Bowers, John M.
Medieval Perspectives 6 (1991): 135-43.
Thomas Chaucer continued the lease on his father's house in the garden at Westminster Abbey to provide a repository for Geoffrey Chaucer's literary remains. His motive was to help form a Lancastrian poetic canon committed to social stability and…
Guare, John.
Woodstock and New York, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 2002.
Two plays by John Guare, with additional apparatus, including an "Afterword," comprised of selections from Guare's journal that records, among other things, his thoughts about Chaucer while the playwright was composing "Chaucer in Rome," a play about…
Serrano Reyes, Jesus L.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature 04 (1994): 20-47.
Describes the Host's speech habits, assessing how they characterize him and how his various forms of address depict him as pilgrim, master of ceremonies, philosopher, etc.
Haskell, Ann Sullivan.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 67 (1968): 430-40.
Identifies the referent of the Host's oath (MkP 7.1892) as the Greek martyr St. Adrian, explaining his history and legends, familiarity to Chaucer's audience, and appropriateness to the context of the Host's complaint that his wife Goodelief had not…
Hanawalt, Barbara A.
Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace, eds. Medieval Crime and Social Control (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 204-23.
Explores legal and historical records pertaining to innkeepers and innkeeping in late-medieval London as a backdrop to the character of Chaucer's Host. Harry Bailly is most notable for his shrewd handling of people and his responsible maintaining of…
Discusses the wives of CT, and, in particular, Constance in MLT, suggesting that "unruly" wives are generally English and that virtuous ones are continental. Traces how Chaucer's use of these good wives offers space for him to rethink England, the…
Harry Bailly's remarks about his wife Goodelief constitute a community among the husbands along for the pilgrimage; they also call attention to various affiliations of wives in CT, e.g., the Clerk's "archewyves." As outlets for complaints about…
Carlin, Martha.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 460-80.
Offers reasons why Chaucer uses a "recognizable contemporary," Henry Bailly, or Bailif (he used both names), as a model for the Host in CT. Provides biographical details on Henry Bailly, or Bailif, of Southwark; historical background of innkeeping…
Rowland, Beryl.
University of Toronto Quarterly 35 (1966): 246-59.
Comments on the prevalence of horse-and-rider imagery in Western culture, and explores Chaucer's uses of the imagery in BD (the hunt), TC (Bayard and Troilus's ride-bys), Wife of Bath (spurs, bridles, and other sexualized images), and various other…
Brown, Melissa L.
David Chamberlain, ed. New Readings of Late Medieval Love Poems (Lanham, Md.; New York; and London: University Press of America, 1993), pp. 119-43.
Thought to be the work of Chaucer until 1775, Roos's translation clarifies the role of the Lover as a "woful lover." The humor and criticism of the poem are aimed at the Lover, not the Lady.
Lara Rallo, Carmen.
Analecta Malacitana: Revista de la Sección de Filologa de la Facultad de Filosofa y Letras 27 (2004): 155-68.
Assesses GP descriptions of the ecclesiastical pilgrims, showing that Chaucer's criticism of his church figures is ambiguous. Focuses on the Prioress but also comments on the Monk, the Friar, the Summoner, the Pardoner, and the idealized Parson.
MilT's heterosexual focus gains comic resonance from its homoerotic underside--clearly present in Absolon's branding of Nicholas and the anal inversion of the oral functions of kissing and speaking. In its emphasis on vindictive sexuality, RvT…
Compares MLT and the stories of Constance by Nicholas Trevet and John Gower. Argues that MLT points to the uncertainty of Rome as the center of ecclesiastical authority in the later fourteenth century.
Markus, Manfred.
Uwe Boker et al., eds. Of Remembraunce the Keye: Medieval Literature and Its Impact Through the Ages. Festschrift for Karl Heinz Goller on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2004), pp. 95-108.
Explores the often-submerged relations between Middle English romances and the Crusades, reading Th as Chaucer's rejection of the "pleasure of indoctrination directed against the pagan enemy." Considers Th "modern, partly even postmodern," in its…
Schmitt, Jean-Claude.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
An exemplum of Stephen of Bourbon, written sometime before 1261, reveals and condemns an odd heresy. Near Lyons, a story has gained currency of a greyhound, slain by its noble master in ill-considered haste, after it had saved the knight's infant…
Czarnowus, Anna.
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 47 (2011-12): 115-28.
Although the SqT draws on missionary accounts of Mongol culture in which religion and magic, the "holy" and the "unholy," are seen as confused, the Tale itself treats magic as something manmade, a technological marvel, eliciting admiration and…
A collection of new and previously published articles (1984-88), including five on the relationship between human beings and God. Reinterprets various images, spiritual and secular, in saints' lives, sermons, religious lyrics, and especially…
The Canterbury Tales Project takes up where Rickert and Manly left off, presenting extant texts in ways that are accessible to and useful for all readers. Since the manuscripts derive from those copied by a select group of scribes a few years after…
Voth, Grant L.
Chantilly, Va.: Teaching Company, 2007.
Includes a thirty-minute audio lecture (Part 2 of 4, disc 9, Lecture 17) on "Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales'," with emphasis on the frame narrative (in contrast to Boccaccio's "Decameron"), appropriateness of tales to tellers, dramatic interaction…
Lerer, Seth.
Chantilly, Va.: The Teaching Company, 1998.
Lerer's lecture, "Chaucer's English" (Part 1, Lecture 10; 17 minutes) comments on the opening eighteen lines of GP, on diction and etymology, verse form, and linguistic conditions at the time. "Dialect Jokes and Literary Representation" (Part 1,…
Downes, Stephanie, and Rebecca F. McNamara.
Literature Compass 13.6 (2016): 444-56.
Surveys "current critical trends" in the history of emotions and in Middle English literature, considering modern and postmodern criticism of TC ("a poem of emotional extremes") and "Sir Orfeo," and suggesting future directions for the study of…
