at funding worked in 2010 in Australia when the Centre for the History of Emotions was awarded funding by…
Williams, George G.
Rice Institute Pamphlet 44, no. 1 (1957): 126-46.
Argues that the "chief characters" of TC "were probably modeled from real people" and, exploring alterations from Boccaccio's "Filostrato," speculates that Troilus is based on John of Gaunt, Criseyde on Katherine Swynford, and Pandarus on Chaucer…
Two documents in the National Archives (London) show that Alice Perrers was married to Janyn Perers, possibly an Italian, before becoming Edward III's mistress. These records hint that she was "a person of lower birth who made her fortune essentially…
Parallels between Criseyde and the women of WBPT "interrogate the following issues: equality between the sexes, possessions (ownership), possession (jealousy), and appearance." Rosenfeld reads the loathly lady as a "synthesis" of the Wife of Bath…
Jones, Terry, Robert Yeager, Terry Dolan, Alan Fletcher, and Juliette Dor.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004; London: Methuen, 2003.
A biography and social history of Chaucer's final years, focusing on Henry Bolingbroke's Lancastrian overthrow of Richard II and the political and social turmoil from which the usurpation resulted and to which it contributed. The book presents Thomas…
Dane, Joseph A.
Huntington Library Quarterly 57 (1994): 99-123.
Discusses variants in editorial and antiquarian reports of the Latin inscription engraved on Chaucer's tomb and the verses "about the ledge" of the tomb. Suggests that the "snowy tablet" supposedly fixed by Surigone to a pillar near the tomb on…
Dane, Joseph A.
East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1998.
Eleven studies on the publishing history of Chaucer's works attempt to correct misconceptions about the nature of book production, extant editions and issues of Chaucer's works, and the reliability of bibliographical descriptions.
Reed, Shannon L.
Journal x: A Journal in Culture and Criticism 5:109-16, 2000-2001.
Assesses critical responses to the Host's verbal assault on the Pardoner at the end of PardT, identifying the common assumption that the Host fears the Pardoner's sexuality. Such readings are complicitous in the "abjection" of the Pardoner and…
Burger, Glenn D.
Chaucer Review 55, no. 4 (2020): 422-40.
Traces the struggles of Dorigen in FranT as a kind of conduct literature for wives, as Dorigen's pain in Arveragus's absence is linked to "two contemporary French conduct texts--'Le Livre du chevalier de la Tour Landry' (1371) and 'Le Mesnagier de…
Berggren, Ruth.
Massachusetts Studies in English 6 (1977): 25-36.
Contrary to received opinion, the Wife of Bath argues implicitly for equality in marriage; she and the loathly lady in her tale gain dominance only to relinquish it. On the other hand, the Clerk, Merchant, and Franklin present views of women which…
Dressman, Michael R.
Walt Whitman Review 23 (1977): 77-82.
Identifies Walt Whitman's interest in Chaucer's use of French vocabulary, and suggests that this interest is "tied directly" to Whitman's self-conscious "role as 'Poet' in the tradition of Chaucer" and his desire to enrich American English.
Havely, Nicholas R.
Medium Aevum 61 (1992): 250-60.
The discourse of antifraternalism is important in understanding Pandarus's role in relation to Troilus and, especially, Criseyde. Havely examines words that form part of that discourse.
Blanch, Robert J., and Julian N. Wasserman.
Julian N. Wasserman and Robert J. Blanch, eds. Chaucer in the Eighties (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 175-91.
The iconographic meaning of the colors red and white had been lost in folk traditions by the time Chaucer wrote KnT. Meaning comes from the joining of the two colors--a symbol of unity. Palamon's and Arcite's choices of colors for their banners…
Travis, Peter W.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22: 1-66, 2000.
Reads BD as a psychoanalytic exploration of the nature of signification in which the dreamer achieves "his own talking cure." Surveys medieval and modern theories of signification, including those of Aristotle, Anselm, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Buridan,…
Madej-Stang, Adriana.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015.
Includes discussion of WBPT as background to a survey of women as witches in contemporary British literature. Interprets WBP as evidence that, in Chaucer's time, a "woman, in order to claim her independence . . . has to speak of herself in negative…
The Vulgate's sheer availability offers compelling evidence that Chaucer used the Vulgate Bible, while faint lexical echoes of the "Bible historiale" suggest ancillary use of the "historiale." The Wycliffite Bible's candidacy may be ruled out on a…
Beidler, Peter G.
T. L. Burton and John F. Plummer, eds. "Seyd in Forme and Reverence": Essays on Chaucer and Chaucerians in Memory of Emerson Brown, Jr. (Provo, Utah: Chaucer Studio Press, 2005), pp. 193-203.
Repunctuates several passages from CT and comments on the implications, encouraging classroom attention to modern editorial punctuation.
Considers the letter as a means of spoken and written transmission and demonstrates how the most important elements and functions of the letter prescribed by the "artes dictaminis" were put to creative use in medieval literary texts such as the…
