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…
Smith, Valerie.
J. A. Jowitt and R. K. S. Taylor, eds. Self and Society in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure. Bradford Centre Occasional Papers, no. 4 (Bradford: University of Leeds Department of Adult and Continuing Education, 1982), pp. 61-79.
Smith assesses characterizations of Criseyde, focusing on Chaucer's, Henryson's, and Shakespeare's characterizations but commenting on others. She argues that the character must be understood in light of contemporaneous attitudes toward, for example,…
Brewer, Derek.
Reingard M. Nischik and Barbara Korte, eds. Modes of narrative: Approaches to American, Canadian, and British Fiction. (Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 1990,) pp. 166-78.
TC is a dramatic monologue delivered by a narrator who is distinctly detached from Chaucer himself. Brewer reexamines the narrator's position and function in TC and the history of the concept of that narrator.
Obermeier, Anita.
Amsterdam and Atlanta, Ga. : Rodopi, 1999.
Surveys authorial apologies in literature from the classical period to the late Middle Ages, discussing classical tradition, Christian tradition, medieval Latin tradition, and medieval vernacular literatures, including German, French, Italian,…
Robertson, D. W., Jr.
John Mahoney and John Esten Keller, eds. Mediaeval Studies in Honor of Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), pp. 165-95.
Assesses BD as a late-medieval "public funerary poem" rather than a portrait of psychological grief, interpreting the Black Knight as a generic, Boethian figure deprived by fortune, rather than as John of Gaunt, and discussing the character Blanche…
Askins, William.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 7 (1985): 87-105.
Details in ManT parallel the character and life of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix; this is consistent with the tale's interest in gossip and aristocratic misbehavior.
Sasagawa, Hisaaki.
Journal of the General Education Department, Niigata University 12 (1981): 179-91.
The historical present and perfect tenses in KnT could be said to function mainly to express vividness, which is closely related to the nature of orally delivered poetry.
Payne, Robert O.
Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. Chaucer at Albany (New York: Franklin, 1975), pp. 179-92.
The idea that Chaucerian criticism must be approached from the premise that Chaucer wrote only for a select court circle is bad history and bad criticism.
Discusses the dating of BD, correcting previous scholarship by adducing evidence from a letter by Louis de Mâle, count of Flanders, that helps to establish the death of Blanche of Lancaster as 12 September 1368. Comments on the identity of the…
Condren, Edward I.
Chaucer Review 5.3 (1971): 195-212.
Challenges traditional dating of BD and identifications of its characters, arguing for 1377 as a date of composition (eight years after the death of Blanche) and reading Octovyen as both Edward III and John of Gaunt, the Black Knight as a younger…
Du Boulay, F. R. H.
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 33-57.
Characterizes Chaucer's world as "lightly peopled," mobile, in economic transition, and hierarchical; characterizes Chaucer as economically successful, relatively untouched by tumultuous events, entertaining, modest, and with "a foot in several…
The setting and select characters of SqT have historical basis in the reigns of Ozbeg Khan of the Golden Horde at Sarai (ruled 1313-41) and Mamluk sultan el-Melik en-Nasir at Cairo (ruled variously 1291-1340). Their failed alliance influenced the…
