By studying pre-Chaucerian and fourteenth-century traditions of Saint Valentine, springtime, hagiography, heortology, etc., Kelly tests the hypothesis that Chaucer invented the patron saint of matchmakers.
McCormack, Frances.
Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007.
Investigates Lollard vocabulary, translation strategies, and rhetorical tropes, arguing that the Parson and ParsT cannot categorically be identified as Lollard. Nonetheless, unmistakable elements of Lollardy undercut the hermeneutic stability of what…
Reads CT, TC, and LGW in the context of late medieval courtesy books, advice literature, and epistolary collections. Considers public and private marital honor in the Paston letters and FranT, and wifely obedience in ClT, "Menagier de Paris," and…
While arousing authorial anxieties, the dream vision permits Chaucer to treat otherwise inaccessible psychological problems. In CT the verbal game repeatedly explores the dangers of violating "pryvetee," privacy.
Yiavis, Kostas.
Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 9: 13-29, 2001.
Chaucer's depreciation of the father figure (biological, theological, literary predecessor) enables him to conceive of poetry separate from the needs for stable interpretation and didactic meaning. Throughout his corpus, his "polyvocal…
Workman, Jameson S.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Studies "the architecture of Chaucerian metapoetics" in CT and reads several tales as Neoplatonic texts. Criticism of MilT, ManT, and NPT is framed by a consideration of the corrupted natural philosophy of the old man in PardT. Nicholas's impalement…
Tajima, Matsuji.
Robert Boenig and Kathleen Davis, eds. Manuscript, Narrative, Lexicon: Essays on Literary and Cultural Transmission in Honor of Whitney F. Bolton (Lewisburg, Penn: Bucknell University Press; and London: Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 195-217.
Tabulates late-medieval uses of ought (owe) as a past form and as a modal auxiliary and explores the forms of infinitives used after ought. Compares Chaucer's uses with those of other late-medieval writers to show that his uses reflect the "unsettled…
Taylor, Mark Norman.
Dissertation Abstracts International 56 (1996): 207A.
The outworn paradigm of courtly love has been discarded but not superseded by a model flexible enough to contain the many variations developed by "moralists and gameplayers." Treats troubadour verse, French and English romances and lyrics, and…
Hall, Louis Brewer.
Mediaeval Studies 25 (1963): 148-59.
Describes five medieval redactions of Virgil’s “Aeneid,” “widely separated geographically and chronologically,” assessing how they “medievalized” the material in conventional ways, and using these “conventions” to discuss…
Pearsall, Derek, and Elizabeth Salter.
Mt. Vernon, N.Y.: Gould; Townsend: Sussex Tapes, 1971.
Item not seen; WorldCat records indicate that there are two lectures included (Salter: Side 1, "Problems of reading and understanding Chaucer". Pearsall: Side 2, "Realism and convention in the Canterbury tales."); the booklet summarizes the…
Bell, Jack Harding.
Dissertation Abstracts International A77.09 (2016): n.p.
Suggests that Chaucer engages the Boethian tradition in TC and HF, only to challenge (and ultimately reject) that tradition's ideas of self-regulation.
Surveys the nineteenth- and twentieth-century development of Chaucer study in Germany and Austria and examines the reception of this study in England and America. German philological practice established a standard that was distrusted after World War…
Morgan, Philippa.
New York: Carroll & Graf; London: Constable, 2006.
Historical detective novel with Chaucer as the investigator of a murder in the seaport of Dartmouth; also involves a conspiracy against Katherine Swynford, thwarted by her sister Philippa.
Wallace, David.
Woodbridge, Suffolk : D. S. Brewer, 1985.
Examines aims and literary traditions of early writings of Boccaccio to provide a context for Chaucer's use of Boccaccio. Both writers loved and used Latin and French writers and Dante; both drew from a wide range of literary forms and styles: …
Robertson, D. W.,Jr.
Francis X. Newman, ed. Social Unrest in the Middle Ages, (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1986), pp. 49-74.
Robertson discusses hardships such as war, crime, extortion, maintenance and procurement, legal abuses, and the ordinances of Edward III and Richard II that serve to illuminate BD, FrT, PardT, and the GP Wife of Bath, Prioress, Monk, Merchant,…
Fowler, Elizabeth.
Patrick Cheney and Anne Lake Prescott, eds. Approaches to Teaching Shorter Elizabethan Poetry. (New York: Modern Language Association, 2000), pp. 249-55.
Several Chaucerian poems--especially the multiple voices and amatory perspectives of CT and the request for patronage in Purse--helped "later writers invent the social person of 'selfe.'" Fowler suggests comparisons for pedagogical purposes.
Donaldson, E. Talbot
T. S. Dorsch, ed. Essays and Studies 1972: In Honour of Beatrice White. Being Volume Twenty-Five of the New Series Essays and Studies Collected for the English Association (London: John Murray; New York: Humanities, 1972), pp. 23-44.
Explores "two related but distinct aspects of Chaucer's celebrated stylistic clarity": 1) while "self-evident," it is "often more apparent than real," and 2) a "means by which" Chaucer "escapes dexterously from the danger of really being clear and…
Condren, Edward I.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 1999.
Reads CT (in Ellesmere order) as organized by the universal principles of entropy (movement to chaos), cybernetics (movement to stability), and synergy (transition to a changed or transcendent state). These three principles also inform the structure…
Davis, Norman.
Geoffrey Chaucer: Conferenze Organizzate dall'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Collaborazione con la British Academy (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1977), pp. 3-22.
Surveys opinions about Chaucer's diction from John Lydgate to G. K. Chesterton and explores the French elements in the vocabulary of his love poetry, along the way commenting on relations between Chaucerian and Chancery diction, the "texture of…
"The Plowman's Tale," first appearing in Chaucer's "Works" in 1542, and the "Pilgrim's Tale," printed not earlier than 1536, both clearly based on earlier material, could be clever forgeries or retouched, but substantially genuine, medieval poems. …
Haymes, Edward R.
South Atlantic Review 37.04 (1972): 35-43.
Affirms Chaucer's familiarity with native English romances by identifying a number of formulaic phrases (some of them oral remnants) that recur in native romances and in a variety of Chaucer's works. Includes comments on Thop as evidence of Chaucer's…
Robinson, Ian.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
Treats Chaucer as a "great" poet and the "father" of English literature, commenting on the "wonderful" range of tones in his poetry, its relations with French and Italian works, its similarities with other late-medieval English works, and the…
