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…
Solopova, Elizabeth,with contributions from N. F. Blake, Daniel W. Mosser, and Peter Robinson. , eds.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Includes complete and interlinked digital images, transcriptions, collations, and descriptions of fifty-three fifteenth-century manuscripts and printed editions of GP. Spelling databases (original and regularized) enable examination of all variants.
Bebb, Richard, Philip Madoc, and Michael Maloney, readers.
[Franklin, Tenn.]: Naxos Audiobooks, 2006.
Disc 1 comprises Richard Bebb's reading in Middle English of GP and PhyT; disc 2, Madoc and Maloney's reading of them in modern verse translation. The booklet includes notes by Derek Brewer and Perry Keenlyside.
Piehler, Paul.
Hudson, Québec: Golden Clarion Literary Services, 1972.
Item not seen; the WorldCat records indicate that this is a reading by Piehler of GP in Middle English. Also re-issued (1986), with the title "The General Prologue for Beginners."
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.
