Condren, Edward I.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 195-204.
In TC, Criseyde's appeals to Hector for clarification of her status in Troy suggest that Criseyde seeks a romantic response from Hector rather than the official response she receives. This disappointment acts as a catalyst for future behavior in the…
Frazier, J. Terry.
South Atlantic Bulletin 43.1 (1978): 75-85.
The marriage agreement in FranT and the Franklin's comment on "maistrie" are not functional parts of the tale, but digressive answers to the Wife, Clerk, and Merchant while obeying the Host's command to "telle on thy tale."
Hussey, S. S.
Modern Language Review 67 (1972): 721-29.
Treats various features of book 5 of TC (lack of proem, several amplifications, various sources) as "apparently gratuitous or insufficiently integrated matter," evidence that Chaucer intended to write his poem in four books but found that he needed a…
Britton, Elizabeth Lindsey.
Dissertation Abstracts International 45 (1985): 3642A.
Consider "the two quite different versions of the Dido and Cleopatra stories as they appear in the works of major Latin and English poets, beginning with the commissioning of Virgil's "Aeneid" ca. 29 B.C. and carrying through to the publication of…
DiMarco, Vincent.
Thomas Kuhn and Ursula Schaefer, eds. Dialogische Strukturen/Dialogic Structures: Festschrift fur Willi Erzgraber zum 70. Geburtstag (Tubingen: Gunter Narr, 1996), pp. 50-68.
The apparent "magic" of SqT is explicable via medieval understanding of the rational explanation of marvels. Surveying medieval attitudes toward science and technology, DiMarco argues that the gifts of SqT are presented as scientific objects that…
Pakkala-Weckstrom, Mari.
Helsinki : Société Néophilologique, 2005.
Explores the relationships between power ("maistrie") and gender in CT as these relationships are reflected in conversation and the dialogue of spouses and lovers in seven Tales: MilT, WBT, ClT, MerT, FranT, ShT, and Mel. Using techniques of…
Tripp, Raymond P.,Jr.
Massachusetts Studies in English 7 (1978): 41-49.
Small debates turn on method, large debates on content--goals and purposes. Chaucer's BD and the Old English "Solomon and Saturn" are comparable big debates. In BD the Dreamer is converted, not refuted, when he recognizes the "routhe" the Knight…
Courtenay, William J.
Keiper, Hugo, Richard J. Utz, and Cristoph Bode, eds. Nominalism and Literary Discourse: New Perspectives (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997), pp. 111-21.
Surveys the history and state of scholarship on a key concept of fourteenth-century nominalism--the dialectic of divine omnipotence--and its applications to Chaucerian and other Middle English texts. Warns that a view of the "potentia absoluta" as…
Pasolini in his "Canterbury Tales" identifies himself as Chaucer because his central concern is relationship of artist to art, focusing on sexuality and morality. The Merchant's Tale and Wife's Prologue show respectability cloaking lust; the Friar's…
Pigott, Margaret B.
Fifteenth-Century Studies 5 (1982): 167-89.
BD and PF shift from "belief to skepticism in Chaucer's attitude toward the three principal ways of arriving at truth--religious experience, written authorities, and revelations of dreams."
Southall, Robert.
Review of English Studies 15 (1964): 142-50.
Describes the Devonshire manuscript (Ds) and comments on its provenance. Newly identifies a Chaucer fragment in the manuscript (f. 59v) from TC 1.946-52.
Miller, Clarence H.
Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 211-14.
It was commonly assumed in the Middle Ages that the devil carried arrows and shot them at his human prey. That the Friar's "yeoman" bears arrows "brighte and kene" (1.1381) is yet another clue that escapes the stupid summoner.
Baird, Joseph L.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969): 104-06.
Suggests that in the drama of CT the Summoner's idea of friars residing in Satan's arse (SumP) was prompted by the demon's promise to the summoner in FrT that he would know the devil's "privetee" (3.1637), an echo of the Miller's claim about "Goddes…
Dalbey, Marcia A.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 75 (1974): 408-15.
Examines the allegorization of Pluto and Proserpine in the "Ovide Moralisé" and argues that it discloses how as figures of "earthly lust" their episode is well integrated into MerT.
Evans, Ruth.
Elizabeth Herbert McAvoy and Teresa Walters, eds. Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002), pp. 182-95.
Surveys originary myths in which human females have sex with supernatural beings, focusing on versions of the story of Albina and her sisters, who have sex with demons-incubi and give birth to the giants of Albion. Evans reads the Wife of Bath's…
Vasta, Edward.
American Notes and Queries 22 (1984): 126-28.
Characteristics of the Reeve suggest stereotypes of a medieval devil: his beardlessness, Northern origin, phlegmatic character, and sharp wit. He fits all six literary types of the Devil in Hannes Varter's "The Devil in English Literature."
"Panne" in Chaucer's day sometimes designated a piece of clothing, sometimes a cooking utensil--and popular tradition associated the devil in hell with "pannes" (cooking utensils) and cauldrons. Chaucer's early audiences would have recognized in FrT…
Pratt, Robert A.
MacEdward Leach, ed. Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Albert Croll Baugh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), pp. 45-79.
Proposes several "distinct stages" in Chaucer's development of the "magnificent individuality" of the Wife of Bath, focusing on his uses in WBP of source material drawn from Jerome, Theophrastus, Deschamps, and others. Assumes that the Man of Law…
Kibler, William W.,and James I. Wimsatt.
Mediaeval Studies 45 (1983): 22-78.
These poems from the University of Pennsylvania MS French 15 show what was happening to the pastourelle and serventois in France from 1300 to the time when Froissart began writing similar lyrics in London, before 1364.
Owen, Charles A., Jr.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 57.3 (1958): 449-76.
Posits a "chronology of growth" for the CT, seeking "to follow the imagination of the poet and to recapture the dynamics of creation" evident in Chaucer's apparent changes in plan. Comments on earlier scholarly efforts to explain or understand…
Iyeiri, Yoko.
Yoko Iyeiri and Margaret Connolly, eds. And Gladly Wolde He Lerne and Gladly Teche: Essays on Medieval English Presented to Professor Matsuji Tajima on His Sixtieth Birthday (Tokyo: Kaibunsha, 2002, pp. 127-43.
Examines occurrences of "any" in four Middle English texts, including CT. The word occurs more frequently in negative contexts in formal tales (KnT, ClT, Mel, and ParsT) than elsewhere.
Masui, Michio.
Mieczyslaw Brahmer, Stanislaw Helsztynski, and Julian Krzyzanowski, eds. Studies in Language and Literature in Honour of Margaret Schlauch (Warsaw: PWN—Polish Scientific Publishers, 1966), pp. 245-54.
Addresses Chaucer's techniques of evoking and changing moods in TC, closely examining hope and fear in Book 2, and commenting on imagery, character psychology, and diction.
Loomis, Roger Sherman.
London: Hutchinson University Library, 1963.
New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964.
Comments on several thematic concerns as they occur in Chaucer's works as well as in Arthurian tradition (pity, renunciation of the world, etc.) and summarizes scholarship pertaining to the Auchinleck MS as a source for Th; also discusses WBT as a…
Brim, Constance E.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1992): 156A.
Latin and French antifraternal works preceded English ones, which display a distinctive treaatment of friars as peddlars,as in Chaucer's SumT. In the Renaissance, antifraternal writing gradually disappeared from Britain, along with the friars.
