Kirby, Thomas A.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 243-70.
GP not only is a brilliant poem in itself but also sets the tone for the entire work to follow. It skillfully blends the real with the ideal world--all seen through the device of a narrative persona. Chaucer uses several devices for description,…
Andrew, Malcolm,Charles Moorman, and Daniel J. Ransom, eds.; with the assistance of Lynne Hunt Levy.
Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.
Part 1A includes a new, variorum text and set of collations for GP, based on the Hengwrt manuscript and edited by Charles Moorman; textual notes by Daniel J. Ransom and Charles Moorman; textual commentary by Daniel J. Ransom, assisted by Lynne Hunt…
Zeeman, Nicolette.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 29 (2007): 141-82.
Male singers in Chaucer's works recurrently--perhaps inevitably--embody narcissism and receive "brutal," scatological punishment as a result of their deserved, comic victimhood. Psychoanalytic understanding of love as "affect" and of song as…
Scala, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico, eds. The Post-Historical Middle Ages ((New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 191-214.
Indicts the "patrilineal logic by which the [masculine] gender of historicism is perpetuated and reproduced," surveying how recent publications in medieval studies (especially Chaucer studies) embody the structures of the "patriarchal family."
Discusses garden imagery in "The Phoenix," "Roman de la Rose," "Pearl," and MerT, focusing in the latter on the theme of lust and its relation to the ideal of spiritual salvation.
Eales, Richard.
Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey, eds. The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood (Wolfeboro, N.H.: Boydell & Brewer, 1986), pp. 12-34.
Historical background of the chess game in knightly culture with a reference to BD.
Bolens, Guillemette, and Paul Beekman Taylor.
Chaucer Review 32 (1998): 325-34.
At the beginning of BD, the Black Knight has an inaccurate conception of how chess is played. The misconception must be corrected by the narrator as the poem progresses and before the castle bell strikes midday and the game, the hunt, and the poem…
Kumamoto, Sadahiro.
Yoko Iyeiri and Margaret Connolly, eds. And Gladly Wolde He Lerne and Gladly Teche: Essays on Medieval English Presented to Professor Matsuji Tajima on His Sixtieth Birthday (Tokyo: Kaibunsha, 2002), pp. 95-107.
Kumamoto compares the word classes of rhyme words in Rom with those of the Old French source. There are wide differences when rhymes involve verbs and adverbs; the use of pronouns in rhymes is confined to the English text.
Richardson, Cynthia C.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 12 (1970): 325-44.
Assesses the character and function of Harry Bailly, the Host in CT, as he represents the "forces external to the artist that press him to create." The Host embodies aesthetic attitudes and various aspects of Chaucer's audience; his concern with the…
Chaucerian pathos derives from the rigidity of fourteenth-century social hierarchies. In KnT, pity brings the ruler and ruled closer together; ClT advocates Christ-like endurance and humility for the weak and God-like justice and mercy for the…
Griffith, John Lance.
NTU [National Taiwan University] Studies in Language and Literature 18 (2007): 37-59.
The exemplary value of FrT is rendered complex by its setting within the Canterbury fiction and by the angered antagonism between Friar and Summoner. Chaucer places the story "in a human situation . . . to engage our understanding of the way in which…
Hennedy, Hugh L.
Chaucer Review 5.3 (1971): 213-17.
The summoner in FrT is "damned if he does and damned if he doesn't" repent because the old lady's curse (3.1628-29) condemns him if he fails to repent and his own self-curse (3.1610-11) condemns him if he does.
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 70 (1971): 600-06.
Explains Chaucer's use of "rente" to describe the Friar in GP 1.256, clarifying that it means service to God due to his vocation (not monetary rent) and contributes to Chaucer's satire of the Friar. Compares Chaucer's other uses of the term.
Mauck, Deanna.
[Jay Ruud, ed.] Papers on the "Canterbury Tales": From the 1989 NEH Chaucer Institute, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota ([Aberdeen, S.D.: Northern State University, 1989), pp. 94-103.
Locates in SumT several violations of William of Saint-Amour's claims about false friars.
Szittya, Penn R.
Studies in Philology 71 (1974): 19-46.
Identifies allusions in SumT to biblical passages that were used by fraternal orders and criticized in antifraternal commentary. The allusions, which engage a "theological controversy well known in Chaucer's time," satirize friars' hypocritical…
Allen, Judson Boyce.
Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971.
Describes modes of literary analysis and understanding characteristic of the late Middle Ages, derived from the work of "classicizing writers" such as Robert Holcot, John Lathbury, Thomas Ringstead, John Ridewell, John Bromyard, Thomas Waleys, and…
