Questions the identity of the book that is being read to Criseyde in Book II of TC, arguing that the answer, the title itself, cannot be known. Examines the descriptions of the book, from both Criseyde and Pandarus, and argues that the unknowability…
Describes the frame tale as a device of an "oral/literate continuum" that enabled medieval authors to draw on both traditions and to produce a flexible form.
Lees-Jeffries, Hester.
Andrew James Johnston, Russell West-Pavlov, and Elisabeth Kempf, eds. Love, History and Emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: "Troilus and Criseyde" and "Troilus and Cressida" (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 61-75.
Assesses Hecuba as a "potent absent presence" in Shakespeare's :"Troilus and Cressida," and comments on the possible influence of LGW and TC on Shakespeare's "Rape of Lucrece" as well as his Trojan play. Includes attention to Dido and Penelope.
Analyzes the Parson's use of "myrie" in ParsP in terms of the "internal generic matrix" constructed by the Parson in the ParsT. Focuses on Tzvetan Todorov's and Paul Strohm's writings on genre.
McTaggert, Anne.
Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture 19 (2012): 41-67.
Reassesses gender violence in WBPT in terms of René Girard's theory of mimesis that complicates surface oppositions and suggests that we can read the Wife of Bath as parallel to the rapist-knight rather than to the loathly lady. The mirroring of…
Hatton, Thomas J.
Chicago: Dramatic Publishing, 1982.
Adapts WBT for the stage, maintaining its Arthurian setting, the life-question, concern for female mastery, and faithful/faithless choice. Eliminates the rape motif (here a kiss) and the magical transformation (here a matter of disguise). Characters…
Field, P. J. C.
Arthurian Literature 27 (2010): 59-83.
Reviews scholarship that discusses analogues of WBT and hypothesizes the nature and date of the archetype of these tales, focusing on the relative chronology of major motifs, shared and unshared. A hypothetical summary of the archetype--presented as…
Matthews, David.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 9-22.
Explores historical formulations of "medieval studies" and "medievalism," arguing that they are inseparable, and encouraging awareness of their interdependencies. Draws examples from Tyrwhitt's edition of CT and Helgeland's film, "A Knight's Tale,"…
Gourlay, Alexander S.
Studies in Bibliography 42 (1989): 272-83.
Blake's catalogue of his 1809 exhibition describes his famous painting of the Canterbury pilgrims and includes modernized quotations from Chaucer. Blake probably used Speght's 1687 edition.
Decicco, Mark.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 2489A.
Completed in 1513, Douglas's was the first and only full translation of Virgil's "Aeneid" into an English vernacular until Dryden's. The status of Middle English as a literary vehicle had been established by Chaucer. Douglas did the same for Middle…
Presents new evidence, particularly the Wycliffite Bible, and disagrees with J. A. Burrow that Custance's speech in MLT when she reaches Northumbria is a debased kind of Latin. Argues the speech is not a mercantile "lingua franca" and claims that…
Morse, Charlotte Cook.
Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, eds. The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 263-303.
Manuscript rubrics variously identify the genre of Petrarch's story as "mythologia," "fabula," and "historia" (perhaps the least constricting choice). Some rubrics emphasize Griselda's wifely virtues of obedience and fidelity, while others single…
Carrillo Linares, María José.
Brian J. Worsfold, ed. Women Ageing Through Literature and Experience (Lleida and Catalunya, Spain: Department of English and Linguistics, University of Lleida, 2005), pp. 21-30.
Depictions of female and male aging in WBT and MerT reflect the reality that human beings wish to remain desirable "in spite of advanced aging."
Matthews responds to articles about Brian Helgeland's film A Knight's Tale, suggesting that medieval studies should be open to medievalism studies, rather than placing the fields in opposition.
Owen, Charles A., Jr.
Medium AEvum 63 (1994): 239-49.
Although most critics agree that Chaucer intended ParsT and Ret to conclude CT, early manuscript history indicates that ParsT may have been an independent work, a "Treatise on Patience," for which Ret would serve as a fitting conclusion.
In WBP, the Wife delivers not a sermon but a mock legal case. Her reasoning is typical of courtroom reasoning, and (like lawyers) she buries her argument in rhetoric. Her unwritten law of marriage triumphs over the written laws of St. Paul, thus…
Siegel, Marsha.
Studies in Philology 82 (1985): 1-24.
The fragment considers how well human beings can understand and order reality. KnT and MilT provide positive solutions: KnT through Boethian metaphysics; MilT by restricting sources of causation. The debate founders in RvT and CkT, where…
Morse, Charlotte C.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp.41-56.
Morse comments on how the Canterbury Tales Project may reinvigorate textual questions thought to have been answered by the Manly-Rickert edition and latent in the Variorum project. Explores such issues as tale order, tale revision, and manuscript…
Assesses the influence of Chaucer and CT on Longfellow's poem, commenting on the poets' differences in sexual attitudes and concerns with mimetic realism and observing that Longfellow sought to become Father of American Poetry. Critical approaches to…
Bowden, Betsy.
Susan Yager and Elise E. Morse-Gagné, eds. Interpretation and Performance: Essays for Alan Gaylord (Provo, UT: Chaucer Studio Press, 2013), pp. 33-46.
Discusses four versions of Arcite's death and focuses on the actions of the horses in each: in Boccaccio, as in Statius, divine interventions frighten the horses; Chaucer's Arcite falls due to both a god's intervention and his own pride; in Dryden,…
Analyzes Edmund Spenser's "The Ruines of Time" as a response to TC, arguing that Spenser emulates aspects of TC as a mediation of "the humanist imitation of classical texts" and concludes that the Renaissance "rediscovery of classical texts was…
Bradbrook, M. C.
Shakespeare Quarterly 9.3 (1958): 311-19.
Argues that "[c]ompression and inversion direct Shakespeare's use of" TC in "Troilus and Cressida," particularly, "the clear inversion of every idealistic feeling save those of Troilus is so relentless that a 'mirror image' emerges." Shakespeare…
Although the initial description of the egalitarian marriage in FranT seems to open liberating possibilities for Dorigen,the ultimate concern is which man is most "fre." Dorigen's actions and intentions have been lost in the insistence of Arveragus…
