Explores the "agency" of scribes and seeks to reconstruct their "thinking" by examining a number of instances where late medieval English vernacular scribes left gaps in manuscripts, focusing on examples where the ostensive goal is to maintain…
Rusch, Willard J.
American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures 6 (1994): 1-50.
Studies of Chaucer's rhymes have traditionally assumed that textual criticism and historical phonology together could recover lost information about the pronunciation of his verse. The rhymes, however, possess their own unique written properties. …
Astell, Ann W.
Ann W. Astell and J. A. Jackson, eds. Levinas and Medieval Literature: The "Difficult Reading" of English and Rabbinic Texts (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009), pp. 255-80.
Two talmudic tales interpreted by Levinas complement PardT in "uncanny ways." While Chaucer explores the impossibility of forgiveness from the perspective of the offender, the talmudic tales explore the impossibility of forgiveness from the…
Utz, Richard [J.]
Philologie im Netz 21: 54-62, 2002.
This account of German-speaking Chaucer philology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries challenges recent accusations that philology is responsible for the backward state of medieval studies. Different phases of Chaucer study are consistent…
Elliott, R. W. V.
A. P. Treweek, ed. Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 1969. Proceedings and Papers of the Twelfth Congress Held at the University of Western Australia, 5-11 February 1969 ([Sydney]: AULLA, 1970), pp, 417-34.
Shows by multiple examples from various works that Chaucer "used oaths not only to give poignancy to character but to add irony, to give a touch of local colour, [and] to create atmosphere and background." Oaths in Chaucer's works tend to be…
Palmer, James M.
Marcelline Block and Angela Laflen, eds. Gender Scripts in Medicine and Narrative (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 292-312.
Investigates in TC Pandarus's attempts to cure Troilus's lovesickness, physically and psychologically. Pandarus's failure to effect a cure indicates that Chaucer rejects determinism and endorses free will, showing that Christian morals are…
Crosse, Gordon, composer.
[London?]: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Item not seen. The WorldCat record states that this opera/pantomime was scored by Crosse, with "text (based on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales) by David Cowan." The Guelph Spring Festival Archives indicate a performance in 1993.
Johnson, Lesley.
Keith Busby and Erik Kooper, eds. Courtly Literature: Culture and Context. Selected Papers from the 5th Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Dalfsen, The Netherlands, 9-16 August, 1986 (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1990), pp. 313-21.
Reads Robert Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," not as a "sequel" to TC, but as a "further displacement of the history of Troy," one that "questions the value of the vicarious experience of reading" fiction, particularly as it is realized in the…
Boyd, Beverly.
Fifteenth-Century Studies, 1. Ed. Guy R. Mermier & Edelgard E. DuBruck. (Kalamazoo: Medieval Inst., Western Michigan University): pp. 15-21.
The influence of Italian poets on Chaucer is but one of many illustrations that the Italian Renaissance had reached fourteenth-century England. But a prevailing conservatism prevented the Renaissance from flourishing in fourteenth- and…
Questions the identity of the book that is being read to Criseyde in Book II of TC, arguing that the answer, the title itself, cannot be known. Examines the descriptions of the book, from both Criseyde and Pandarus, and argues that the unknowability…
In the context of medieval humoral symptomatology, Chaucer's Pardoner fits the profile of a phlegmatic male. This diagnosis explains, in turn, his corrupt character, for "incontinence, excess, deceitfulness, cowardice, and negligence" in a man were…
Scanlon, Larry.
New Medieval Literatures 6 (2003): 129-65
Scanlon reads ClT against a historical tension between aristocratic arranged marriage and canonist marriage of consent, focusing on the espousal scene, the papal letter forged by Walter, and the conclusion and Envoy of the Tale.
Describes the frame tale as a device of an "oral/literate continuum" that enabled medieval authors to draw on both traditions and to produce a flexible form.
Lees-Jeffries, Hester.
Andrew James Johnston, Russell West-Pavlov, and Elisabeth Kempf, eds. Love, History and Emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: "Troilus and Criseyde" and "Troilus and Cressida" (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 61-75.
Assesses Hecuba as a "potent absent presence" in Shakespeare's :"Troilus and Cressida," and comments on the possible influence of LGW and TC on Shakespeare's "Rape of Lucrece" as well as his Trojan play. Includes attention to Dido and Penelope.
Analyzes the Parson's use of "myrie" in ParsP in terms of the "internal generic matrix" constructed by the Parson in the ParsT. Focuses on Tzvetan Todorov's and Paul Strohm's writings on genre.
McTaggert, Anne.
Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture 19 (2012): 41-67.
Reassesses gender violence in WBPT in terms of René Girard's theory of mimesis that complicates surface oppositions and suggests that we can read the Wife of Bath as parallel to the rapist-knight rather than to the loathly lady. The mirroring of…
Hatton, Thomas J.
Chicago: Dramatic Publishing, 1982.
Adapts WBT for the stage, maintaining its Arthurian setting, the life-question, concern for female mastery, and faithful/faithless choice. Eliminates the rape motif (here a kiss) and the magical transformation (here a matter of disguise). Characters…
Field, P. J. C.
Arthurian Literature 27 (2010): 59-83.
Reviews scholarship that discusses analogues of WBT and hypothesizes the nature and date of the archetype of these tales, focusing on the relative chronology of major motifs, shared and unshared. A hypothetical summary of the archetype--presented as…
Matthews, David.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 9-22.
Explores historical formulations of "medieval studies" and "medievalism," arguing that they are inseparable, and encouraging awareness of their interdependencies. Draws examples from Tyrwhitt's edition of CT and Helgeland's film, "A Knight's Tale,"…
Gourlay, Alexander S.
Studies in Bibliography 42 (1989): 272-83.
Blake's catalogue of his 1809 exhibition describes his famous painting of the Canterbury pilgrims and includes modernized quotations from Chaucer. Blake probably used Speght's 1687 edition.
Decicco, Mark.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 2489A.
Completed in 1513, Douglas's was the first and only full translation of Virgil's "Aeneid" into an English vernacular until Dryden's. The status of Middle English as a literary vehicle had been established by Chaucer. Douglas did the same for Middle…
Morse, Charlotte Cook.
Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, eds. The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 263-303.
Manuscript rubrics variously identify the genre of Petrarch's story as "mythologia," "fabula," and "historia" (perhaps the least constricting choice). Some rubrics emphasize Griselda's wifely virtues of obedience and fidelity, while others single…
Carrillo Linares, María José.
Brian J. Worsfold, ed. Women Ageing Through Literature and Experience (Lleida and Catalunya, Spain: Department of English and Linguistics, University of Lleida, 2005), pp. 21-30.
Depictions of female and male aging in WBT and MerT reflect the reality that human beings wish to remain desirable "in spite of advanced aging."
