Burke, Linda.
In R. Barton Palmer and Burt Kimmelman, eds. Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), pp. 192-216.
Reiterates traditional discussions of similarities between LGW and John Gower's "Confessio Amantis," develops recent arguments of the importance of Anne of Bohemia to both poems (emphasizing Gower's), and uses these connections and others to argue…
Douglas, Blaise.
Claire Vial, ed. "A noble tale / Among us shall awake": Approches croisees des "Middle English Breton Lays" et du "Franklin's Tale" (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2015), pp. 17-25.
Explores the notion of commitment in connection with the contradictory and untenable verbal pledges in FranT.
Yvernault, Martine.
Danielle Buschinger, ed. Médiévales, 48 (Amiens: Presses du Centre d'Études Médiévales, Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, 2010), pp. 179-87.
Comments on the relationship between narration and food in CT.
Niebrzydowski documents "significant attention," positive and negative, paid to wives and wifehood in the literature and architecture of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England. The volume is structured to "follow the life cycle of a wife," from…
Morey, James H.
Urbana and Chicago : University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Bibliographical guide to Middle English biblical literature, including manuscript and publication information, descriptions of the works, and identification of the biblical sources, covering some 110 individual works or sets of related works.…
Griffiths, Jeremy, and Derek Pearsall, eds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Fifteen original essays on such topics as early book design, book purchasing and ownership, Caxton, and production of various kinds of books. Includes C. Paul Christianson on "Evidence for the Study of London's Late Medieval Manuscript-Book Trade,"…
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…
Explores "imperfect analogies between Chaucerian poetics and border theory/pedagogy," reporting on classroom experiences and discussing what Chaucer can teach us about "inhabiting borderlands."
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…
