Siewers, Alfred K.
Louise Westling, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 31-44.
Assesses the ecopoetics of the Celtic underworld in the "Immram Brain," "Tochmarc Étaíne," and the "Mabinogi" as background to green-world concerns in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Closes with commentary on parallel concerns in the opening of…
Smith, Jeremy (J.)
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 95 (1994): 433-37.
Some northernisms in RvT have been dismissed as quasi-northern or as scribal misreadings. However, these forms are genuine attempts by post-Shift southern scribes to reflect a pre-Shift northern pronunciation.
Hoffman, Nancy Y.
Matthew J. Bruccoli and C. F. Frazer Clark, Jr., eds. Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual 1971 (Washington, D.C.: NCR/Microcard Editions, 1971), pp. 148-58.
Identifies parallels between TC and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," treating plot, theme, and characterization, and regarding the two works as tragedies of false gentilesse or gentility.
Nohara, Yasuhiro.
Journal of Human Sciences (Momoyama Gakuin University) 17.3 (1981): 33-69.
Line-by-line, phrase-by-phrase commentary on the grammar and lexicon of CkPT, presented as a series of notes to a reprinting of the text from F. N. Robinson's 1957 edition.
Brewer, Derek.
Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, eds. Acts of Interpretation (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1982), pp. 119-27.
Praises E. Talbot Donaldson as a great textual scholar, using TC to explain Donaldson's ideas on rhyme and meter and discussing the final -"e" and the five-stress verse. The reliability of scribes is examined.
Assesses previous explanations of the "greyn" placed on the clergeon's tongue in PrT (7.662ff.), including comments on analogues, and suggests that it is best understood as a "grain of paradise," i.e., the seed capsule of Aframomum melegueta…
Suggests that the "greyn" placed on the clergeon's tongue by the Virgin in PrT 7.662 may represent that his "disembodied spirit [was] restored for a time," offering contextualizing background from biblical, classical, and medieval scientific sources…
Prescott, Donna D.
Troy, N.Y.: Troy Book Makers, 2019.
Item not seen. Identified in WorldCat as a modern reworking of CT set on a twenty-first-century train trip from Chicago to Memphis to visit Graceland, home of Elvis Presley, with characters and tales adapted from Chaucer.
Pearsall, Derek.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Gower's "Confessio Amantis": Responses and Reassessments (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 179-97.
Surveys the "history of Gower's reputation," beginning with Chaucer's reference to him as "moral Gower" at the end of TC and his possible allusions to Gower's works in ManT and MLP. The idea of a "quarrel" between the two poets is perhaps…
Summit, Jennifer.
Dissertation Abstracts International 56 (1996): 240A.
After the anonymity of earlier times, fourteenth-century writing reveals increasing individuation and attention to the gender of an author. Chaucer's fictional women writers indicate an anxious sense on his part of declining "auctoritas, whereas…
An, Sonjae (Brother Anthony).
Medieval English Studies 7: 63-92, 1999.
Chaucer's use of worthy and the many ways CT plays with questions of value lead to a reading of CT in which SNT exemplifies the highest value in human living-holiness-and joins ParsT to challenge all other values and narratives.
Brooks, Karen.
New York: William Morrow, 2022 (originally published Sydney: Harlequin, 2021).
Historical novel in which the setting, plot, and first-person protagonist, Eleanor (later Alyson) are based on WBPT, with many characters adapted from history and from CT, including Chaucer. Includes a glossary, list of historical characters,…
Holliday, Peter.
William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum, eds. Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures (SAC 27 [2005], no. 105), pp. 326-67.
Holliday considers Eric Gill's wood-engraving illustrations to The Canterbury Tales (4 vols., Golden Cockerel Press, 1929-31) in light of Gill's collaboration with Robert Gibbings (owner of the press), the legacy of Edward Johnston (Gill's teacher of…
Argues that "linguistic irony which results from [an] extended pun on 'amor'" runs throughout CT, supported by the diction and imagery of gold. Spiritual love is associated recurrently with positive images of gold; earthly love, with negative ones.
Economou, George D.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Traces the uses and development of personified Nature in classical and medieval traditions, focusing on Boethius, Bernard Silvestris, Alain de Lille, Jean de Meun, and Chaucer's relations with all of them in PF. Following tradition, Chaucer presents…
Costello, Mary Angelica, R. S. M.
Dissertation Abstracts International 23.09 (1963): 3352.
Compares TC with Boccaccio's "Filostrato," and explores Chaucer's "controlled use of the gods and the Christian God" as they "function ambiguously and symbolically" in contributing to the "ultimate meaning of the poem."
Fumo, Jamie C.
Carolyn P. Collette, ed. The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 157-75.
Intertextual connections among LGWP, Ret, and the end of TC capitalize on the medieval scholastic literary theory of the co-authorship of books by human authors and God ("duplex causa efficiens"). All three works remind audiences of authorial…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Harry Levin, ed. Veins of Humor. Harvard English Series, no. 3 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 57-68.
Describes Chaucer's comic perspective as one that "takes all things lightly because fundamentally they are too serious . . . a way of faring the universe bravely." Exemplifies the poet's narrative device of offering rhetorical "defence of the…
Lupton, Julia Reinhard.
Julia Reinhard Lupton, Afterlives of Saints: Hagiography, Typology, and Renaissance Literature (Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 73-84.
Analyzes Chaucer's uses in LGWP of the term "legend" and the image of "gleaning" for literary leftovers, the latter derived from Leviticus and here linked to the Book of Ruth. Reads these devices for their implications in the development of…
Torti's introduction explores the Christian and classical precedents for mirror metaphors in late-medieval English literature and surveys medieval tradition. Subsequent chapters discuss mirror imagery in Lydgate's Temple of Glass, Hoccleve's…
