Cooper, Helen.
P. L. Heyworth, ed. Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 65-80.
KnT, MilT, MerT,and FranT share the same plot--the story of the girl with two lovers--and show striking interrelations and variations of episodes, conventions, images, and ideas.
Introduces medieval manuscripts, their production, and their legacies, with emphasis on the experiences, surprises, and pleasures of manuscript study. Refers to Chaucer's life, works, and manuscripts recurrently, with a brief section on his…
The Host's reference to the "yiftes of Fortune and of Nature" is the thematic basis for Group C (Fragment 6). PhyT shows how Grace can sustain those injured by Nature's gifts; PardT shows the wretched fate of those who, blinded by Fortune's gifts,…
Cooper-Rompato, Christine F.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.
Discusses (pp. 143-88) Chaucer's "great translation experiment" in PrPT, MLT, and SqT, arguing that Chaucer is "highly invested in the mechanics of miraculous and mundane translation" and that Custance is a "medieval example of a xenoglossic holy…
Perkins, Nicholas.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021.
Engages several literary and anthropological theories of gifts, and addresses related motifs of reciprocity, generosity, promising, and exchange in medieval English texts, especially romances. Individual chapters assess "King Horn"/"Horn Childe"…
Examines Chaucer's use of gerunds, observing that his usage is generally not unusual for his time except in two respects: he more frequently uses the construction "determiner+gerund+of-adjunct"; and seemingly "modern" gerunds with verbal properties…
Tajima, Matsuji.
Jacek Fisiak and Akio Oizumi, eds. English Historical Linguistics and Philology in Japan (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1998), pp. 323-39.
Like most of his contemporaries, Chaucer used gerunds primarily as nominals. Yet his usage is marked by a penchant for "determiner + gerund + 'of'-adjunct" and by an unusual number of gerunds with verbal properties, especially in his prose.
Millersdaughter, Katherine Elizabeth.
Dissertation Abstracts International 64 (2003): 1245A.
English political claims to Wales depended in part on claims of Welsh incest; Millersdaughter discusses various texts (including MLT) in which this "heterogeneous, colonialist discourse" is evident.
Sanok, Catherine.
New Medieval Literatures 5 : 177-201, 2002.
PhyT and Pearl both explore the assumption that the communal and anagogical can subsume the individual and ethical, an assumption underlying Fredric Jameson's historicist theorizing. The ending of PhyT indicates the "hermeneutic limits" of virgin…
The Franklin is a gentleman with old-fashioned but praise-worthy standards. FranT treats the fourteenth-century interdependent virtues of "trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie" (A46)--moral values in ambiguous wrappings.
McAlpine, Monica E.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.
"De casibus" tragedy stems from a single event which determines the protagonist's career. By contrast, the genre of TC is Boethian, depicting multiple crises in the lives of its characters with no single experience as the crucial one. The story of…
Brewer, D. S.
Modern Language Review 53 (1958): 321-26.
Surveys the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French tradition of short love-visions, observes similarities between PF and Oton de Grandson's "Le Songe Saint Valentin," and emphasizes that Chaucer's originality most evident in two ways: his…
Details the patience genre in medieval literature. Chapter 5 focuses on Chaucer's female patience figures, including Griselda in ClT and female characters in LGW, and compares how Christine de Pizan and Chaucer treat the patience literature genre…
Pearcy, Roy J.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 329-84.
The comic, satiric, and philosophic sophistication in Chaucer's narratives has no precedent in the fabliaux, but there are models in twelfth-century Latin comedy--notably for MilT (Geta) and MerT (Lidia). Also discusses the theories of Northrop…
Sternberg, Irma Ottenheimer.
Dissertation Abstracts International 25.12 (1964): A5392.
Argues that MLT is neither saints' legend nor romance, but that its "heroic theme, setting, and characters suggest strongly that . . . it belongs to the literary genre of epic and to the sociological genre of myth."
Williams, Clem C.
Dissertation Abstracts International 28.08 (1968): 3161A.
Discusses the "literary qualities" of Old French fabliaux, comparing and contrasting them with those of "higher genres" as a step toward gauging their influence on writers such as Chaucer.
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Chaucer Newsletter 1.2 (1979): 6-10.
Argues that Chaucer's St. Valentine is a Genoese Saint Valentine whose feast was May 2, and not the Valentine of February 14. Thus the appropriateness of spring imagery.
Boitani, Piero.
Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.
Assesses Chaucer's adaptations of his sources and his influences on later tradition, examining his uses of Dante in TC (Paolo and Francesca, idea of gentility, and Paradiso 33) and tracing the transformations of the characters of KnT (particularly…
Boitani, Piero.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1990), pp. 185-98.
Boitani studies the chain of literary works that stem from Chaucer's KnT, namely "The Two Noble Kinsmen" of Shakespeare and Fletcher and Dryden's "Palamon and Arcite." The story of Palamon and Arcite has features in common with that of Troilus and…
Wawn, Andrew N.
Yearbook of English Studies 2 (1972): 21-40.
Revises and adds to Henry Bradshaw's discussion of the origins of the "Plowman's Tale," examining chronological and regional features of vocabulary, allusions to contemporary fashion and events, and Lollard ideology to argue that the poem was written…
Ashton, Gail.
London and New York : Routledge, 2000.
Analyzes the voices in medieval vernacular saints' lives: the controlling masculine voice and the submerged and subversive feminine voice. Defines female hagiography as a genre separable from male hagiography. French feminist critics (Cixous and…
Dauby, Hélène.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 237-41.
Most of the pilgrims seem to be about the same age, but the problem of age is not ignored: e.g., old and young husbands (WBPT); the relationship between father and son (Knight and Squire, Franklin, Chauntecleer) or daughter (RvT); and the…
Winny, James, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965
A textbook edition of GP, with text (following Robinson's 1957 edition), end-of-text notes and glossary, introduction, and commentary on Chaucer's language and the arrangement of the Tales. The Introduction (pp.1-42) focuses on tale-teller…
Kirkham, David, and Valerie Allen, eds.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999.
School-text edition of GP, accompanied, on facing pages, by extensive glossing and pedagogical commentary and discussion questions. Also includes synoptic descriptions of Chaucer's pilgrims and brief essays on pertinent topics, including pilgrimage…
