Since in his most carefully completed poems Chaucer avoids or undercuts any full thematic resolution, it is unlikely that the missing conclusion of HF would explain away the dynamic tensions of the poem. Probably the most inconsequential of the…
Fry, Donald K.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 71 (1972): 355-68.
Considers manuscript variants of MkT and NPP, historical contexts of various details, and the dramatic effectiveness of the interruption that bridges the two. Argues that the so-called "Modern Instances" should conclude the Monk's sequence of…
Fry, Donald K.
Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. Chaucer at Albany (New York: Franklin, 1975), pp. 27-40.
HF demonstrates metaphorically the unreliability of the transmission of knowledge. Chaucer makes the point by abruptly cutting off the authority figure at the end.
Dean, James.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 21 (1979): 17-33.
In ManT, Chaucer intentionally thwarts his narrative skills, thus creating an "anti-tale" or a "farewell to his book." Providing "images of linguistic destructions," the tale prepares for the Parson's new direction in language and thought.
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Brown, Arthur, and Peter Foote, eds. Early English and Norse Studies: Presented to Hugh Smith in Honour of His Sixtieth Birthday (London: Methuen, 1963), pp. 26-45.
Explores the "literary value" of Chaucer's "pretended inferiority complex on the subject of poetry," commenting on the "modesty convention" (or humility topos) in the GP description of the Prioress, the moralization of NPT, the question of Providence…
Morgan, Gerald.
Modern Language Review 77 (1982): 257-71
TC is vindicated as a finished work of art, as complete in terms of the clarity and proportion that constitute its beauty. Chaucer's poetic allusion to Dante's "Paradiso" 14.28-30 is cited as an apt ending, and Morgan stresses the appropriateness of…
Olson, Glending.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21: 209-45, 1999.
Explores a variety of practices and meanings associated with Pentecost in Chaucer's time as context for a nuanced understanding of responses to SumT, especially its ending, which parodies the feast. In addition to traditional iconography, dramatic…
Explores Chaucer's play "with the very concepts of finished and unfinished" in CT, surveying the ends of several tales and Ret. Suggests that Chaucer's sense of an ending distinguishes him from modern sensibility.
Yager, Susan.
Allen J. Frantzen, ed. Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell in the Middle Ages (N.p.: Illinois Medieval Association, 1993), pp. 15-26
Briefly surveys the tradition in which sight and the many-eyed Argus were figures of either intellectual perception or deception. For Chaucer, in KnT, MerT, WBP, and TC, Argus "typifies a common failing in men"--their inability to comprehend truly…
Haruta, Setsuko.
Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds. Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 353-60.
Chaucer, in TC, and the Gawain poet "understate" the prowess of their heroes and emphasize the negative aspects of courtly love. The heroes fail to realize their chivalric ideals--Troilus, because he is vulnerable to Criseyde's inconstancy; and…
Alphabetical dictionary of people, places, institutions, and events of the Middle Ages; the entry on Chaucer (p. 116) summarizes his life and works and comments on his dependence on Boccaccio.
Echard, Siân, and Robert Allen Rouse, eds.
Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2017.
Presents over 600 entries on texts, critical debates, methodologies, cultural and historical contexts, and terminology on British literature from the fifth to the sixteenth century. Represents all medieval literatures, including Chaucer, and presents…
Klitgård, Ebbe.
Gerd Bayer and Ebbe Klitgård, eds. Narrative Developments from Chaucer to Defoe (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 25-39.
Testing the premise of A. C. Spearing's "Textual Subjectivity" (2005), Klitgård explores the dramatic monologues of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner and uses of narrative personae.
Summarizes medieval attitudes toward dreams and traces their roots in the Bible and classical tradition, emphasizing their prophetic qualities. Then discusses dream vision conventions and their uses in "Pearl," "Piers Plowman," and several shorter…
Fowler, Elizabeth.
David Aers, ed. Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 55-67.
Reads MLT as a "thought experiment" in which the topos of the ship (familiar in both romance and political/legal philosophy) is used to confront the "conflict of laws" among the various cultures represented: Christian, Islamic, and pagan. With ClT,…
Kessel-Brown, Deidre.
Medium Aevum 59 (1990): 228-45.
Medieval literature utilizes landscape symbolism for both positive and negative emotional effects. The article touches on KnT, FranT, BD, and medieval lyrics.
Pask, Albert Kevin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 55 (1994): 578A.
Pask develops a distinct genre from Foucault's formulation of an "author-function": the life-and-works narratives that emerge in the historical perceptions of readers of Chaucer, Sidney, Spenser, and Donne.
Fisher, John H.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996.
Prints eight previously published essays with a new introduction, all pertaining to the influence of bureaucratic and literary language on the standardization of English. Chronicling the development of Fisher's idea that standard written English…
Looks for evidence that certain medieval writers were aware of the newly emerging "arithmetical mentality." Because of his work at the Customs House, Chaucer was much more aware than most writers. He knew counting boards and algorisms, the ancestor…
Blake, N. F.
Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library; Tokyo: Yushodo, 1995), pp. 205-24.
Since the text of the Ellesmere manuscript is highly edited, Hengwrt is superior to it and should be used as the basis for standard editions of CT.
Edwards, A. S. G.
Essays and Studies 63 (2010): 59-73.
Studies the reception of the Ellesmere manuscript of CT and its use by scholars, concluding that the manuscript is remarkable not only for the poem it records but also for the part it plays in development of modern ideas about the author.
Schulz, Herbert C.
San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1966.
Describes the Ellesmere manuscript, with particular attention to the illustrations of the pilgrims (here reproduced), the program of semi-vinet illumination, and the "Portrait of Chaucer." Also includes a description of the manuscript's text of CT, a…
Schulz, Herbert C.
San Marino, Calif. : Huntington Library, 1998.
Revised reprint of 1966 original; a description of the Ellesmere manuscript, its illuminations, and its history. Includes a new "Bibliographical Note" by Joseph A. Dane and Seth Lerer, plus their additions to Schulz's list of reproductions of…
