Fisher, John H.
Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992.
Explores how Chaucer expanded the boundaries of the English literary idiom. Chaucer's innovations capitalize on the rise of a new audience, a class of bureaucrats and businessmen who shared his education at the inns of court and chancery. Details…
Purdie demonstrates that the layout of Th in several key early manuscripts derives from the traditional layout of Middle English tail-rhyme poetry. Chaucer intended to contribute to the Tale's humor with this arrangement, which reflects his…
Prendergast, Thomas A.
Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry, and Melissa Raine, eds. Contemporary Chaucer across the Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), pp. 125-37.
Considers possible motives for the "Beryn" scribe to include the "Prologue" and the "Tale of Beryn" in one of the CT mansucripts that he copied, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland, MS 455 (Nl), arguing that he was responding to the "agency of the text,"…
Tracing the revival of the romance genre, Santini describes in chronological order the work of amateur scholars, editors, and editorial societies that produced editions and commentary on Middle English romances between 1760 and 1860. Comments on the…
Studies the distribution of Chaucer's impersonal verb "listen" (to be pleasing), focusing on disparities between distributions in prose and verse, usage in formulaic expressions, and transition from impersonal to personal usage.
Ohno, Hideshi.
Osamu Imahayashi, Yoshiyuki Nakao, and Michiko Ogura, eds. Aspects of the History of the English Language and Literature: Selected Papers Read at SHELL 2009, Hiroshima (New York; Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 115-29.
Tabulates features of impersonal usage in Chaucer, Gower, and Langland, using a variety of verbs and commenting on the conditions of usage.
Tinkle, Theresa.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 157-74.
The treatment of Cupid in the various works of Bodleian MS Fairfax 16 reveals a cultural transition from the Gallic tradition of the supremacy of love-and from the Latinate tradition of the supremacy of religion-to a new English poetic tradition.…
Federico, Sylvia.
Journal of British Studies 40: 159-81, 2001.
Documents evidence of women's participation in the uprising of 1381, considering judicial records, chronicles by Henry Knighton and Thomas Walsingham, and poetic depictions by Chaucer and Gower. In the chase scene of NPT, Chaucer depicts women as…
Lee, Dong Choon.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 24.2 (2016): 83-105.
Discusses medieval concepts of aging and Chaucer's depictions of old men in CT. Claims that Chaucer displays a balanced attitude in his depictions of old men, which differs from how medieval society tended to view the elderly in a negative light.
Clogan, Paul M.
Hugh T. Keenan, ed. Typology and English Medieval Literature (New York: AMS, 1992), pp. 168.
Building on medieval conventions in which the city was a metaphor for the human condition, Thebes--known for fratricide and civil war--symbolizes disorder and chaos. Theseus, especially through his subjugation of the queen of the lawless and violent…
Toole, William B., III.
Jack M. Durant and M. Thomas Hester, eds. A Fair Day in the Affections: Literary Essays in Honor of Robert B. White, Jr. (Raleigh, NC: Winston, 1980), pp. 25-35.
In developing the theme that Troilus values too highly love and beauty in this world, Chaucer throughout TC intertwines imagery of Fortune and of religion to describe Troilus' experiences and to characterize Criseyde. Although the depiction of…
Sadlek, Gregory M.
Klaus Jankofsky, ed. The South English Legendary: A Critical Assessment (Tubingen: A. Francke, 1992), pp. 49-64.
In "St. Michael," the image of the Devil's five fingers is a homiletic, mnemonic device to convey a lesson on sin. Chaucer's version in ParsT has a clear literary quality.
Heidt, Edward R.
Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1994.
Chronological survey of representative depictions of church ministers in a variety of works, from Chaucer to Morris West, briefly considering works by Shakespeare, Trollope, John Henry Newman, George Eliot, Ibsen, Edmund Gosse, Joyce, Graham Greene,…
Donovan, Mortimer J.
Philological Quarterly 36 (1957): 49–60.
Identifies parallels between the characterizations of January and May in MerT and those of Pluto and Proserpine in Claudian's "De Raptu Proserpinae." Anticipating the role of the fairy deities in Chaucer's Pear-Tree episode, Claudian's "myth of…
Bleeth, Kenneth A.
Larry D. Benson, ed. The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature. Harvard English Studies, no. 5 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 45-60.
Examines various evocations of paradise as a garden in MerT as parodic inversions of Christian understanding of the scene of the Fall.
Wright, Will,and Steven Kaplan,eds.
Pueblo, Colo.: Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery, [1993].
Fifty-seven essays on a variety of topics. For essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Image of Nature in Literature, the Media, and Society under Alternative Title.
Jones, Terry.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 205-36; 15 color figs.
The GP description of the Knight suggests that he wore clothing and equipment typical of "military opportunism." More specifically, the Knight's dress and career call to mind Sir John Hawkwood, and changes to the Ellesmere portrait of the Knight may…
Miskimin, Alice (S.)
Modern Philology 77 (1979): 26-55.
Two sets of Chaucer illustrations altered the late eighteenth-century and early Romantic readers' perception of Chaucer: George Vertue's for Urry's edition (1721), and Thomas Stothard's for Bell (1782-83). Stothard's illustrations were later…
Analyzes the border illustrations and other codicological features of twelve manuscripts of the hooked-g group of manuscripts (including three CT manuscripts), using them to construct a "tentative chronology" of the dates of production and the…
Zeeman, Nicolette.
Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson, and Nicolette Zeeman, eds. Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England: Textuality and the Visual Image (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2002, pp. 43-62.
For Chaucer and other medieval writers, "the figure of the idol is a means of focusing on problematic aspects of imaginative textuality and its contexts" (44). The sculptures in HF and Lollius in TC are partially represented or broken figures of…
Windram, Heather F., Christopher J. Howe, and Matthew Spencer.
Literary and Linguistic Computuing 20 (2005): 189-204
Uses a statistical technique derived from DNA research to reexamine the possibility of examplar changes in the copying of WBP. Results agree with earlier studies, indicating the usefulness of this method.
Robinson, Peter.
International Journal of English Studies 5.2 (2005): 115-32
Selection from among variant readings should be based on both literary judgment and variant distribution. In the case of MilT, the richest readings are likely to be Chaucer's own. Analysis of them leads to greater appreciation of MilT, "of the…
